One of the country’s largest banks, Morgan Stanley, is losing its chief financial officer to Google in the most visible example yet of the flow of talent from Wall Street to Silicon¹ Valley.

美国银行业巨擘摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的首席财务官即将加盟谷歌(Google)。截至目前，这是人才从华尔街流向硅谷的最明显例证。

Ruth Porat, Morgan Stanley’s chief financial officer since 2010, has been one of the most powerful women in a financial industry that has struggled to promote and hold on to its female executives. She is going to Silicon Valley while it is facing its own issues about gender² balance.

在竭尽所能提拔和留住女高管的金融行业里，从2010年开始担任摩根士丹利首席财务官的露丝·波拉特(Ruth Porat)是最具影响力的女性之一。而她即将投身其中的硅谷目前正面临性别平衡方面的问题。

Ms. Porat is following in the steps of other big names from the bastions of East Coast power who have recently decamped to the ascendant technology industry on the West Coast. The former White House spokesman Jay Carney said last month that he was joining Amazon.com, and the former Obama aide David Plouffe joined Uber last year.

最近，一些大名鼎鼎的人物纷纷撤离东海岸的权力堡垒，投身到西海岸蒸蒸日上的科技行业之中，波拉特正追寻着他们的脚步。前白宫发言人杰伊·卡尼(Jay Carney)上个月称，自己即将加盟亚马逊(Amazon.com)；给奥巴马(Obama)当过助手的戴维·普洛夫(David Plouffe)则在一年前被Uber招致麾下。

But Silicon Valley has been drawing much of its most valuable new talent from Wall Street. A top banker at Goldman Sachs, Anthony J. Noto, moved west last year to become the chief financial officer at Twitter.

不过，华尔街一直是硅谷大举吸纳最具价值的新鲜血液的地方。去年，高盛集团(Goldman Sachs)的高管安东尼·J·诺托(Anthony J. Noto)搬到西海岸，成了Twitter的首席财务官。

Less than a decade ago, Wall Street firms were the premier³ destination for young college graduates and talented executives. More recently, though, the financial industry has been struggling to keep growing as it faces a raft of new regulations and a lack of public confidence as a result of the financial crisis.

不到10年前，年轻的大学毕业生和有才干的高管都把华尔街当成他们职业生涯的首选目的地。但近来，金融业一直在勉为其难地维持增长，同时还要应对一系列监管新规以及金融危机以来对其缺乏信任的公众。

Silicon Valley, on the other hand, is experiencing a period of blockbuster growth that has created dozens of billion-dollar start-ups practically overnight.

相对而言，硅谷正在经历一段飞速发展的时期，几乎在一夜之间创造了数十家价值10亿美元级别的初创企业。

“Smart people go to where they feel there is the most growth,” said Robert Reffkin, who left Goldman in 2012 after seven years to found a start-up, Compass, that is focused on real estate.

“聪明人都会去他们觉得增长空间最大的地方，”罗伯特·里夫金(Robert Reffkin)说。2012年，里夫金在高盛工作七年后离开，成立了初创公司指南针(Compass)，该公司专注于房地产业务。

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a top source of young recruits, only 10 percent of undergraduates went into finance in 2014, compared with the 31 percent who took jobs on Wall Street in 2006, before the financial crisis. Software companies, meanwhile, hired 28 percent of M.I.T. graduates in 2014, compared with 10 percent in 2006.

在作为新人首要来源的麻省理工学院（Massachusetts Institute of Technology，简称MIT），2014年只有10%的本科生进入了金融领域，而在金融危机前的2006年，共有31%的人选择了华尔街的工作。与此同时，软件公司2014年共聘请了28%的MIT毕业生，这个比例在2006年则为10%。

Similar trends have been evident at the other top training grounds that have long fed the upper ranks of Wall Street. At Harvard Business School, for example, the percentage of graduates going into finance dropped to 33 percent last year from 42 percent in 2006, while the numbers going into technology jumped to 17 percent from 7 percent.

在长期以来为华尔街提供高层工作者的其他重要学校，也明显出现了类似的趋势。例如在哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)，去年进入金融行业的毕业生人数比例已经从2006年的42%降至33%，而进入科技领域的人数则从7%跃至17%。

Wall Street is certainly not hurting for talent. It remains⁴ the top destination at many business schools and is still one of the most selective industries for hiring. Last summer, Morgan Stanley had 90,000 applicants⁵ for roughly 1,000 entry-level summer jobs.

华尔街当然不缺乏有才者。它仍然是许多商学院的首选目的地，同时还是最挑剔的用人行业之一。去年夏天，摩根士丹利共有9万名申请者申请大约1千个初级暑期工作。

Ms. Porat’s move, meanwhile, is one in a long list of instances in which Wall Street has served as a training ground for the leadership ranks of other industries. Most famously, Goldman has produced two Treasury⁶ secretaries during the last two decades. Ms. Porat was on the short list of people being considered for deputy Treasury secretary in 2013, but she eventually asked for her name to be withdrawn⁷.

