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by 123212321 3048 days ago
This isnt really true. Banks dont pay anywhere near tech salaries. Its all lip service.

The flow of good engineers is always banks -> tech companies and never tech companies -> banks.

5 comments

They don't pay anywhere near top tier tech salaries. They are competitive below that (the Oracle/Cisco/IBM level).
I make significantly more at GS than I did at google. The difference is that the majority of my compensation comes from the yearly bonus - a quirk in finance.
As a regular engineer? Or is there a math heavy component?

My understanding is that I could get about 200k base at goldman and maybe a 20% bonus, this is for working in a high in demand field. Google/FB/Other job I can get 300k+ while working less hours, paid for lunch, better treatment, more respect.

Google / Facebook / Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have equivalent grades and conditions. Employees regularly goes back and forth between them.

More important than the company name, you should make sure to join the right role for you in the right group.

That's a realistic compensation package for a normal Sr engineer role at a big bank ime. No, it's not Goog/FB pay but a lot of the jobs are available in LCOL areas like Delaware and the Triangle fwiw.
That's the biggest thing some people don't take into account when it comes to salaries: cost of living. $300k is not always more money than $200k.
Interesting. I work for a direct GS competitor and compensation is nowhere near FANG level, not even with bonus accounted for
This would imply you're at the Director level or above at GS. I expect you were L5 or less at Google, so this would make sense, but I'd expect Director at a big bank to be equivalent to an L6+ role at a Google or FB, or am I totally off base somewhere. (that is, you aren't really expected to make director)
I've seen non director (pres) level offer packages up to $300k including guaranteed bonus minimum.
Those are well within what an L5 could get at Google. Unless you mean 300K base and a significant (ie 30-50% bonus).
That's non-director level, upper end of the vp level.
I'm not quite sure what your point is. Mine was that their bonus being > salary implied a role/level at a bank that was higher than what they likely had at Google, so a commensurate salary increase would make sense.

Could you explain what you're getting at?

I think it depends on the company. From my personal experience it's something like

crappy software company << bank << startup

So depending where you are in the software world, you can still be making a ton of coin at a bank.

Sometimes in the early stage of their careers people make mistakes (including myself) to move from tech company to a bank. Never doing this mistake again. I've never seen so much legacy code, poor engineering decision and code standards in my career so far. Of course this could be limited experience to my department, but given the comments here it feels like this is a standard situation across the "tech" in the financial world.
The salaries are good if you are banker.