5 ms·

I have no clue why people are obsessing over 250K. If you care about money as a programmer, you are better off working at a hedge fund. My programmer friends

by veyron 15y ago

I have no clue why people are obsessing over 250K. If you care about money as a programmer, you are better off working at a hedge fund. My programmer friends at hedge funds (all between 22 and 26) are averaging 500K salary with 100K bonuses (note: as a programmer, base is much higher but bonus is lower). So if google isn't paying those types of numbers to people, then money cannot be the only factor at play.

omlette 15y ago
the idea was that you had to take a 5x pay cut to do interesting work in a good environment with smart people. it's interesting that it has reduced to a 2x paycut.
- cynicalkane 15y ago
  Many hedge funds have 2 of those 3 and sometimes 3 of those 3. It's a myth that every finance job is as bad as I-banking for Goldman.
stuntprogrammer 15y ago
This is certainly true (I've worked both sides of the fence in terms of types of firm). To add a generalization, my rule of thumb is the variable part of compensation varies most for the domain experts. So in technology for the sake of technology style companies like Google, total comp shoots up based on stock/bonuses. In reality, Google is an advertising company so presumably the ad sales folks bringing in whales aren't hurting either. Naturally numbers get skewed by overpaying to keep certain people (i.e. overshoot on retention packages), and given large scale, there are always some overpaid due to lucky timing/placing. Such is life! In hedge funds, the traders get the big bonuses, but the programmers get a solid salary so lower bonuses don't hurt quite so much. Luck also plays a part for those folks var comp. For those in hft, I'm aware of a few places where given the right mix of skills, someone who likes to think of themselves as a programmer can get the trader style bonuses.
Selvik 15y ago
What kind of backgrounds do they have? CS or STEM degrees at ivy league or similar schools? Does people with liberal arts degrees and a finance MBA get those kinds of jobs? (Assuming they can program.)
- stuntprogrammer 15y ago
  CS/STEM. Need not be Ivy League but it certainly doesn't hurt-- though I know a team or two in the top tier that almost have a preference for non-ivy league :-) To be a quantdev or quant, an MFE is far more useful than an MBA.
- jarek 15y ago
  If you have a finance MBA and want to make money in finance, you'd be insane to try programming.
zem 15y ago
i think what's happening here is that no one really envies hedge fund programmers. sure, they make a lot of money, but the job itself is perceived as unpleasant, unfulfilling, boring, stressful, or some combination of those. google, on the other hand, is a standard[1] software job - the type that most people in the hacker news demographic are probably doing, so it is seen as directly comparable. [1] i don't mean that in a dismissive sense - i work there and it's the best job i've ever had, but the work is not qualitatively different from what you'd do in other software-focused companies. hedge funds are not software-focused.
- stuntprogrammer 15y ago
  A /lot/ depends on the fund. I know some that are extremely tech focused as it makes the difference between profitable and not.
  - zem 15y ago
    true, but their product is not software, nor do the dev team develop anything outward-facing. i'm not saying that some of the funds aren't great places for a techie to work (anecdotally, if jane street capital had an office in san francisco i'd have been tempted to apply there), it's just that there is no perception of them as enjoyable places for a dev to work. pushing money around simply doesn't excite me, and i daresay a lot of other devs (especially those who work in product companies) would feel the same way.
    - stuntprogrammer 15y ago
      I agree there isn't a perception of them being an enjoyable place to work; I think that is more due to the fact that one isn't really encouraged to talk about it, and the most successful actively avoid the limelight! Now there are plenty of sweatshops out there, but there are also plenty of tech companies I wouldn't touch with a barge pool. Many people, even at Google, will be writing coding that isn't The Product. Having spoken to people at such firms, and their competitors, there are plenty of dev jobs there that sound boring as all hell, alongside the fun ones. Pushing money around does sound boring, just like "pushing web pages around" or "pushing 140 char messages around". yawn ;-) In the last 12 months I've worked on custom languages/compilers, custom databases, kernel hacking, oddball processors, little visualization hacks, and have a giant stack of as yet unreleased hardware piled up to experiment with. I get to program against millions of events per second with minimal latency, giant result data sets for batch work, and points on the spectrum in between. The data itself is finance related and it's fun to munge and experiment with trading algorithms on it. So far I have, over time, swung between product companies and trading companies. Fun to be had on both sides, among many other places. Actually, one of the more surprising things I've learned over time is how little most programmers realize about the variety of fun things out there. And how conservative and fad following most programmers are, funnily enough.

