Great Discussion on Blind: Software Engineers talking about working 15-20 hrs a week and earning 400k
IB/PE is not the way boyos
What should be my next rest and vest company? - Blind (teamblind.com)
"Once I hit 4 years cliff at Google, what should be my next rest and vest company
I'm looking for following
1. Good / great work life balance.
25 - 30 hours a week max. Occasional heavy work days are okay. But not too many.
2. Around 350 - 400k TC
3. Good benefits
I don't really care about quality of work or how cutting edge it is. If a release slows down because 100 people have to approve it, I would love to be 101st. Lol.
Current TC 400k
L5"
L5 is someone maybe 4 years out of school
oh my god not this thread again
Let me break it down for you:
IB/PE also prepares you to run your own business/become an entrepreneur much better than an SWE role will - save your responses to this point, this is coming from real-life experience. Very easy to buy a developer, hard to buy a good CEO/business manager.
Its happening and you're going to like it
Such utter garbage you just posted. where do I start
Not at all. The tech economy is way larger than the handful of BBs and EBs. Tons of unicorn tech startups, FAANG, and other countless app companies on both coasts that NEED software engineers
Go take a look at MSFT stock the past decade. Would be really nice to get paid in equity from them. Pretty much every succesful tech companies stock has outperformed the bank stocks (which is part of senior level comp)
Senior level roles in finance also suck balls compared to a senior SWE gig where you work 15 hrs a week
And now your ABSOLUTE dumbest remark:
IB/PE also prepares you to run your own business/become an entrepreneur much better than an SWE role will - save your responses to this point, this is coming from real-life experience. Very easy to buy a developer, hard to buy a good CEO/business manager.
Umm...what? Any truly great new billion business grown in the past 20 years was a TECH company where the founders had TECHNICAL skills
You cannot be serious if you think being a software engineering whiz will stall you out in terms of being an entrepreneur. Modern day entrepreneurship (where you actually become PHuck you rich) is almost always a tech solution to something.
Enjoy trying to start the next great tech company with your IB modeling skills
Wow seriously?
Not at all. The tech economy is way larger than the handful of BBs and EBs. Tons of unicorn tech startups, FAANG, and other countless app companies on both coasts that NEED software engineers
I said Google, not the entire Tech Economy - specifically because OP was talking about Google's TC, not the entire tech economy which doesn't pay the same TC. Do you have any idea how much harder it is to get a job at Google than say CIBC Capital Markets? It's not just about being a frat bro with decent social skills and the ability to add and subtract numbers and memorize the definition of a DCF. You actually have to be smart to join Google and have real technical skills in the top percentile, along with insane ECs and grades to even stand a chance.
Next counter point:
Go take a look at MSFT stock the past decade. Would be really nice to get paid in equity from them. Pretty much every succesful tech companies stock has outperformed the bank stocks (which is part of senior level comp)
Thanks for stating the obvious captain dumbass, everyone knows MSFT has historically been highly successful. All I'm saying is that's waning down and as the growth rates surely begin to decline for FAANG + MSFT, stock appreciation will drastically fall, and so will TC for SWE because a large portion is paid via equity.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Go to any EB and get paid 1-2x your base salary in an ALL CASH bonus. Do you see what I'm getting at here?
Number 3:
Umm...what? Any truly great new billion business grown in the past 20 years was a TECH company where the founders had TECHNICAL skills
You cannot be serious if you think being a software engineering whiz will stall you out in terms of being an entrepreneur. Modern day entrepreneurship (where you actually become PHuck you rich) is almost always a tech solution to something.
Enjoy trying to start the next great tech company with your IB modeling skills
You can code all you want, but the fact of the matter is, most developers don't know where their own asshole is when it comes to business - I've seen it first hand. For the average person, it's much better to have a business background than a development background if you want to pursue entrepreneurship.
Reasons being:
1) You can always buy a developer to build your app for you (like I have by the way), you can't buy investors or customers' trust, you need to be a businessperson to accomplish that.
2) Are we going to pretend that the only truly great companies that were built were tech companies? Seriously? In the last 20 years? Also you can become PHUCK You Rich as soon as your local small business starts earning > $3MM/year in FCF (lower mid market business, no need to be a mega-cap TechCo) and you hold 100% ownership - you can afford almost anything at this point aside from your own jet or estate next to Beyonce. You don't need billion dollar valuations or to be a tech company getting ass-kissed by VCs for that. Ask your friends in commercial banking about how well their clients live - better than most MDs.
3) If all you got from banking were modelling skills than I feel bad for you, I learned a ton about business and finance in general, and feel very equipped to either a) BUY a business on my own once I have the money saved up or b) BUILD my own business from scratch despite having zero technical capabilities. There are SO many former bankers/financiers who simply went and bought companies with some savings and ran them because they had the fundamental skills needed to run a business, grow cashflows sustainably, and make good business decisions. Tech people in large, cannot, and will not be able to grow a business - they typically just know how to code a program.
