
Banks Wage 'Hand-to-Hand Combat' for Tech Talent - minimax
http://www.americanbanker.com/people/banks-wage-hand-to-hand-combat-for-tech-talent-1066269-1.html
======
jrockway
I think I worked for Cathy Bessant at BAC.

Here is why they can't retain talent:

* No career path for engineers. There are no criteria for promotion, there are no positions for technical people above "vice president". (A fancy-sounding title, but it's basically equivalent to "senior software engineer". Google has 5 more promotions after "senior".) I never saw anyone worthy get promoted, but I did see promotions used to play games.

* Performance reviews are useless. It's 100% manager driven, and your manager's not a programmer. Despite solving problems for teams in Singapore, Chicago, and New York, with recognition from the CTO of the company, I never got a performance review higher than "meets expectations". Are you fucking kidding me?

* Uncompetitive compensation. Google pays me twice as much as BAC. The peer bonuses I've received at Google sum to more than I ever got in real bonuses or raises at BAC.

* No perks whatsoever. People got notes from building management for having too many figures on their desks. Want coffee? Leave and buy it. Want food at 6pm? Leave and buy it, except you're in the financial district, so just give up and go home.

(They were so intent on cost cutting that they actually installed waterless
urinals. The whole building smells like urine as a result!)

But yeah, just hire a bunch of college kids that don't know any better. LGTM.

(Some other posts mention things like "lack of autonomy" as being their
problem. That's not their problem. You can do whatever you want and you mostly
have the freedom to solve problems the way you want to. You just aren't going
to be rewarded for doing a good job, because nobody can tell the good from the
bad.)

~~~
vecter
Wow, that's atrocious. You should seriously consider giving this feedback to
them (if you haven't already). Even an anonymous letter would be helpful. If
they're _truly_ intent on changing their ways to value tech more, they'll take
your words to heart. If not, nothing can save them.

~~~
waterlesscloud
They're a big, established, bureaucratic company.

The odds are 100:1 that they aren't truly intent to change any of their ways.

The people who work at that kind of company pick them for status and/or
security, not innovation and change.

~~~
stcredzero
A big company is typically sitting on a stable formula for printing money. Why
should they change? (Because the world changes and that formula isn't
perfectly stable, but the problem is to get them to know that.)

~~~
chris_mahan
But that's how companies go out of business. They kill all the calves that
compete for grass with the cash cow, and when the cash cow finally dies, they
are left with no cow at all.

~~~
jrockway
You should have said: "the steakholders are left with no cow at all."

------
GVIrish
Forgive me if I missed something but it sure sounds like banks are going to
get their teeth knocked out if that's what they think constitutes 'hand-to-
hand combat' for recruiting tech talent. It's good to focus more on
engineering schools but that is only putting you at the start line against
everyone else trying to recruit IT grads.

I don't know the financial industry well, but it sounds like they have some of
the myopia problems that other old, big industries have when it comes to
recruiting IT people. They look around and wonder why people don't want to
work with them, and think if only they recruit harder they'll fix the problem.

IMO part of their problem is that their organizational cultures don't put a
high priority on IT, nor do they necessarily give IT the autonomy they need to
deliver value. So if you do succeed in hiring great people they'll get
frustrated and eventually leave. The work is naturally not going to be as sexy
as startup land or dedicated tech companies, but the bureaucracy is a killer.

The other side of that is that IT people aren't valued as much as managers and
regular line of business employees, so naturally they're loath to pay at
market rates for IT people.

~~~
EC1
I work at a major north american bank as a mobile developer. Windows XP laptop
from 2005, completely locked down so we can hardly do anything. We develop,
strictly on that laptop, for 12 separate devices. There are 8 of us working in
a 14' * 10' room, with no natural light coming in.

~~~
avenger123
Are you an employee or an employee of the contractor (CGI, etc.) that's been
hired to do the work?

~~~
EC1
Employee. For some reason, everyone else gets a large cube that they're going
to hang onto for quite awhile, and we've been moved building to building 3
times within a year, all within shittier than the last conference rooms.

~~~
waps
Sadly, this probably is because your manager is "freelancing" on the mobile
app on a shoe-string budget because it doesn't have support from most of
management. The result is that it has to camouflage in some other budget. The
way to win here is to ask your boss or your boss' boss for a nice, well paid,
ideally somewhat privileged project in 6 months, then hold him to it. Or move
to a decent company of course.

Not necessarily saying anything about your particular situation, but I've seen
this before.

------
xfour
Seems pretty simple solution, just pay more.

You have a 9 Billion dollar Technology budget just pay 225k and I'm sure good
devs will sign right up. Coolness be damned.

~~~
ntaylor
What is the industry norm for financial tech salary? Low?

~~~
Mikeb85
100,000 and up. You can find jobs advertising 500,000 for programmers in NY
with a simple search (I just saw a few), and there are stories of top
programmers making millions (one which made it to HN some months ago).

