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Comment by codingslave | Hacker News Reader

Finance pays more, is also more competitive.

Software engineering in finance, you mean? How specialized is this?

350k is probably doable but if you wanna make like high six figures/7 figures you need to know about finance. You need to learn ML, fundamental analysis of companies, distributed systems, NLP, data analysis on data sets with extreme bias, holes, messy, etc. Could go the c++ low latency route, idk how well those are paying these days

It's a big field - I'd say buyside algo funds pay best in the space; I expect you'd be able to increase your income if you find the right fund and the right position.

As everywhere else, the closer you are to the profit centres, the more you get paid: e.g. exchange connectivity specialist at an HFT shop, devops maintaining the plumbing and infra for ML systems, data wrangling specialist etc. Also, some funds are notorious for having made weird decisions regarding their main programming language (e.g. ocaml or q/kdb), so being a language specialist can also prove lucrative.

You can also look to join a trading team inside a fund - the ceiing is much higher on what you can be paid, but it's a lot riskier too. Generally, working on the infra side of a highly sophisticated algo fund is less risky.

> the closer you are to the profit centres, the more you get paid

Yes, this. I would go further and say that if you're "IT" in a finance firm you're a second class citizen. You want to do engineering in a trading role: designing prop trading strategies, managing portfolios and pnl.

There are very few financial firms that are tech companies at the core. The landscape today is certainly better than it was ten or twenty years ago. Today, the firms who have a standing chance to compete in the arena have automated everything.

I'm making sweeping generalizations, so obviously YMMV.

This is outdated. Top non quant funds still pay their programmers 400 - 700k. Places like bridgewater, pimco, etc.

The comp structure is very different though. Base salary in finance is low compared to tech/silicon valley. most of the typical finance comp comes from yearly bonus, usually cash, but sometimes stock/options with vesting.

Yes, but the harsh truth is, you are still a 'second class citizen', even if a well paid one.

It's really a matter of culture; virtually all places will have a clear delineation between Investment and Technology, with various perks given to Investment people: better visibility into what is going on, access to higher management, general power to influence which projects need work etc. Also, Investment people tend to hang out together.

EDIT: Just realised you were maybe not commenting on the 'second class citizen' bit. I'll leave my comment here anyway.

So what, if youre paying me 600k a year to write code, I'll accept some abuse. Its why they pay so much

> You want to do engineering in a trading role: designing prop trading strategies, managing portfolios and pnl.

From a income maximisation PoV, that's true. However, OP was looking to not increase his risk, so taking PnL risk might not be what he wants.

That's true, but "IT" can still be paid pretty well. It's sort of like being a SRE at a FAANG. They won't respect you, but they need you anyway. Someone has to clean up the messes devs make. :-)

> They won't respect you, but they need you anyway

Wait, what? Have you ever been an SRE at FAANG? I am currently an SRE at Google and I am absolutely well respected by everybody and compensated in the exact same band of my peers SWE at my level (L5 at ~400k TC), and the career growth opportunities are the exact same. In fact, I used to be an SWE and switched to SRE due to the challenges being more vibrant and better aligned to my interests.

All my friends who do SRE work at Facebook have a similar experience.

I haven't. YMMV, and I'm glad to hear it's working well for you.

What's the culture like at these places if you're an engineer? Does the finance bro culture bleed over, or is it separate?

Depends on the fund - most specialist algo funds don't really have a 'trader bro' culture - no loud trading floor, no brash yelling on the phone.

The vibe is more of a tech firm with people working quietly in front of their copmputer.

Once you're seasoned enough on the finance side you'll wish you went to silicon valley...

The grass is always greener.

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