
Ask HN: What's it like for software engineers on Wall Street? - aerovistae
I was looking at this quora question[1] in which an individual is 23 and makes 300k on Wall Street as a developer. I&#x27;ve heard many times how miserable the financial sector is, but I&#x27;d probably be willing to bite the bullet for a couple years at that rate. Information about the jobs there seems scarce, though. Anyone on HN have experience in the financial sector? What sort of work do you do, what kind of work environment is it, what was the pay like, and was it worth it?<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;I-just-turned-23-and-make-around-300k-working-on-Wall-Street-Could-I-make-this-in-Silicon-Valley-if-I-was-looking-to-make-the-switch
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petr_tik
Wall street is indeed a very broad term and the biggest distinction is between
banks and hedge funds. Below is a very rough outline and no doubt some people
will debate it.

Banks are more standard jobs, where devs are usually siloed into doing very
specific assignments in a pre-determined part of the business. If you want to
build a long-term career in finance through banking, you should get in, climb
the corporate ladder by doing your particular job well and hope your
department’s business will be popular and sexy in 5 years. In 2003-2008 CDO
and derivatives were the sexiest thing alive, after which it became less
interesting. In terms of pay, you would get a higher base salary guaranteed,
but any extra profit the bank makes will have to be split across all
departments (sales, client, compliance …), so bonuses tend to be limited.

Hedge funds and prop trading are smaller institutions than banks, as such they
are more tech-oriented (especially systematic trading places, where
algorithmic platforms are built to place and execute trades). Hedge funds
client their clients’ money and charge a commission on profits, while prop
traders trade their own money and could potentially go down in one day. All
this presents challenging problems to solve. Therefore, HFs and prop trading
value good developers and they work closely with quant analysts and traders.
While they usually look for strong backend developers, there is demand for
good front-end engineers to refine the client facing applications too. Due to
the nature of the job you would be working with traders and analysts, which is
a good way to learn about finance proper. Smaller headcount in hedge funds
generally encourages more collaboration and working in tighter teams, as it’s
inefficient for the business to silo people away from each other as much.
Another advantage is splitting the bonus across fewer people, leaves more
money per person, which is where a dev with a lower base will beat your banker
dev and can (not always) get > 250k.

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codegeek
I used to work on Wall St in technology. To make 300K or more as a developer,
you need to either be in Quant Finance or probably work at a hedge fund, Prop.
trading or high frequency trading firm. The other way to make big money on
Wall St is to become a specialized consultant in a specific field.

The reality is that majority of developer work for Wall St is to build/manage
legacy systems from back in the days. Will you believe it if I said I worked
with a back office system at one of my clients in 2010 which was built in IBM
iSeries ? Not to scare you but you will be working with old technology a lot
on Wall St and not everything will be fancy new JS framework (some are
catching up with those too)

Also, on an average, it will be VERY difficult to get over 160-170K as a base
salary. Most people fall in the 120-150K range even after years of experience.
Sure, you could get some bonus on top but consider those almost zero in
today's market on wall st. Pay raises ? Forget about it. You may get 1-2% if
lucky. Some years, you get 0 pay raise.

So don't be illusioned about the 300K number. Those are possible but only if
you fit the criteria as I explained above. You are looking at average of
120-150K base like I said. Anything over it, you need to become a Director or
above and go up the food chain.

The trick of working on Wall St in tech is simple. Negotiate the best pay you
can BEFORE you get the job. Once you have it, forget about getting a big raise
or bonus these days on wall st in technology.

~~~
ig1
It sounds like you were mostly working back/middle office. You can earn a lot
more in front office if you're working as a developer on a trading desk. At
some banks front office developers share desk bonuses which can be very
lucrative.

Efinancialcareers is a good job website to find front office dev role
recruiters.

~~~
codegeek
Yes, trading desk developers can make more but again, my point was that most
software engineers on wall st do not fall into that category as the OP asked.
I am saying that the majority of developers on wall st don't make 300K and it
is only the few that are either working on trading desk, hedge funds, prop
trading etc.

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cityofdelusion
It really depends what "Wall Street" means to you. With big banks (my area),
you're looking at market rate salary (~100-150k, junior-senior).
Retirement+bonus can push it up 25-30%, but that's not salary, of course. My
company uses enterprise technology (IBM stuff, Natural, COBOL/Java, Oracle). I
have mostly normal hours, open office plans, etc. Python has some traction
going. Nothing new and exciting, tons of legacy code. I vary between back-end
services and web dev. It is your average boring, corporate gig.