~~~
jrockway
Don't expect to make a million dollars a year at Bank of America.

~~~
w1ntermute
Million dollars a year or not, no programmer with a conscience should work for
Bank of America. They are a fundamentally amoral institution.

------
Phlarp
"We will do anything to recruit tech talent, except pay more!"

~~~
xophe
arent these guys supposed to know a thing about valuation?

~~~
stcredzero
I've seen this again and again, where some alpha-male exec who knows nothing
about programming just angrily asserts, "Those guys aren't worth $100,000!"
with nothing concrete to back it up.

------
lostcolony
I was hoping for actual hand to hand combat. To the death, preferably.
Regardless of who wins, or whether it attracts more tech talent, fewer bankers
sounds like a win.

------
tsunamifury
I've worked in development in the Big 4 in the US banking market.

Key Issues:

1) Product managers and Product Leads with MBAs (not all bad) and zero tech or
design knowledge (bad)

2) Contracting out key roles to people who leave or disappear in less than a
year, then just churning a new one in

3) Wildly uninteresting products built on ancient, dry legacy platforms

4) Feature update life cycles that can be measured in years, not months weeks
or days.

5) Intense internal political battles between legacy middle and upper
management who have nothing to offer the product.

6) Poor pay and even poorer respect

7) Not a creative environment.

I was just recruited for a mobile product manager role at the #1 or #2 bank in
the US and I listened until I heard they intended it only to be a 6 month
contract. I asked them how they planned to deal with a product after getting
rid of the strategic head after 6 months -- to which of course there was no
answer. Its this kind of nonsense that keeps them in back of IT recruiting.

------
wil421
I work at MegaCorp but from what I've head from the contractors I work with
the banks are the worst places to work. Horrible conditions, mediocre pay, low
budget for the project(computers keyboard even mice), and endless work weeks.
They said unless you work on the main website people come to (bofa.com,
wellsfargo.com) you don't want to work there.

------
quaffapint
I work for said ABC financial firm...

Pluses...

-Only real MAJOR PLUS is I work remotely. This is huge and in the company I got acquired from would be unheard of and still is in most corporations. Unfortunately they are trying to get rid of this and nobody joining now is supposed to be allowed to do it.

Negatives...

-Try to get anything done - 6 weeks. Want a VM? No joke - took us over 6 months. 5 minutes of works = 3 weeks of paperwork. It's basically a small government full of red-tape. Maybe this is just a big company thing, but even in my acquired financial firm we got stuff done in a reasonable amount of time.

-You could get tapped on the shoulder at any moment and given your walking papers. There is no logic and no loyalty. It's all about money, money, money. CEO gets 11% bonus, workers are lucky to get anything. There must be like 50 levels of management. There seems to be more management than people actually doing things and they all need to justify their positions.

-It ain't cool code at all, but that's what side projects at home are for.

Salary...

-Since I work remotely it's hard to judge. If I lived in San Fran, I would be homeless on this salary. For the area I'm in, I scrape by. I will say it's a little more than a lot of dev jobs around here though. Salaries were REALLY hit hard around here and never recovered.

-Bonuses and Cost of Living are not dependent upon your work quality but a lot more political, who your manager is and if what you got to work on got noticed by any bigwigs. You basically get nothing in comparison to cost of living around the country. Maybe $50 a pay check.

-Healthcare - Blows. Ever since Obamacare, we pay MUCH more and basically aren't covered for much of anything for the first x $1000

...But, given were I live and the salaries being offered I'm sticking it out,
as long as I can continue working remotely and saving on gas expenses and
commute time.

------
rsailboat
Cathy Bessant, the English major turned "tech-exec" who once said "I
frequently design datacenter structures on the back of a napkin—much to the
horror of my team"
([http://www.waterstechnology.com/waters/feature/2076214/bank-...](http://www.waterstechnology.com/waters/feature/2076214/bank-
americas-catherine-bessant-business)) is suddenly going to go after tech-
talent? Har Har. In the past 5 years, tech wages have only gone in one
direction at the Bank: down. There is no technical talent in management
whatsoever (and no technical career path). Don't believe me? If you ever
interview there, ask to speak with your hiring boss's boss. See how technical
they are. You will not find tech talent more than one level deep in
management.

This is a company that hired an Oceanographer
([http://www.rubinworldwide.com/team.php](http://www.rubinworldwide.com/team.php))
to tell them how they are spending too much on IT, and are dumb enough to
believe it. As Steve Jobs said, once you compete on price (instead of value)
you have already lost. Well, at the Bank it's just cut, cut, cut. No one Sr in
IT appreciates or understands enough about technology to actually communicate
its value to the business. This is a company in its death throes - the
management is just too ignorant to recognize it.

