I love the way people in the Startup community talk about how New York is oriented around finance. It is totally true, from the perspective of a certain group of people. New York also has a history and cultural identity that puts monetary success and business above other concerns that can arguably be traced back to its founding by Dutch traders as New Amsterdam.
That said, New York is only oriented culturally around finance from the perspective of a tiny subgroup of self-important people. The overwhelming majority of people living, working, and creating in NYC do not feel that "finance" dominates the culture, the connections, or the emphasis.
New York is the dominant hub (or close to it) for several genres of music, for television, for fashion, for theater, for many counter-culture political movements, textiles ... the list goes on and on and it will be boring if I continue to explain.
Basically, it's the kind of thing you can say if you really know nothing about New York.
Thank you for this. I absolutely can't stand the comparison between the two environments. According to NYC's labor statistics [1], Finance as a whole (including all of commercial and investment banking, insurance, and real estate) makes up about 12.5% of the city's private sector jobs, and employs about as many people as the NYC local government does. For comparison, the Education and Health Services sector employs almost twice as many people (~24%), and Leisure and Hospitality about the same (11.4%).
Its much harder to find good statistics on the Bay Area because its comprised of so many different municipalities, but I would bet the Tech industry employs way more than 12.5% of private sector employees there. There's also no real "runner-up" in the region; Finance is one of the industries here, Tech is the industry in the Bay Area.
Well put. I live here and can go months before meeting someone who works in finance. There are lots of big corporations here as well as lots of artistic/creative jobs.
That said, New York is only oriented culturally around finance from the perspective of a tiny subgroup of self-important people. The overwhelming majority of people living, working, and creating in NYC do not feel that "finance" dominates the culture, the connections, or the emphasis.
New York is the dominant hub (or close to it) for several genres of music, for television, for fashion, for theater, for many counter-culture political movements, textiles ... the list goes on and on and it will be boring if I continue to explain.
Basically, it's the kind of thing you can say if you really know nothing about New York.