by veyron 15y ago

omlette 15y ago

the idea was that you had to take a 5x pay cut to do interesting work in a good environment with smart people. it's interesting that it has reduced to a 2x paycut.

cynicalkane 15y ago
Many hedge funds have 2 of those 3 and sometimes 3 of those 3. It's a myth that every finance job is as bad as I-banking for Goldman.

stuntprogrammer 15y ago

This is certainly true (I've worked both sides of the fence in terms of types of firm). To add a generalization, my rule of thumb is the variable part of compensation varies most for the domain experts. So in technology for the sake of technology style companies like Google, total comp shoots up based on stock/bonuses. In reality, Google is an advertising company so presumably the ad sales folks bringing in whales aren't hurting either. Naturally numbers get skewed by overpaying to keep certain people (i.e. overshoot on retention packages), and given large scale, there are always some overpaid due to lucky timing/placing. Such is life! In hedge funds, the traders get the big bonuses, but the programmers get a solid salary so lower bonuses don't hurt quite so much. Luck also plays a part for those folks var comp. For those in hft, I'm aware of a few places where given the right mix of skills, someone who likes to think of themselves as a programmer can get the trader style bonuses.

Selvik 15y ago

What kind of backgrounds do they have? CS or STEM degrees at ivy league or similar schools? Does people with liberal arts degrees and a finance MBA get those kinds of jobs? (Assuming they can program.)

stuntprogrammer 15y ago
CS/STEM. Need not be Ivy League but it certainly doesn't hurt-- though I know a team or two in the top tier that almost have a preference for non-ivy league :-) To be a quantdev or quant, an MFE is far more useful than an MBA.
jarek 15y ago
If you have a finance MBA and want to make money in finance, you'd be insane to try programming.

zem 15y ago

i think what's happening here is that no one really envies hedge fund programmers. sure, they make a lot of money, but the job itself is perceived as unpleasant, unfulfilling, boring, stressful, or some combination of those. google, on the other hand, is a standard[1] software job - the type that most people in the hacker news demographic are probably doing, so it is seen as directly comparable. [1] i don't mean that in a dismissive sense - i work there and it's the best job i've ever had, but the work is not qualitatively different from what you'd do in other software-focused companies. hedge funds are not software-focused.

stuntprogrammer 15y ago
A /lot/ depends on the fund. I know some that are extremely tech focused as it makes the difference between profitable and not.
- zem 15y ago
  true, but their product is not software, nor do the dev team develop anything outward-facing. i'm not saying that some of the funds aren't great places for a techie to work (anecdotally, if jane street capital had an office in san francisco i'd have been tempted to apply there), it's just that there is no perception of them as enjoyable places for a dev to work. pushing money around simply doesn't excite me, and i daresay a lot of other devs (especially those who work in product companies) would feel the same way.
  - stuntprogrammer 15y ago
    I agree there isn't a perception of them being an enjoyable place to work; I think that is more due to the fact that one isn't really encouraged to talk about it, and the most successful actively avoid the limelight! Now there are plenty of sweatshops out there, but there are also plenty of tech companies I wouldn't touch with a barge pool. Many people, even at Google, will be writing coding that isn't The Product. Having spoken to people at such firms, and their competitors, there are plenty of dev jobs there that sound boring as all hell, alongside the fun ones. Pushing money around does sound boring, just like "pushing web pages around" or "pushing 140 char messages around". yawn ;-) In the last 12 months I've worked on custom languages/compilers, custom databases, kernel hacking, oddball processors, little visualization hacks, and have a giant stack of as yet unreleased hardware piled up to experiment with. I get to program against millions of events per second with minimal latency, giant result data sets for batch work, and points on the spectrum in between. The data itself is finance related and it's fun to munge and experiment with trading algorithms on it. So far I have, over time, swung between product companies and trading companies. Fun to be had on both sides, among many other places. Actually, one of the more surprising things I've learned over time is how little most programmers realize about the variety of fun things out there. And how conservative and fad following most programmers are, funnily enough.