[kevstev]

Not at all. This is a complete falsehood spread most likely by the financial companies themselves. I worked at Investment Banks for many years, doing low level C/C++ type stuff in various flavors of algorithmic trading and high frequency trading. I left in 2014, because I got an offer for 40% more just doing pure web stuff in Javascript. In the years since I have more than quadrupled my TC, and my neighbor, who is essentially sitting in the seat I sat in when I was working in finance, in that period has upped his comp by maybe 40%.

And on top of that, I rarely log in after hours or on a weekend. In finance, my real breaking point came because there was just an absolute refusal to architect to be able to make changes during market hours, which are essentially 9-6 these days- most securities have a big enough of an extended session that you can't push changes until after. Any significant network changes, host swaps, etc... all had to be done on the weekends. In the web world, you had to bake the ability to make changes on the fly from the very get go, there is no off-time when there is no traffic. And in my last team, we actually avoided pushing changes with any significant risk on Fridays, because if something really bad did happen, it was going to be very hard to get ahold of the right people to diagnose and fix it...

[22SAS]

Banks in general pay a lot less for C++ devs than prop trading firms do.

[kevstev]

I should have added that I worked in prop funds during that period as well, I left finance for a bit to do "pure tech" and then went back to a top N hedge fund until recently (and while there are always silly arguments about these things, N was rarely considered greater than 5) for about 5 years, and while yes everyone was paid nicely there, no one was paid 7 figures for their C++ skills. Quant researchers that were writing C++, different story, but they were paid entirely for their research/alpha generating ability, C++ was just a tool they used to get there. In fact, hearing about their hiring process, it was mostly math questions, I am not even sure there was a big in depth technical portion to their interview loop.

Similarly, there were some AI/ML guys that were rumored to be hauling it in, but this was not for their tech skills- though they were doing mostly python, it was for their AI/ML specific knowledge. As was kind of typical at that place, and most places like it, those guys I think all flamed out and were let go by the time I left. While its not easy to "score a deal" and get promised a very high package for a year or two, its actually much harder in those types of roles to actually keep your seat there. But... if you are actually producing models that generate alpha/profit for the firm, then you are golden.

AI/ML was really just a specific manifestation of a larger trend of if you were on the bleeding edge of a capability that the firm wanted- IE had invented it, or were a very early successful adopter, my firm would have been welling to pay well above typical market to get that. Think along the lines of cloud (2016ish), Kubernetes (2017/18ish), "big data" (2016ish) capability, etc... an alternate route would be to have had successfully engineered change in an org to adopt something like real SRE. Even those types of things, I don't believe anyone was over 7 figures, but maybe? Regardless, the typical path there would be to kind of "burn and churn" those types- IE they build it, maybe its even quite successful, and then thats your niche for the rest of your time there (which is not what most leader types want), or you don't succeed and just get pushed out pretty quick- SRE as a concept was something my previous firm tried several stabs at hiring guys from Google for, but they just never made any real inroads on.

[22SAS]

At my shop, my boss makes 7 figures. Some of the other very senior engineers make those too. At HRT, Jump, it definitely happens more. Jane Street is not a C++ shop, they have devs making 7 figures too.