finance versus silicon valley

this post pertains to job selection.
a friend of mine is just graduating from grad school and he is looking at job offers and the following is a precis of what we discussed about this choice.
financial services sector has it requirements which they choose to cater to themsleves and not through franchising traditional software companies like oracle and mircrosoft although these companies have long tried to make a foray into this sector. the it divisions of new york companies vary in size from 10000 (goldman sachs) to 100 (KBC) . they are located in downtown manhattan or uptown connecticut. susqehanna is actually located in a wonderful suburb of philadelphia and is also a great option. a prticularly stellar company my friend did not get an offer from is bridgewater, located in connecticut. morgan stanley located in white plains NYC is great because it has such a young it sector with such young and fresh people and such stellar success that the prospects of vertical and lateral growth seem promising. also as far as a guy planning a startup it is a very fertile ground since the ideas and the technologies and the algorithms that one can generate here can be taken with a small suitable team to fledgling markets like south asia and south america something like four to five years from now and it would be tremensously rewarding because the institutional support needed for these to work need this time to grow in such companies and even we need this time to gerner this experience and knowledge and contacts. as far as the west coast is concerned google, amazon, microsoft, vmware and oracle all have their plus points. more in the next post...