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Had an offer from Citigroup a few months ago, hope this is useful for anyone approached, this is from my interview/offer experience and from talking to folks at

Had an offer from Citigroup a few months ago, hope this is useful for anyone approached, this is from my interview/offer experience and from talking to folks at Citi privately: - They claimed remote was impossible, after I told them it was a red line there was suddenly an exception. They did claim this exception required a lot of approvals but take from that what you will. - The projects they wanted me to work on were genuinely ambitious and impactful, not just something thankless. - They claimed to want to start open sourcing large parts of their tech from 2023 onwards. - It's definitely a different world from the rest of tech, people seemed to care about the things they worked on, but the way things were reasoned about just seemed a bit different. - The people I met there are genuinely nice people (at least in Tech) who I'd be happy to sit down and have a coffee with anytime. - Even the very specifically designated tech places had debt coming in from the rest of the company (primarily in process when they had to touch other teams), they did say they had C-Suite buy-in to go solve that but as I didn't join I can't comment on how strong that buy in really is. - Politics is everywhere, people will fight you not on technical merit but because they want to claim responsibility for something even if its inferior to the product you could build - if you don't have the support to push through this I suspect you'd get stuck here. - Corporate structure is confusing because everyone's titles are massively inflated. - Claimed to have internal open source in the Division I interviewed for (didn't expect that). - Offer for 2 YoE UK was VP £190k/year with no stock

