I'm much more quant than programmer, but even programmers at trading companies get paid at least as well as they do at Google/Facebook (and obviously much bette

I'm much more quant than programmer, but even programmers at trading companies get paid at least as well as they do at Google/Facebook (and obviously much better than they'd be paid at a startup) to start with. Not to mention that programmers at SV companies are second class to product managers, so the relative status situation isn't that different. I don't know where you get the more hours/more rigid attitude from. 9hrs is very typical, weekends are very rare, and the only time you ever exceed that is when you are releasing very new strategies -- strategies which you get a direct cut of the PnL, so you have a very direct incentive to want to get that out there and trading as soon as you can. Is everyone equal in finance? No. But compared to working in the valley? It's worlds apart. Let's look at a simple example, for Google and Goldman, take a look at average revenue per employee (~1.2m for both) vs. average compensation per employee (600k for GS, ~150-200k for Google). In what way are Google employees not getting screwed over? Prop trading firms have even flatter structures than Goldman.