Finance job market in SF (San Francisco: closing, moving to, land)

[tirk82]

Hello everybody,

May be moving to san fran in 3 months. I am currently employed in the OTC derivatives operations industry with 3 yrs experience with a reputable bank. I just started looking , but was wondering if any finance people can tell me what your take is on the general finance job market in san fran? I know its a tough economy overall, but is san fran doing in this field despite the **** economy? Feel free to share your experiences. There are some comanies workin in derivatives , from what I've seen so far, however, I may have to venture outside of this field to other areas of finance. Is the industry strong weak slowing down growing in SF? Is it xtremely competetive or what? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks all!

[X14Freak]

I know a ton of unemployed finance people who have been looking for over a year or even 2 years in San Francisco. One of them was in Equity Research for a Bulge Bracket Investment Bank and it took this person over 2 years to land a crappy contract gig at a large CA based bank. A close friend of mine even knows a former Managing Director at a large Bulge Bracket Investment Bank who was laid off and it took this person over 1.5 years to land another gig. I also know other people from large well known Investment Banks who have been looking for a while.

The financial services sector is miserable in San Francisco and in fact it is shrinking. A lot of my friends who work in finance tell me how they are moving or closing operations in SF. Charles Schwab (which isn't a bank but it is a large financial institution) has been shrinking its operations in SF like crazy and has laid a ton of people off. Wells Fargo has also shrunk quite a bit in SF. There are some large Private Equity firms that have been doing well in SF but those firms usually hire a specific type of person with a specific skill set.

Finance in SF has been shrinking and if you ask me, stay wherever you are at since it is an incredibly difficult market here. The financial fields that are doing ok are Venture Capital and Private Equity and even these two fields have shrunk considerably from their previous highs. Hedge funds are also doing ok but as I have stated before, they are nowhere near their previous highs.