The other part of wall street, the hedge funds, can pay way higher (data
analysis/quant stuff). Those spots are quite rare, plus pay is more tightly
tied to company performance. Who you know is more important than what you
know, if that's what you're aiming for.

~~~
fiftyacorn
there is a lot of pressure for things not to go wrong, so the testing(unit and
system) requirement can be higher. Timelines are normally longer too - due to
this pressure and politics

Banking/finance bonuses are also capped at 15-25% pa normally - so if the
company does badly you dont get a bonus, but if it does well you dont get that
much of a bonus in comparison to other areas of the business

------
gadders
I work in the UK equivalent, but have taken trips to US banks on Wall Street.

I'd say these days, the horror stories are rare. There will be times you will
be expected to work weekends, late nights etc but these are VERY much the
exception, and mostly for hitting regulatory deadlines, rather than business
ones. Like a lot of places, it will depend on whether your boss is competent
or an arsehole.

The working environment will be more formal than a startup. You may well need
to own a suit (or two).

Some of the work is really interesting and cutting edge. Some of it isn't.

The pay (at least in the UK) is lot more than you would get in other
industries.

One final thing I would say after being in the industry 20+ years is that
there is less of a divide between the Front Office traders and technology.
It's no longer seen as an imposition, but key to them making money and trading
well.

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tmaly
I am just off Wall St, but things are stable at my place. We get to code a lot
more than people at the bigger banks. If you have a solid degree in math and
can program in C++, there are firms in NYC that will pay you 400k - 1M total
compensation.

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kasey_junk
I worked in finance for ~15 years. The short answer is that it is largely the
same as any other tech. industry. To make "big" money in finance, you need a
couple of things 1) be in the front of the house, that is, things that are
trivially tied to revenue. 2) be attached to a profitable division (this is
good advice generally by the way)

Most large comp numbers in SV come from stock grants, most on Wall Street come
from profit sharing bonuses. This is double edged, when profits go away you
don't make good money & you frequently lose your job.

Happy to answer specific questions.

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whatok
There are all sorts of developers who do all sorts of things. Any role that
generates P&L is going to pay significantly more than if you're developing
some random insignificant backend.

I also would caution against generalizing on the hedge fund experience. I
would say that unless their strategy is tech-driven or there are some senior
management in tech roles, you could be in for a not so fun time.

------
rajacombinator
That's not a typical salary for someone that age. Anyway main differences are
that the good gigs have a very high level of competition compared to SV, and
also more importantly the industry is very closed. No open source, no
hackathons, no collaboration due to extreme secrecy.

~~~
petr_tik
I agree with your points about the salary and levels of competition. One
shouldn't expect any odd company to slap a >150k offer on the table and
getting an offer is challenging enough. That's why both sides benefit from a
recruitment layer between them to help candidates find out about the
opportunity and understand the company to go to interviews prepared.

However, your point about the lack of openness seems directed at prop trading
shops more than banks or hedge funds.

Banks are large corporations and are expectedly monolithic, but they are
seeing benefits to opening up and hosting hackathons. Using/contributing to
open source is difficult there because of inflated compliance departments, who
need to justify their existence by banning the use of open source and signing
up on enterprise solutions.

Prop trading is definitely the most secretive, because the people are trading
their own money and aren't huge fans of letting anyone close to the secret
sauce. Because it's their bread and butter, you would probably be less keen to
make your methods public if your money was on the line in a really cut-throat
environment. It's comparable to google not open sourcing their ranking/search
engine - we don't complain about that, do we?

Hedge funds are by far the most open both internally and externally. Several
of the big funds I know, sponsor academic events, research, organise
hackathons internally and externally. A NY HF recently ran an internal build
your air hockey AI to play against human air hockey pros. Devs were working on
the software and someone connected airhockey controllers to leves and pulleys.
The AI won. the business model at HFs promotes collaboration and the engineers
are the most chilled out bunch you ever meet, so most people end up liking the
environment.

------
aminorex
1\. Know the right person. 2\. Actually make millions for your employer each
year. 3\. Negotiate well at review time. 4\. Profit (but a small fraction of
what you would make if you ran your strategy yourself)