同时，大量事实表明，华尔街一直是其他行业领导者的训练场，波拉特仅是其中一个案例。最广为人知的是，高盛过去20年曾培养了两名财政部长。2013年，波拉特曾出现在财政部副部长的最终候选人名单上，但她最后提出了移除自己名字的请求。

In the last few years, though, Silicon Valley has strengthened its case as the new center of economic gravity in the United States. Established companies like Google and Apple have grown rapidly at the same time that start-ups like Uber and Twitter have flourished.

然而过去几年，硅谷强化了它作为美国经济影响力新中心的理由。谷歌和苹果(Apple)等老牌公司获得了迅速发展，同一时间，Uber和Twitter等初创企业也蒸蒸日上。

Mr. Reffkin said that when he was at Goldman, as chief of staff to the bank’s president, “it became clear that we are in the middle of a software revolution.”

里夫金说，当他在高盛担任银行总裁的幕僚长时，“我逐渐意识到，我们正处在软件革命的中心。”

“I want to be a part of that,” he added.

他接着说，“我想参与其中。”

The economic strength of the technology industry adds to the lifestyle differences — including a relaxed dress code, better weather and a more freewheeling culture — that have long attracted young employees to start-ups. Compare that with Wall Street, where new legislation has increased the emphasis on hierarchical decision-making and standardized⁸ processes.

科技行业的经济实力，再加上生活方式上的差异——其中包括宽松的着装要求、更好的氛围和更加随心所欲的文化——一直在吸引年轻工作者前往初创企业。相比之下，针对华尔街的新法规则更重视分层决策和标准化流程。

“Just the thought of walking into a tall building in a suit or high heels and going to meetings where you’re discussing a regulated industry where it’s increasingly difficult to innovate⁹ — most of the people I talk to don’t find that prospect¹⁰ appealing,” said Martha Josephson, a partner in the Palo Alto, Calif., office of Egon Zehnder, an executive recruiting firm.

高管猎头公司亿康先达(Egon Zehnder)在加州帕洛阿尔托的合伙人玛莎·约瑟夫森(Martha Josephson)说，“想想要穿着西装或高跟鞋走进一栋高楼，开会讨论一个受到严密监管且越来越难以创新的行业——我交谈过的大部分人都不认为这有什么吸引力。”

As the movement between industries has taken hold, it has often built on itself. When Marissa Mayer became Yahoo’s chief executive in 2012, she hired Jacqueline D. Reses, a former Goldman banker, as the company’s chief development officer. Ms. Reses’s job, in essence, was to help Yahoo recruit new talent and to find promising¹¹ companies to buy and team up with.

随着行业间的这种流动开始形成，它往往会愈演愈烈。2012年，当玛丽莎·梅耶尔(Marissa Mayer)成为雅虎(Yahoo)首席执行官时，她聘请了前高盛银行家杰奎琳·D·雷瑟斯(Jacqueline D. Reses)来担任公司的首席开发官。雷瑟斯的工作，其实就是帮雅虎招募新人才，并寻找有前途的公司进行收购或合作。

She has led Yahoo’s dozens of acquisitions, including the $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr and the $640 million purchase of Brightroll. Naturally, she brought in many of her own to help.

她领导了雅虎的数十起并购，其中包括以11亿美元购买Tumblr，6.4亿美元购买Brightroll。当然，她带了很多她的人进入新公司。

“I have hired people out of Wall Street, primarily because it was a peer group that I was very familiar with,” Ms. Reses said.

雷瑟斯说，“我挖了一些华尔街的人，主要因为这是一个我非常熟悉的朋辈群体。”

The most noticeable departures from Wall Street have been the high-level banking¹² executives like Ms. Porat and Mr. Noto, who have taken their financial expertise¹³ to companies that were started by programmers.

华尔街最引人注目的离职事件中都是波拉特和诺托这样的银行高管。这些人把自己的财务专业知识带到了程序员所开创的公司。

But the more troubling trend for Wall Street banks is the lower-ranking programmers who are opting¹⁴ to head west at a time when banks are more dependent than ever on software and technology.

但是，对于华尔街的银行而言，更令人不安的趋势是，当银行比以往任何时候都更依赖软件和技术的时候，级别较低的程序员却选择了前往西部。

At Goldman, for instance, the number of high-level programmers-cum-bankers — what the firm calls “strats” — has risen 43 percent since 2009. These are the employees who are most likely to be lured¹⁵ away by a Facebook or Google.

例如在高盛，加入银行业的高级程序员人数——公司所谓的“战略资源”（strats）——自2009年以来已经增加了43％。这些工作人员最有可能被Facebook或谷歌这样的公司挖走。

The start-ups, meanwhile, are not just stealing talent from Wall Street. Many of them are also trying to build companies like the payment processors Square and Stripe, which could eventually siphon business from the financial industry.

与此同时，这些初创企业不只是在从华尔街偷走人才。它们当中有许多还试图建立像Square和Stripe这样的支付处理公司，这些公司最终可能会抢走金融行业的业务。