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It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

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Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen non director (pres) level offer packages up to $300k including guaranteed bonus minimum.

Those are well within what an L5 could get at Google. Unless you mean 300K base and a significant (ie 30-50% bonus).

That's non-director level, upper end of the vp level.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#93
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google: $110B revenue Where did you get 110 from? I'm seeing 90 for last year.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOGL/financials?p=GOOGL $110B total revenue for 2017

That's all revenue, including non-advertising revenue.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#94

I'm of the opinion that all banks should be technology companies, in that pretty much all of their operations rely on computing, so the better they are at developing and operating computer systems they better they'll be able to do business. Unfortunately, many banks (at least in the UK market) seem to see IT as some kind of overhead, to be minimized in cost and/or outsourced (e.g. Lloyds outsourcing to IBM https://ww…

The problem is legacy culture & systems. Theres almost no chance of a transformation unless a paradigm shift in senior management thinking takes place.

Maintaing their mess costs massively and large projects carry risks and a bad track record no one on top can support.

Too bad the fintech revolution lost some of its momentum challenging the profitable areas of banking

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#95
post #5
post #2

That being said I wouldn't say Goldman is your typical bank. Other banks are much slower at embracing automation and software development is more often than not considered as a non strategic commodity which budgets and headcount fluctuates up and down based on how much is available for discretionary spending. And the statements from its senior management are also too often aspirational and disconnected from the reali…

That's interesting to hear! I'm going through "Flash Boys" right now, and it (to me at least) paints GS in a pretty negative light wrt their engineering culture. Granted the book mostly focuses on HFT firms, so I could easily see that GS is way better than most large banks but a bit lacking behind, say, Citadel.

> That's interesting to hear! I'm going through "Flash Boys" right now, and it (to me at least) paints GS in a pretty negative light wrt their engineering culture.

As an aside, if you’re not planning to already, please read Flash Boys: Not So Fast when you’re done.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#97
post #88
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are absolutely the right questions to be asking, and in my experience the answers are mostly "yes".

Although from what I've heard, their version of moving from "waterfall" to "agile" could best be described as "iterative waterfall"

I'd take that over the "agile means we can yell at developers and just tell them to give us exactly the same things following exactly the same processes, just FASTER".

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#98

I work for a large healthcare system, and the "we're not a tech company" line is often heard. At many levels, I agree—we're in the business of delivering healthy outcomes to our communities, so we need to make sure that efforts across the enterprise support that—but it is often applied in ways that stifle us from delivering what we feel would be the most impactful and cost-effective solutions. I like to respond that…

I work in technology for an investment bank and i hear “we are not a technology company” every quarter. Ironically, the tech we develop is a major factor, if not the only factor, for revenue. My motivation is instantly shattered when i hear that.

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are well within what an L5 could get at Google. Unless you mean 300K base and a significant (ie 30-50% bonus).

That's non-director level, upper end of the vp level.

I'm not quite sure what your point is. Mine was that their bonus being > salary implied a role/level at a bank that was higher than what they likely had at Google, so a commensurate salary increase would make sense.

Could you explain what you're getting at?

Re: It's Getting Harder to Tell Banks from Tech Companies

#100

I'm of the opinion that all banks should be technology companies, in that pretty much all of their operations rely on computing, so the better they are at developing and operating computer systems they better they'll be able to do business. Unfortunately, many banks (at least in the UK market) seem to see IT as some kind of overhead, to be minimized in cost and/or outsourced (e.g. Lloyds outsourcing to IBM https://ww…

Most of what you say is true. But the reason they see IT as overhead is because their budget accounts for building the technology and find that supporting it may cost just as much. So they try to get rid of the overhead of Engineering the system to make room for Supporting the system they built. Now, they seem to quickly forget that you still need Engineering to build your next project. And that is why a lot of these companies treat IT Engineering as a disposable asset and then heavily out source the building of these projects to disposable IT Engineering consultants.
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