inferiorhuman 4y ago
Politics is everywhere, people will fight you not on technical merit but because they want to claim responsibility for something even if its inferior to the product you could build - if you don't have the support to push through this I suspect you'd get stuck here. In my meager experience this is not unusual in large(r) organizations. At one point at megacorp there was a big push to get me to buy into some atrocious docker orchestration thing as I was part of a high velocity team. There were two teams working on this internal monstrosity and each manager was quite happy to promise entirely contradictory things to promote their own status within the company. I've never been so fast to turn someone's name into a verb. Another shining moment was when the security/compliance department cobbled together a Hashicorp Vault proof-of-concept and lobbed it over the fence at one of the ops teams. The ops team didn't have the bandwidth to deal with it and the security team refused to maintain it. It was ridiculous enough that veeps and directors got involved. Corporate structure is confusing because everyone's titles are massively inflated. This has been my experience at most tech companies I've been at. Claimed to have internal open source in the Division I interviewed for (didn't expect that). Careful what you ask for. ;)
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  goes doubly for banking sector. I can't tell you how many 'vice presidents' are in my rolodex, it's pretty much everybody that isn't a teller.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    Sure. The first time around at megacorp I left shortly before a reorg that demoted my manager to IC status. He was still a manager when I returned but a manager with no direct reports.
  - mindentropy 4y ago
    > I can't tell you how many 'vice presidents' are in my rolodex Yes I have seen this. This person was boasting about being a "Vice President" and then I see almost everyone is a VP. What is up with this?
    - wbl 4y ago
      Suppose you are the CEO of a bottle cap company in the Midwest. Whose call you going to take, a VP at Goldman or a junior banker at Goldman?
  - rockinghigh 4y ago
    Vice President at financial companies is just a mid-senior title. Similar to L4/L5 at Google. There is no expectation of managing people.
  - decafninja 4y ago
    My resume and LinkedIn original had "vice president" as my title (as a bank SWE). It seemed to be detrimental to finding a job at a tech company, so I've long since replaced it with just "senior software engineer" to much better results. One FAANG hiring manager outright told me he found it very intimidating.
- softveda 4y ago
  One bank in Australia (NAB) is also doing this inner source thing. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nab-to-innersource-some-of-its-business-platforms-573652#:~:text=NAB%20has%20been%20innersourcing%20code,cloud%20and%20into%20production%20faster https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nab-to-innersource-some-of-it....
acchow 4y ago
> Offer for 2 YoE UK was VP £190k/year with no stock This sounds higher than Google UK?
- intunderflow 4y ago
  Depends wildly on the team / level surely, much more than YoE? I'd have guessed Google/Deepmind can pay anywhere from 80k up through 400k based on the role.
  - nickkell 4y ago
    Are you talking about US dollars? The salaries in the UK are much lower.
    - carnitine 4y ago
      No that’s definitely consistent with what Google pay in GBP in London.
      - oumua_don17 4y ago
        Google UK pays an L5 which is Senior Software Engineer around 200K GBP including stocks [1] [1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engineer/L5/United-Kingdom/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...
        carnitine 4y ago
        I don’t get how that is inconsistent with the root comment? If the median senior earns 200k, then it’s reasonable that someone junior would earn 80k and a top engineer at DeepMind would earn more.
        nickkell 4y ago
        Wow that is honestly much higher than I was expecting. I was thinking back to Dan Abramov earning half of that at Facebook.
pottertheotter 4y ago
I don’t know if it is the case with Citi, but it may not be that titles are inflated, but that titles are different. I’ve spent most of my career on Wall Street (i-banking and investing) and VP is a mid level position, and it comes before director. Whereas my mom works for Google and VPs there are quite senior.
- singhrac 4y ago
  This is right. It’s just different, not inflated.
  - jtc331 4y ago
    ISTM the definition of title inflation should be something like “titles frequently connote a significantly higher level of responsibility than the title holder actually has”. If the title communicates incorrect information it isn’t merely a different convention; it actively causes confusion.
- kgwgk 4y ago
  If having thousands of vice-presidents is not title inflation, what would qualify as such?
  - jbjbjbjb 4y ago
    Just that the convention is different. It is just the third rung on the ladder in the finance world. You might manage a small team of junior staff.
    - kgwgk 4y ago
