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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

#51

Post by joshuamorton »

xaybey wrote: post #26
123212321 wrote: post #11

This isnt really true. Banks dont pay anywhere near tech salaries. Its all lip service. The flow of good engineers is always banks -> tech companies and never tech companies -> banks.

I make significantly more at GS than I did at google. The difference is that the majority of my compensation comes from the yearly bonus - a quirk in finance.

This would imply you're at the Director level or above at GS. I expect you were L5 or less at Google, so this would make sense, but I'd expect Director at a big bank to be equivalent to an L6+ role at a Google or FB, or am I totally off base somewhere. (that is, you aren't really expected to make director)

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

#52

Post by 123212321 »

whatok wrote: post #49
123212321 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source is I work in this field. There are positions with big data and data management that pay well. But the ones paying 350k+ are way harder to get than working at a top tech firm. Theres a quant trading firm called engineers gate that has a bunch of ivy league programmers, the top of the top. They havent made a nickel off their technology. They have a had a huge outflow of talent to Google and FB. People do get pai…

If "data scientists" working at Google are considered tech roles then finance quants should be as well, right? I agree that there's a distinction between data engineers and quants but to me they're all tech roles essentially.

The difference is that quants make way more than regular engineers in finance. At google, an engineer working on the next generation database can make a ton of money, his work is extremely valuable to the firm. Engineering innovation is central. In finance, engineers in HFT did make a ton, but HFT is no longer very profitable.

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

#53

Post by TremendousJudge »

freehunter wrote: post #50
debt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say the same about largest media company in the world. It's shocking that people don't know it's Facebook. And in their case not just in the world, but the largest media company in history by a very wide margin. People don't see any connection between William Randolph Hearst and Mark Zuckerberg; Facebook really has the best PR team.

Well the difference is that Facebook is an aggregator and doesn't actually publish or write any of their own content. They're a media company, sure, but they're not directly comparable to newspapers or cable news outlets.

Google doesn't make the ads either, they just publish them on their platform

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

#54

Post by raverbashing »

Do they?

Have they dropped "corporate" solutions that barely work, sold in golf courses to people that are not affected in the least by their decisions?

Are they still using XML (or even worse, CORBA) as duct tape tying everything together?

Have they dropped waterfall?

Do they allow developers to have their say on architectures and solutions to use? Can they experiment with, let's say, Scala, Elixir or are they stuck with some old Java version and don't even think of adding a library besides the approved ones?

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

#55

Post by Cyph0n »

raesene9 wrote: post #38
curuinor wrote: post #10

it is extremely easy to tell a bank from a tech company: tell if they hash their damn passwords. i'm not even talking salt here, just hashing

if you're thinking of some bank's propensity to ask for specific characters of passwords (rather than the whole thing) meaning they can't have hashed it, it's worth noting that many protect the passwords with symmetric encryption and then store the keys in an HSM to mitigate the risk of unauthorised access.

Unless the HSM is also doing the decryption, the key(s) can still be stolen while in RAM..

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

#56

Post by freehunter »

southphillyman wrote: post #48
123212321 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a regular engineer? Or is there a math heavy component? My understanding is that I could get about 200k base at goldman and maybe a 20% bonus, this is for working in a high in demand field. Google/FB/Other job I can get 300k+ while working less hours, paid for lunch, better treatment, more respect.

That's a realistic compensation package for a normal Sr engineer role at a big bank ime. No, it's not Goog/FB pay but a lot of the jobs are available in LCOL areas like Delaware and the Triangle fwiw.

That's the biggest thing some people don't take into account when it comes to salaries: cost of living. $300k is not always more money than $200k.

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

#59

Post by jnordwick »

Tech and finance are two very broad brushes that both paint a large swath of the business landscape.

When speaking of finance there is everything from regional banks or loan originators to investment banks and trading firms. They are often very far apart in terms of culture, abilities, and pay.

On the higher end in tech you get front desk trading, and they are most definitely a tech subsidy inside a larger institution. Some of the best tech teams I've ever been exposured to. I would take the best team GS over the best team from Google any day of the week. Even a mediocre front desk team are far far above average for the industry because they focus on getting the best talent.

Even companies like Bloomberg that you wouldn't really think of beyond their news service is a massive tech company on the back end. They also have trading and low latency data infrastructures. One of the best teams i ever met was the core bond team at Bloomberg. I was blown away at how good they were.

All these places know they are tech companies and pay appropriately. On the other side you have regional banks or even old school trading firms where they aren't really tech companies, but are mostly admin work with average pay.

I've worked at tech companies and finance (hfts, algo trading, dark pool, banks), one thing i really like about finance is how difficult and interdisciplinary it can be. The tech problems I've encountered at finance firms have been so much more difficult than any other place. Google scales by throwing more machines at it, as most other web tech firms. Many times you don't have that luxury in finance. You have to be smart about it.

Remember, Google gives it developers Go because it considers them above average cogs. Finance firms gives it developers APL/A+/KDB :) I jest a little, but I think there is definitely something telling in what is expected of you.

You can go into a big bank and be a 9 to 5er in an auxiliary role. Or you can go in and workn your tail off and move up. But be prepared to work a lot for those bonuses.

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

#60

Post by guyzero »

bannable wrote: post #39
wafflesraccoon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is the biggest advertising company? Google?

Probably WPP or Omnicom.

Omnicom: $15B revenue annually, $17B market cap WPP: $18B revenue, $23B market cap Google: $110B revenue, $750B market cap

Seems like a good argument that being tech-forward provides a multiplier on value versus doing the same old thing, if you believe that these are all just advertising companies.

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