My experience is old, and I worked mainly in backoffice/clearance stuff, but that said... I worked for Salomon Brothers in the mid-late 90's, and they treated

My experience is old, and I worked mainly in backoffice/clearance stuff, but that said... I worked for Salomon Brothers in the mid-late 90's, and they treated developers extremely well. Us backoffice guys got extraordinarily good facilities/equipment, humane working hours, a lot of freedom in tech use, etc. All for above average pay, even for NY. The trader support devs I worked around and with had it a little bit differently; their processes were much more reactive than ours, they worked under enormous pressure, and there was a lot of "less than cordial" interaction with the traders. However, they got paid quite extraordinarily, and there were never grudges held after the trading day; you could get screamed at for a few hours and go out for refreshments with the same guys a couple hours later. It was a dynamic that you had to have a certain personality to be able to handle, but no one went in there not knowing that. Just a data point.