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FWIW I know someone who used to work in IT for a bank whose yearly bonus was bigger than my (decent) wage as a programmer at a startup during the Dotcom 1.0 boo

FWIW I know someone who used to work in IT for a bank whose yearly bonus was bigger than my (decent) wage as a programmer at a startup during the Dotcom 1.0 boom. I guess they had to trickle-down some bonuses to the IT guys so they didn't get jealous when the traders were getting their 6 or 7 figure bonuses at the end of the year. He worked in networking. I guess it was one of the largest private networks in the world, and they had a big budget and got to use tons of interesting gear (make it fast! make it secure!). I don't think his department was mediocre in any way and was probably a rewarding job (providing you can get over the working for an evil corporate kinda thing).

etrevino 12y ago
There are two sides of the development coin for companies like banks, though. On one side is your friend who is asked to do the Serious Business. Without a doubt those are the interesting jobs. On the other side is the stupid report development. I've only seen the stupid report development. I've never heard of folks moving from one to the other, though.
walshemj 12y ago
I know part of me whished I has switched into TCP/IP from OSI (I was 3rd line support for the uk for X.400) and gone down the multiple CCIE route at BT
exelius 12y ago
Yeah, banks are the epitome of just throwing money all over the place. You're right though; core systems work at banks is often super-interesting because the total amount they spend on IT systems in a year is so small compared to the amount of business that they do, they go all-out. I'm speaking more of the peripheral IT functions - the one-off business apps and reporting solutions that departments within banks will often use because no commercial product exists to serve a specialized need. I can think of one example at a major international bank that was executing over a trillion dollars in currency trades a day. They had a pretty basic tool that basically amounted to a spreadsheet with some custom logic that pulled data from a bunch of systems and aggregated it so the traders could book a bunch of smaller trades together and get better rates. This tool was super-niche and quite simple from a programming standpoint, but it made the company probably a million dollars a day. So they paid a guy a full salary to maintain it. He had been in the job for 15 years and was pretty well settled in. They probably didn't need someone full time dedicated to this, but it's not hard to justify $100-150k in salary for someone to maintain a system that generates $200 million a year in pure profit.
- seestheday 12y ago
  Big investment banks pay well. Big consumer banks, not so much, at least in Canada. I was shocked at how low some of the laughable salary offers I received were.

etrevino 12y ago

There are two sides of the development coin for companies like banks, though. On one side is your friend who is asked to do the Serious Business. Without a doubt those are the interesting jobs. On the other side is the stupid report development. I've only seen the stupid report development. I've never heard of folks moving from one to the other, though.

walshemj 12y ago

I know part of me whished I has switched into TCP/IP from OSI (I was 3rd line support for the uk for X.400) and gone down the multiple CCIE route at BT

exelius 12y ago

Yeah, banks are the epitome of just throwing money all over the place. You're right though; core systems work at banks is often super-interesting because the total amount they spend on IT systems in a year is so small compared to the amount of business that they do, they go all-out. I'm speaking more of the peripheral IT functions - the one-off business apps and reporting solutions that departments within banks will often use because no commercial product exists to serve a specialized need. I can think of one example at a major international bank that was executing over a trillion dollars in currency trades a day. They had a pretty basic tool that basically amounted to a spreadsheet with some custom logic that pulled data from a bunch of systems and aggregated it so the traders could book a bunch of smaller trades together and get better rates. This tool was super-niche and quite simple from a programming standpoint, but it made the company probably a million dollars a day. So they paid a guy a full salary to maintain it. He had been in the job for 15 years and was pretty well settled in. They probably didn't need someone full time dedicated to this, but it's not hard to justify $100-150k in salary for someone to maintain a system that generates $200 million a year in pure profit.

seestheday 12y ago
Big investment banks pay well. Big consumer banks, not so much, at least in Canada. I was shocked at how low some of the laughable salary offers I received were.