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Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

bloomberg.com

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Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#41

Post by malux85 »

throwaway129999 wrote: post #33
naturalgradient wrote: post #3

Can anyone comment on how competitive salaries are there actually? Right now, for top tier PhD graduates in machine learning, it's about 300-400k at big tech companies starting out, and ~200k for master's degrees. From what I read and heard, banks are not really willing to pay up competitively for software?

I'm in the range of 3-5 years out of undergrad, working at a quant firm. My total gross comp for this year will be about 400-450k, majority of that is bonus. By quant firm I mean either a proprietary trading firm (no outside investors) or a hedge fund (takes outside money), but not a bank. I have a CS background but have self-studied in stats, and received mentorship from people with strong math backgrounds. Main adv…

Sounds interesting and challenging - my contact details are in my profile if you'd like to chat

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#42

Post by kasey_junk »

dookahku wrote: post #18

So how does a mid-level software engineer get into trading? I do paper trading on my own for fun but I'd like to make it a career.

Same way you get into any industry. Get a job at a place that trades.

Like any industry it’s best if you have contacts there to get you past the HR gauntlet but even if not they advertise jobs like anywhere else.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#43

Post by xenihn »

throwaway129999 wrote: post #33
naturalgradient wrote: post #3

Can anyone comment on how competitive salaries are there actually? Right now, for top tier PhD graduates in machine learning, it's about 300-400k at big tech companies starting out, and ~200k for master's degrees. From what I read and heard, banks are not really willing to pay up competitively for software?

I'm in the range of 3-5 years out of undergrad, working at a quant firm. My total gross comp for this year will be about 400-450k, majority of that is bonus. By quant firm I mean either a proprietary trading firm (no outside investors) or a hedge fund (takes outside money), but not a bank. I have a CS background but have self-studied in stats, and received mentorship from people with strong math backgrounds. Main adv…

How much math did you self-teach and what did you use to learn it? Aside from mentorship.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#44

Post by nvarsj »

lordnacho wrote: post #31
vostok wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not surprising that it's higher than the average job on stackoverlfow. That's about what I would expect. I'm not saying it's horrible, but it's not exactly higher than top paying tech companies.

Any idea what the tech firms pay in London? I don't have many data points for them.

I'd say the typical for a senior engineer is around 70, ranging up to about 100 or so depending on expertise/company. Going to lead/architect you're looking around 80-120 total comp (there's a huge range...). Finance will pay much better like you said, 150-200, but the tech will be pretty bad. People making over 150 out of finance are generally contracting or working for a US company.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#45

Post by dogruck »

lordnacho wrote: post #23
vostok wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it a native recruitment piece, but it's telling that they didn't talk about total compensation.

I would think it's pretty good. I get recruiters calling me all the time, a lot of them are quoting £150-200k total comp. That's for a guy with over a decade's experience in financial coding. By contrast on StackOverflow the salaries that you can see tend to be much lower for the non-finance things.

The trading-coding positions they’re referring to in that article have total comps that can be far greater than 200k pounds.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#46

Post by vasilipupkin »

aleph_naught wrote: post #40
throwaway129999 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the range of 3-5 years out of undergrad, working at a quant firm. My total gross comp for this year will be about 400-450k, majority of that is bonus. By quant firm I mean either a proprietary trading firm (no outside investors) or a hedge fund (takes outside money), but not a bank. I have a CS background but have self-studied in stats, and received mentorship from people with strong math backgrounds. Main adv…

A few questions, if you don't mind answering: > 400-450k Where is that in the pay distribution? Near median? Realistically, where, comp-wise, would the average SWE plateau? How many hours are you guys putting in a week? What was the interview like? Did they go deep into stats/stochastic-calc/derivates-pricing/etc ? --- I'm currently in tech, making near the low end of your range. Getting promoted to the next pay scal…

What does it take to make 7 figures at your tech company ?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#47

Post by mrep »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #21
vostok wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My understanding is that the average finance professional makes less than or equal to tech, but the top 1 - 5% of finance easily make 7 figures. This is more or less true, but an interesting thing to think about is that the number of people (with technical backgrounds) making 7 figures in financial firms is smaller than the number of people making 7 figures in technology firms. This is probably obvious to you if yo…

are you sure? how likely is it that an engineer in a technology firm makes 7 figures? I mean what sort of position do you need to have to get there?

I think only distinguished engineers get that outright at amazon of which there are only like 10-15.

However, I bet most principal engineers and up who have been here 3+ years are hitting that lately with how good our stock is doing and that amazon pays higher ups mostly in RSU's.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#48

Post by [deleted] »

lordnacho wrote: post #23
vostok wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it a native recruitment piece, but it's telling that they didn't talk about total compensation.

I would think it's pretty good. I get recruiters calling me all the time, a lot of them are quoting £150-200k total comp. That's for a guy with over a decade's experience in financial coding. By contrast on StackOverflow the salaries that you can see tend to be much lower for the non-finance things.

[deleted]

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#50

Post by throrwawayquant »

throwaway129999 wrote: post #33
naturalgradient wrote: post #3

Can anyone comment on how competitive salaries are there actually? Right now, for top tier PhD graduates in machine learning, it's about 300-400k at big tech companies starting out, and ~200k for master's degrees. From what I read and heard, banks are not really willing to pay up competitively for software?

I'm in the range of 3-5 years out of undergrad, working at a quant firm. My total gross comp for this year will be about 400-450k, majority of that is bonus. By quant firm I mean either a proprietary trading firm (no outside investors) or a hedge fund (takes outside money), but not a bank. I have a CS background but have self-studied in stats, and received mentorship from people with strong math backgrounds. Main adv…

I wish we had more salary threads for quants.

I started 4 years ago at a quant shop fresh out of college and expect to make around 250k.

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