12 ms·
Have done this for a decade and a half... it obviously there is some variations but a few themes: * Pay is decent, amazing locations like NYC / Manhattan, City
by tacostakohashi 4y ago
Have done this for a decade and a half... it obviously there is some variations but a few themes:
* Pay is decent, amazing locations like NYC / Manhattan, City of London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, nice buildings, some travel (business class, etc).
* High status... it shouldn't matter, but it does, even really crappy jobs in this sector give you instant credibility with the rest of society.
* Actual monetary compensation is decent... you won't starve, but it's kind of discounted because a lot of people are attracted to the first two items above.
* Code can be ok (at best)... or sometimes really crufty, so long as it does whatever it needs to do, lots of legacy stuff 10, 20 or more years behind.
* Most software is actually not actually that mission critical. Outside of a few very specific areas like high frequency trading, most errors can be undone with a phone call, or roll back and rerun it, etc.
* Some of the most important things are done in excel spreadsheets. All sorts of very sophisticated systems and algorithms send roll up to feeding their data into some spreadsheet for analysis/manipulation.
* It's all about the people, ultimately if the company is in the equity trading or life insurance business, those people will be the key decision makers, and tech is just a cost center. If you can fix things for those people, great, if you can't, nobody cares how good your coding is in an academic sense.
- giantg2 4y agoAs a dev I've only worked for a financial company, so I don't have a comparison. I mostly agree with the above. The locations can include the listed places. They can also include other sites like JPM at Wilmington, DE or smaller companies in smaller cities/suburbs. The status is sort of right. One side of this that I've seen is that being on the tech side rather than the hard finance side will mean you are viewed as lower status within the company.
- tacostakohashi 4y agoYeah, they're always trying to move various back office / support / tech jobs to second tier / lower cost locations / "nearshoring", MS has Montreal, GS has Utah, lots of them do Budapest, etc. But, they always have core people on site too. It's not so much that the work is only in Manhattan, London, etc... but more that, if you want to be in one or visit those locations, finance is among the best ways to get there.
- dev_0 4y ago[dead]
- GianFabien 4y ago> Actual monetary compensation is decent ... After you take into account the much higher cost of living in the places you mention, it remains hard to save much. For example for an excellent job in London it was the choice to live centrally and enjoy the experience, or to commute several hours a day and be able to save for the future. Besides the hours are long so you end up living it up far less than you expect.