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Comment by ig1 | Hacker News Reader

It depends on the bank, at some banks front-office developer bonuses are pay out of the desk bonus pool rather than a tech bonus pool.

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It is rare these days in my experience - it creates an appropriate separation of concerns to have the management alignment distinct (that can be interpreted to be a Sarbannes Oxley requirement.)

There can be budgeting for specific desk profits in the relative bonus pools decided in IT, but bonus makes up a smaller percentage of developer total comp generally unless you are approaching management.

If you are desk dev and hack Excel and Access for the front office that can help your case in regards bonuses, but this isn't true software development of course.

This is from my experience in London, I guess NYC might be different due to regulatory concerns.

I am speaking of my last 15 years in London working in derivatives/front office IT, and interviewing for many jobs in front office IT. It is very exceptional to find banks that will organise IT to report into the front office structure - this doesn't occur, and I almost never hear of such a thing when I see job specs.

It's not all of IT, but it's not unusual for quant dev type roles to report to the front-office (either singly or as part of a dual-reporting structure). The reporting doesn't have to be direct for dev bonuses to be tied to PnL either, what I've seen happen at some places is that a certain percentage of the desk bonus pool is assigned to the development team and the development team management than decide how to split that pool among the developers.

Go to efinancialcareers and search for "PnL bonus" if you want to see some examples of job specs mentioning it.

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