      You don’t need to manage anyone to be VP. If you manage people you deserve a director title! More than 25% of Goldman Sachs employees are VP, for example. And of course the idea of title inflation can be rendered meaningless in any situation saying “it’s just a different convention”.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Is that your offer (with 2 YoE) or someone else? Is that usual do you think, or do you have some golden stuff on the cv?
- intunderflow 4y ago
  This is my offer. I suspect golden stuff on CV / strong interview round. (I'm now a Staff Engineer on 2.5 YoE)
  - cmckn 4y ago
    More power to you, but that sounds like a pretty inflated title to (not staff) me.
    - intunderflow 4y ago
      Probably is honestly.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - quickthrower2 4y ago
        I imagine it was HR BS. They had to call you that to pay you X. You are worth X. But they needed to match the title to it. From what I have read Staff Engineer is mostly architecture/meetings/people management, and being across a very large team. If you are doing that it might be Staff Engineer, but if you are mostly coding it probably isn't. Either way it doesn't matter. It is just another title.
zakki 4y ago
I think this different (as said by other poster) or inflated title is on purpose. i.e. to get customers trust. Imagine Citi’s customer talk to their VP!
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  This is absolutely a technique they use at branches and for customer support calls. The majority of people respond very positively when they think their problem is being handled by a Senior Vice President.
notyourwork 4y ago
(No offense) We're paying in-experienced new to industry engineers way too much money. Thanks for sharing.
- intunderflow 4y ago
  I'm not sure how much can be gleaned about my competency and experience from just YoE (I jokingly refer to it as "bum in seat time" sometimes) In any case though, that comp seems pretty typical nowadays, folks I know at Apple are on 250k and that's considered normal.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    > folks I know at Apple are on 250k and that's considered normal As in UK based Apple employees? 5 years back you would only get to that level as a massively prolific contractor. Maybe I should move back to the UK! :)
    - intunderflow 4y ago
      Yeah, high Senior / low Staff at Apple nets you 250k based on folks I know
  - _trackno5 4y ago
    Sure 250k is normal, but at a senior level. 2 YoE would never get someone 190k salary (in the UK).That's just nuts. If you told me 190k for a senior role I'd totally buy that.
    - catchmilk 4y ago
      OP didn't specify whether that includes bonus or not. Regardless, for 2 YoE, this has to be a huge outlier. I'm inclined to think that this more an exception to the rule - I have a bunch of friends working in London finance tech, none of them making even close to that figure.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
zxcvbn4038 4y ago
I did a job interview at Citibank a number of years ago, for an IT security position, and the thing I remember most was walking through the office and seeing a well used copy of Computer Security For Dummies on every desk. That reminded me of a past position at Chase where our group’s head of IT security was a former bricklayer, with no technical background, who was never without his copy of Computer Security for Dummies, and was forever trying to find out where we were “hiding our NFS”. We always tried to tell him that we didn’t use NFS and he would always counter that he didn’t buy it, and he knew we had one and that we were hiding it from him. Ok. Chase and Citigroup are like the McDonalds of financial services, everyone works there once, the talented people leave, the ones who stay generally lack the confidence or ability to do likewise, and they are a PITA to work for because they live in constant fear of being out shown. I really wouldn’t recommend working at any of the big banks, they are thankless soul crushing jobs, and you’ll forever be working on what everyone else was doing ten years ago.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >Chase and Citigroup are like the McDonalds of financial services, everyone works there once, the talented people leave, the ones who stay generally lack the confidence or ability to do likewise, and they are a PITA to work for Thanks, this explains the experience I had interviewing with Chase. I have never ghosted an entire company before, let alone walked into a bank branch to tell them to get their computer doctors to learn to be respectful in a job interview. On my end, I'd hoped it might be a cultural fit since I think many big tech companies have insider threats because they don't allow people to truly take time off -- it's common in the finance world to force someone to take a vacation at least once a year for fraud prevention. (The idea being your scam requires your constant presence, it will fall apart.)
  - bigie35 4y ago
