An interesting point which I will concede. But I doubt the exception disproves the rule for the general case.
For what it's worth, GS was founded in 1869, which makes it older than most of the behemoth systems companies like IBM (1911) or AT&T (1880). Big banks like GS may not be as invincible post-2008 as they used to appear to be, but if there are institutions which you could say "this institution is not going to evaporate in the next few decades which will make up my career", GS would not be a bad bet.
Which brings an interesting question, how many former Goldmanites a) worked primarily in Slang (given that not all Goldmanite engineers work on SecDB) b) were laid off or otherwise left GS without having a job lined up and c) then found work? If you can prove that you can work on a different stack and get a job with no frictional unemployment, is a much different picture compared to engineers who stay out of work (the parallel question being, why is Slang so much more de-facto employable than COBOL or other languages which for one reason or another are now unpopular or unused in the wider industry?).
For what it's worth, GS was founded in 1869, which makes it older than most of the behemoth systems companies like IBM (1911) or AT&T (1880). Big banks like GS may not be as invincible post-2008 as they used to appear to be, but if there are institutions which you could say "this institution is not going to evaporate in the next few decades which will make up my career", GS would not be a bad bet.
Which brings an interesting question, how many former Goldmanites a) worked primarily in Slang (given that not all Goldmanite engineers work on SecDB) b) were laid off or otherwise left GS without having a job lined up and c) then found work? If you can prove that you can work on a different stack and get a job with no frictional unemployment, is a much different picture compared to engineers who stay out of work (the parallel question being, why is Slang so much more de-facto employable than COBOL or other languages which for one reason or another are now unpopular or unused in the wider industry?).