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Masters of the Universe? Barbarians at the gate? Both?
 Tom Wolfe, in his book Bonfire of the Vanities, called them “Masters of the Universe”. In Barbarians at the Gate, the implication is less flattering yet just as powerful. Investment Bankers, Traders, Equity Analysts… the list goes on. The importance of Wall Streeters to the free market can hardly be overstated. At their best, they are true market makers ensuring the flow of capital to areas where it can be most productively employed. This often has the end effect of raising standards of living and national productivity. At their worst, they symbolize greed and hyper-capitalism – a sentiment perhaps best captured in Michael Douglas’ words, “Greed is good” in the movie Wall Street.
In BITSians on Wall Street, the Sandpaper 2.0 team had the opportunity to meet and speak with many of our prominent alumni who have built careers in various functions of high finance on the Street. As always, our alumni were extremely gracious in taking the time to tell us their stories and providing us with various insights into careers on Wall Street. We spoke about topics ranging from the long hours and the lure of the lucre to the league tables and dynamic hedging.
Our goal is to inspire alums and students with a penchant for such careers to follow their dream as well as to help them chart their courses. For others, we hope that the article makes for enjoyable, educational reading.
In addition, this issue also breaks from our tradition of awarding the Quarterly BITSian to individuals only. Warren Bennis, leadership guru and management educator, often reminds us “none of us is as smart as all of us”. There is perhaps no better example of this than the outstanding achievements of the BITSunami Team, the first group to be awarded the Quarterly BITSian.
We hope that these stories, our regular features, and other ‘extras’ on sandpaper.bitsaa.org help you stay connected with your BITSian heritage and spur you on to whatever it is that you want for yourself.
Sandeep Mukherjee (’95 Phy Mech)
Chief Editor
October 27, 2005
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