    I will say, having worked at Capital one in the past, that it is the outlier here. They have a really strong tech focused culture and from my experience, rarely outsource their tech teams. To drive this point home, they're creating a whole new business based on the expertise they developed with Snowflake. https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2022/06/01/capitsl-one-enters-b2b-software-industry/?sh=15697cb12d6b https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2022/06/01/capitsl-...
spacejogger 4y ago
That is a great salary for the UK - did you apply for a UK role, or did you apply for a US role working remotely, and thus got a US-level salary? I'm at the executive director level at another bank and get paid only slightly more than that in the UK - looks like I need to start interviewing.
- jackhiggs 4y ago
  I'm fairly sure that's total comp - so with a 1st year bonus guarantee. After that first comp cycle, we all know which way the bonus will go...And then you're fighting the rest of the team for that 2-5% merit budget. If that's just salary - I have no idea what Citi are doing, it's way out of market.
- MafellUser 4y ago
  What's crazy is just a few years ago that TC was only available for IBD. Even if the trajectory is only down after the 1st year bonus, you can hop off after the paycheck. Now that money can only be found in tech. 200k is roughly ICT4 at Apple Ldn which is like 10 years of experience. GP definitely an outlier. Maybe their profile fits a narrative that the bank is pushing.
  - stevoski 4y ago
    TC, IBD, ICT4, Ldn, GP… I simply can’t parse this comment.
    - soared 4y ago
      Tc = total compensation (salary, bonus, stock, benefits) Ibd = investment banking division Ict4 = more commonly IC, individual contributor level 4. Not a manager. Ldn = London I think Gp = grandparent poster (comment 2 levels above the referenced comment)
_the_inflator 4y ago
> They claimed to want to start open sourcing large parts of their tech from 2023 onwards. My background is enterprise, finance. I talk to enterprises frequently. Question this as hard as you can. They will never act like Google, Facebook, Netflix. In short: don't work for the OS side of enterprises. There is none. "large parts" - which? In corporate "large parts" is different from tech people. "from 2023..." - well, this tale is a running gag at least at my company. Telling this since 2017: "Next year!" There are a lot of processes involved, finance fears of losing intellectual property, decision makers are usually business people who know next to nothing about tech people thinking and reasoning. Banks fear of code injections, have to deal with regulators, don't want to deal with an OS community, because costs - that's my experience. Ask them about these topics and you can sense how realistic these claims are.
- altacc 4y ago
  I'm in enterprise, insurance industry. Our witticism for future functionality is "Any decade now!" Enterprises are slow, they have high inertia for many reasons and tech can only affect that so much.
bambataa 4y ago
That’s a very good VP level UK salary, at least compared to JPM. However, I wouldn’t go back to an IB if I could avoid it. Fundamentally tech is just a cost centre and they have very top-down corporate cultures. Everything is intensely political.
- shamiln 4y ago
  I’d posit that most VPs and some EDs at JPM aren’t on that salary. Looking at the data, that salary is a massive outlier, and I know SVP salaries at Citi aren’t at 190 for technologists.
  - jackhiggs 4y ago
    It's total comp. So salary plus bonus. It's high but I've seen higher at JPM in terms of total comp at VP level. If we're talking pure salary then yes £190k is base for a seasoned ED.
    - shamiln 4y ago
      I guess I'm severely underpaid then....
  - bambataa 4y ago
    I know that JPM are trying to compete with the likes of Citadel, so perhaps IBs are increasing their offers for new tech people.
weego 4y ago
I had a job offer like this with grand visions and promises of greenfield freedom, with the goal to compete with someone big in the payments sector who was and has since eaten their lunch, by WorldPay years ago. No product ever came of it and others left early from good salaries due to the endless political infighting that handcuffed the entire thing. Same thing happened again more recently with a company that has to remain nameless I'm not saying every opportunity in institutional fintech is like this but initial appearance and promises are easily wiped away once middle management get a smell of it, far more so than in other industries.
giantg2 4y ago
"They claimed to want to start open sourcing large parts of their tech from 2023 onwards." I work for a different financial company that said something similar about contributing to open source. That was 10 years ago and still nothing. So take this skeptically. "Politics is everywhere, people will fight you not on technical merit but because they want to claim responsibility for something even if its inferior to the product you could build - if you don't have the support to push through this I suspect you'd get stuck here. Corporate structure is confusing because everyone's titles are massively inflated." This is also true at my company.
bananapear 4y ago
> Offer for 2 YoE UK was VP £190k/year with no stock I'm assuming you have a PhD and this was a quant role?
- intunderflow 4y ago
  BSc and no

