I agree that its financial porn. I disagree on the "dubious field" and "no value to society" premise - In the past, I've interviewed with and worked for several s/w startups that were/are much more dubious and useless than finance.
Also, "attracting all sorts of people into the field" is really stretching it. Getting into the field to make a serious non-trivial impact - like running a derivatives desk or managing say a non-ferrous futures portfolio or even something straightforward like a 130-30 long-short equities fund takes a whole lot of expertise, something a whole lot of people simply don't have. For example, the codebase for one of the largest 130-30 fund in the world, run by Blackrock out of the Howard street office in SF, is actively managed by 3 Applied Math PhDs, 5 Java Programmers with CS Masters, and a dozen SQL , QA & misc scutwork CS undergrads. The guys using the codebase ie. the portfolio managers and the junior portfolio mgrs, are another dozen econ grads with CFAs and some 50 years of combined market experience. Its a pretty challenging job, and they've come up with a +ve alpha through most of the crisis, which is a minor miracle in itself.
Your second paragraph has enough industry lingo and insider info that it strongly suggests you work(ed) for a hedge fund, yourself. So your opinion on whether it's a dubious field or of value to the society is going to be a wee bit biased. :)
Also, "attracting all sorts of people into the field" is really stretching it. Getting into the field to make a serious non-trivial impact - like running a derivatives desk or managing say a non-ferrous futures portfolio or even something straightforward like a 130-30 long-short equities fund takes a whole lot of expertise, something a whole lot of people simply don't have. For example, the codebase for one of the largest 130-30 fund in the world, run by Blackrock out of the Howard street office in SF, is actively managed by 3 Applied Math PhDs, 5 Java Programmers with CS Masters, and a dozen SQL , QA & misc scutwork CS undergrads. The guys using the codebase ie. the portfolio managers and the junior portfolio mgrs, are another dozen econ grads with CFAs and some 50 years of combined market experience. Its a pretty challenging job, and they've come up with a +ve alpha through most of the crisis, which is a minor miracle in itself.