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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

There might be a tipping point when the big tech companies decide jack up the offers high enough to be competitive with finance. Once that threshold is crossed, I'd imagine you will see a flood of smart people fleeing the financial sector to do something more rewarding with their lives.

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The tech companies already do have offers high enough to be competitive with finance. On another note, I do not know why working at Facebook would be intrinsically more rewarding than working at Jane Street. Finally, the finance skill set is not quite the same as what is needed at Facebook. They would be more likely competing with startup companies and Google NYC.

Isn't Jane Street a little... unique? Most banks don't write blogs about OCaml, right?

I'm speaking from the anecdotal evidence that most engineers I know in finance are pretty miserable sans the fact they make barrels of money.

Probably you never talked to real finance technology guys.

Or true Scotsmen.

> On another note, I do not know why working at Facebook would be intrinsically more rewarding than working at Jane Street.

Because the former actually makes a useful product?

> Finally, the finance skill set is not quite the same as what is needed at Facebook.

At least at the entry level, the hiring is for credentials not so much skill set. There is a decent number of math/cs majors who end up in finance (not even necessarily something like computational finance, just state up IB or trading) instead of engineering.

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