inferiorhuman 4y ago

Politics is everywhere, people will fight you not on technical merit but because they want to claim responsibility for something even if its inferior to the product you could build - if you don't have the support to push through this I suspect you'd get stuck here. In my meager experience this is not unusual in large(r) organizations. At one point at megacorp there was a big push to get me to buy into some atrocious docker orchestration thing as I was part of a high velocity team. There were two teams working on this internal monstrosity and each manager was quite happy to promise entirely contradictory things to promote their own status within the company. I've never been so fast to turn someone's name into a verb. Another shining moment was when the security/compliance department cobbled together a Hashicorp Vault proof-of-concept and lobbed it over the fence at one of the ops teams. The ops team didn't have the bandwidth to deal with it and the security team refused to maintain it. It was ridiculous enough that veeps and directors got involved. Corporate structure is confusing because everyone's titles are massively inflated. This has been my experience at most tech companies I've been at. Claimed to have internal open source in the Division I interviewed for (didn't expect that). Careful what you ask for. ;)

jabroni_salad 4y ago
goes doubly for banking sector. I can't tell you how many 'vice presidents' are in my rolodex, it's pretty much everybody that isn't a teller.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  Sure. The first time around at megacorp I left shortly before a reorg that demoted my manager to IC status. He was still a manager when I returned but a manager with no direct reports.
- mindentropy 4y ago
  > I can't tell you how many 'vice presidents' are in my rolodex Yes I have seen this. This person was boasting about being a "Vice President" and then I see almost everyone is a VP. What is up with this?
  - wbl 4y ago
    Suppose you are the CEO of a bottle cap company in the Midwest. Whose call you going to take, a VP at Goldman or a junior banker at Goldman?
- rockinghigh 4y ago
  Vice President at financial companies is just a mid-senior title. Similar to L4/L5 at Google. There is no expectation of managing people.
- decafninja 4y ago
  My resume and LinkedIn original had "vice president" as my title (as a bank SWE). It seemed to be detrimental to finding a job at a tech company, so I've long since replaced it with just "senior software engineer" to much better results. One FAANG hiring manager outright told me he found it very intimidating.
softveda 4y ago
One bank in Australia (NAB) is also doing this inner source thing. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nab-to-innersource-some-of-its-business-platforms-573652#:~:text=NAB%20has%20been%20innersourcing%20code,cloud%20and%20into%20production%20faster https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nab-to-innersource-some-of-it....

acchow 4y ago

> Offer for 2 YoE UK was VP £190k/year with no stock This sounds higher than Google UK?

intunderflow 4y ago
Depends wildly on the team / level surely, much more than YoE? I'd have guessed Google/Deepmind can pay anywhere from 80k up through 400k based on the role.
- nickkell 4y ago
  Are you talking about US dollars? The salaries in the UK are much lower.
  - carnitine 4y ago
    No that’s definitely consistent with what Google pay in GBP in London.
    - oumua_don17 4y ago
      Google UK pays an L5 which is Senior Software Engineer around 200K GBP including stocks [1] [1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engineer/L5/United-Kingdom/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...
      - carnitine 4y ago
        I don’t get how that is inconsistent with the root comment? If the median senior earns 200k, then it’s reasonable that someone junior would earn 80k and a top engineer at DeepMind would earn more.
      - nickkell 4y ago
        Wow that is honestly much higher than I was expecting. I was thinking back to Dan Abramov earning half of that at Facebook.

pottertheotter 4y ago

I don’t know if it is the case with Citi, but it may not be that titles are inflated, but that titles are different. I’ve spent most of my career on Wall Street (i-banking and investing) and VP is a mid level position, and it comes before director. Whereas my mom works for Google and VPs there are quite senior.

singhrac 4y ago
This is right. It’s just different, not inflated.
- jtc331 4y ago
  ISTM the definition of title inflation should be something like “titles frequently connote a significantly higher level of responsibility than the title holder actually has”. If the title communicates incorrect information it isn’t merely a different convention; it actively causes confusion.
kgwgk 4y ago
If having thousands of vice-presidents is not title inflation, what would qualify as such?
- jbjbjbjb 4y ago
  Just that the convention is different. It is just the third rung on the ladder in the finance world. You might manage a small team of junior staff.
  - kgwgk 4y ago
    You don’t need to manage anyone to be VP. If you manage people you deserve a director title! More than 25% of Goldman Sachs employees are VP, for example. And of course the idea of title inflation can be rendered meaningless in any situation saying “it’s just a different convention”.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Is that your offer (with 2 YoE) or someone else? Is that usual do you think, or do you have some golden stuff on the cv?

intunderflow 4y ago
This is my offer. I suspect golden stuff on CV / strong interview round. (I'm now a Staff Engineer on 2.5 YoE)
- cmckn 4y ago
  More power to you, but that sounds like a pretty inflated title to (not staff) me.
  - intunderflow 4y ago
    Probably is honestly.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      I imagine it was HR BS. They had to call you that to pay you X. You are worth X. But they needed to match the title to it. From what I have read Staff Engineer is mostly architecture/meetings/people management, and being across a very large team. If you are doing that it might be Staff Engineer, but if you are mostly coding it probably isn't. Either way it doesn't matter. It is just another title.

zakki 4y ago

I think this different (as said by other poster) or inflated title is on purpose. i.e. to get customers trust. Imagine Citi’s customer talk to their VP!

BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
This is absolutely a technique they use at branches and for customer support calls. The majority of people respond very positively when they think their problem is being handled by a Senior Vice President.

notyourwork 4y ago

(No offense) We're paying in-experienced new to industry engineers way too much money. Thanks for sharing.

intunderflow 4y ago
I'm not sure how much can be gleaned about my competency and experience from just YoE (I jokingly refer to it as "bum in seat time" sometimes) In any case though, that comp seems pretty typical nowadays, folks I know at Apple are on 250k and that's considered normal.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  > folks I know at Apple are on 250k and that's considered normal As in UK based Apple employees? 5 years back you would only get to that level as a massively prolific contractor. Maybe I should move back to the UK! :)
  - intunderflow 4y ago
    Yeah, high Senior / low Staff at Apple nets you 250k based on folks I know
- _trackno5 4y ago
  Sure 250k is normal, but at a senior level. 2 YoE would never get someone 190k salary (in the UK).That's just nuts. If you told me 190k for a senior role I'd totally buy that.
  - catchmilk 4y ago
    OP didn't specify whether that includes bonus or not. Regardless, for 2 YoE, this has to be a huge outlier. I'm inclined to think that this more an exception to the rule - I have a bunch of friends working in London finance tech, none of them making even close to that figure.
- rbanffy 4y ago

zxcvbn4038 4y ago

I did a job interview at Citibank a number of years ago, for an IT security position, and the thing I remember most was walking through the office and seeing a well used copy of Computer Security For Dummies on every desk. That reminded me of a past position at Chase where our group’s head of IT security was a former bricklayer, with no technical background, who was never without his copy of Computer Security for Dummies, and was forever trying to find out where we were “hiding our NFS”. We always tried to tell him that we didn’t use NFS and he would always counter that he didn’t buy it, and he knew we had one and that we were hiding it from him. Ok. Chase and Citigroup are like the McDonalds of financial services, everyone works there once, the talented people leave, the ones who stay generally lack the confidence or ability to do likewise, and they are a PITA to work for because they live in constant fear of being out shown. I really wouldn’t recommend working at any of the big banks, they are thankless soul crushing jobs, and you’ll forever be working on what everyone else was doing ten years ago.

dontbenebby 4y ago
>Chase and Citigroup are like the McDonalds of financial services, everyone works there once, the talented people leave, the ones who stay generally lack the confidence or ability to do likewise, and they are a PITA to work for Thanks, this explains the experience I had interviewing with Chase. I have never ghosted an entire company before, let alone walked into a bank branch to tell them to get their computer doctors to learn to be respectful in a job interview. On my end, I'd hoped it might be a cultural fit since I think many big tech companies have insider threats because they don't allow people to truly take time off -- it's common in the finance world to force someone to take a vacation at least once a year for fraud prevention. (The idea being your scam requires your constant presence, it will fall apart.)
- bigie35 4y ago
  I will say, having worked at Capital one in the past, that it is the outlier here. They have a really strong tech focused culture and from my experience, rarely outsource their tech teams. To drive this point home, they're creating a whole new business based on the expertise they developed with Snowflake. https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2022/06/01/capitsl-one-enters-b2b-software-industry/?sh=15697cb12d6b https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2022/06/01/capitsl-...

spacejogger 4y ago

That is a great salary for the UK - did you apply for a UK role, or did you apply for a US role working remotely, and thus got a US-level salary? I'm at the executive director level at another bank and get paid only slightly more than that in the UK - looks like I need to start interviewing.

