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Actually this is in no way surprising. I just graduated from school and let me tell you that the real brain drain is in our smartest students defecting to finan
by gxs 17y ago
Actually this is in no way surprising. I just graduated from school and let me tell you that the real brain drain is in our smartest students defecting to finance.
Why would someone with a 4.0 in a hard, rigorous subject go into engineering for a measly 60k a year starting salary + 20% raises when he can work in a finance industry where the top talent makes in the hundreds?
I had a lot of friends in the math department that were double business majors. I imagine that at least for quantitive finance positions, interviews such as these (if not way harder) are a must to separate the top talent from the elite talent.
- rantfoil 17y ago60k starting? That sounds low, even for 6 years ago when I graduated in CS. Google/Microsoft paid 80K starting for college grads back then -- have no doubt it is > 100K or more now.
- smanek 17y agoI can confirm that Microsoft still started at 80K last year. I've heard Google is a bit higher, but still under a 100K. A trader at a top tier firm, on the other hand, might have a $150K+ base first year out of school. Adding on bonuses, it isn't unusual for them to be making $1mil/year within 3-5 years (although the vast majority don't make it five years ...). A quant programmer (slightly less competitive/stressful) can expect to be making $200K/year+ within five years at a top tier quant firm. It isn't really fair to compare programmers to bankers since the hours aren't really comparable. But the traders/quant-programmers I know (usually) only work about 60 hours a week. All based on my relatively limited experience (~5 people/company - although I have no reason to suspect bias in my sample).