jackhiggs 4y ago
I'm fairly sure that's total comp - so with a 1st year bonus guarantee. After that first comp cycle, we all know which way the bonus will go...And then you're fighting the rest of the team for that 2-5% merit budget. If that's just salary - I have no idea what Citi are doing, it's way out of market.
MafellUser 4y ago
What's crazy is just a few years ago that TC was only available for IBD. Even if the trajectory is only down after the 1st year bonus, you can hop off after the paycheck. Now that money can only be found in tech. 200k is roughly ICT4 at Apple Ldn which is like 10 years of experience. GP definitely an outlier. Maybe their profile fits a narrative that the bank is pushing.
- stevoski 4y ago
  TC, IBD, ICT4, Ldn, GP… I simply can’t parse this comment.
  - soared 4y ago
    Tc = total compensation (salary, bonus, stock, benefits) Ibd = investment banking division Ict4 = more commonly IC, individual contributor level 4. Not a manager. Ldn = London I think Gp = grandparent poster (comment 2 levels above the referenced comment)

_the_inflator 4y ago

> They claimed to want to start open sourcing large parts of their tech from 2023 onwards. My background is enterprise, finance. I talk to enterprises frequently. Question this as hard as you can. They will never act like Google, Facebook, Netflix. In short: don't work for the OS side of enterprises. There is none. "large parts" - which? In corporate "large parts" is different from tech people. "from 2023..." - well, this tale is a running gag at least at my company. Telling this since 2017: "Next year!" There are a lot of processes involved, finance fears of losing intellectual property, decision makers are usually business people who know next to nothing about tech people thinking and reasoning. Banks fear of code injections, have to deal with regulators, don't want to deal with an OS community, because costs - that's my experience. Ask them about these topics and you can sense how realistic these claims are.

altacc 4y ago
I'm in enterprise, insurance industry. Our witticism for future functionality is "Any decade now!" Enterprises are slow, they have high inertia for many reasons and tech can only affect that so much.

bambataa 4y ago

That’s a very good VP level UK salary, at least compared to JPM. However, I wouldn’t go back to an IB if I could avoid it. Fundamentally tech is just a cost centre and they have very top-down corporate cultures. Everything is intensely political.

shamiln 4y ago
I’d posit that most VPs and some EDs at JPM aren’t on that salary. Looking at the data, that salary is a massive outlier, and I know SVP salaries at Citi aren’t at 190 for technologists.
- jackhiggs 4y ago
  It's total comp. So salary plus bonus. It's high but I've seen higher at JPM in terms of total comp at VP level. If we're talking pure salary then yes £190k is base for a seasoned ED.
  - shamiln 4y ago
    I guess I'm severely underpaid then....
- bambataa 4y ago
  I know that JPM are trying to compete with the likes of Citadel, so perhaps IBs are increasing their offers for new tech people.

weego 4y ago

I had a job offer like this with grand visions and promises of greenfield freedom, with the goal to compete with someone big in the payments sector who was and has since eaten their lunch, by WorldPay years ago. No product ever came of it and others left early from good salaries due to the endless political infighting that handcuffed the entire thing. Same thing happened again more recently with a company that has to remain nameless I'm not saying every opportunity in institutional fintech is like this but initial appearance and promises are easily wiped away once middle management get a smell of it, far more so than in other industries.

giantg2 4y ago

"They claimed to want to start open sourcing large parts of their tech from 2023 onwards." I work for a different financial company that said something similar about contributing to open source. That was 10 years ago and still nothing. So take this skeptically. "Politics is everywhere, people will fight you not on technical merit but because they want to claim responsibility for something even if its inferior to the product you could build - if you don't have the support to push through this I suspect you'd get stuck here. Corporate structure is confusing because everyone's titles are massively inflated." This is also true at my company.

bananapear 4y ago

> Offer for 2 YoE UK was VP £190k/year with no stock I'm assuming you have a PhD and this was a quant role?

intunderflow 4y ago
BSc and no