You're absolutely right. IB prepares you much better to become an entrepreneur. After all, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and Larry Page were all at Goldman Sachs before starting their companies....ohh...wait.
So tech entrepreneurs are the only entrepreneurs in history to you? Widen your scope. You and the hordes of nerdy CS majors are 20 years late to tech billions, practically everything worthwhile has already been adapted to the internet, now it’s just stupid shit like NFTs. Look at the actual entrepreneurs that built this country— the industrialists and tycoons of the roaring 20s that would have eaten mark zuckerberg for breakfast. The tech boom is just a blip amongst the companies of history. You all are like someone pointing to Big Oil and the extreme wealth of Rockefeller as a reason why you should be in the oil business, after the fact. Like all markets, tech is moving towards saturation with every day that passes.
read the thread lmao
survivorship/availability/confirmation bias.
WSO ranks EBs. Other forums write random shit.
No one in SWE is making 400k working light hours. Granted 40-60hrs beats finance. But hearing SWE ppl write this stuff is like EB rankings on WSO.
SWE jobs can become very intense and toxic too. Ask anyone who has worked in big tech for more than a couple of years. It is probably not always sunshine and roses over there.
lol no kid. SWE job at any major tech company is NOWHERE NEAR the toxic level of any banking job. nowhere near.
why bother? Kids here will never be able to code anyway lol. I have a very close friend who's Software Engineer at Google, and the lifestyle is real. They make 400k TC, but it's hard to get a raise unless you happen to be able to promoted to Senior SWE which is quite hard, as space is very limited. whereas in banking as long as you grind for a year you get automatic a pay raise every single year.
IMO this is the right answer. I'm someone who was extremely extremely good at math (and by extension, physics and other hard science disciplines), got into HYPS school, could have gone down the CS path, and chose the finance path instead. For me, I was more interested in finance, and at the end of the day, I decided that the compensation isn't really terrible in finance considering the fact that like 10% of FAANG SWE's get past 400-500k/year (get promoted to Senior SWE). In Finance, you have a pretty definite path to $x mm a year as a partner or PM. There is no such path in Tech (unicorn startup odds suck).
Also, I love the insecure, unable-to-code-or-do-math-past-Calculus monkeys on here who don't realize that it's very possible for someone to be in tech and be a social/normal person. Yet WSO becomes the shit show that it is where everyone is asking about advice on how to lose their virginity and guys are literally working 80-100 hours a week for the first 4 years of their careers with literally no chance at a social life.
Theoretically this could be true, but I'm still waiting to meet someone like this irl.
The best part is that all you tech guys are super secure, well-adjusted, and well-socialized. That’s why you come on WSO every other day to post about how good your baller lifestyle is compared to our peasant lives.
99% of cs guys have the social skills of a dung bettle
400k is not enough for me to work with mouth-breathing virgin discord mods.
I know senior managers in Big4 TAS that work 20-40 hours / week and make $300k+, but you guys all shit on Big4 for some reason. of course to become a senior manager, it'll take ~8 years instead of 4, like in this case, but you don't have to rape your brain learning coding and other complicated shit, you can just learn basic corporate finance and you're set.
Agree with you and I've met similar people. This path doesn't get talked a lot enough. Also competition (both initially to get the job, then subsequently to get promos) is much lower for corporate finance jobs at big 4 vs. investment banks.
This is cap. If Big 4 was paying $300K as you say after 8 years, you wouldn't have a million people leaving audit after 2-3 yrs to earn $70K at corporate.
100%. Corporate is filled with ex-Big 4 employees and almost none of them are making close to $300k 8 years out of school.
I'm talking about TAS (transaction advisory, i.e. corp fin advisory), not audit. Pay differs drastically between departments. Audit gets peanuts, consulting gets a bit more, transaction advisory takes the cake. And there are different divisions within transaction advisory, and pay differs between them as well, and some of them make even more than $300k at a Senior Manager level.
People leave because they either:
1) get an offer with better immediate compensation, e.g. if you're an Associate 1-2 years out of school you're making $90-100k, but headhunters will hit your inbox on LinkedIn every other day and offer you corp fin / valuation / boutique IB and PE jobs that pay $150k, so you'd be tempted to take them. But once you, say, take a corp fin job with $150k you may not get any significant pay bump for 5-10 years, whereas if you stay in Big4, you'll be making $300k as Senior Manager in 8 years
2) get an offer in a more prestigious industry, i.e. IB / PE. And many people take it even though they'll be raped and thrown out of the window in ~2 year for about the same amount of money they'd be making, whereas they could just coast and push back at Big4 and reach Senior Manager level nonetheless
3) get staffed heavily in their first year or two (staffed heavily at Big4 = work 80h/week occasionally), and they don't realize they can push back, and they're not willing to wait until they're more senior and can delegate and do jack shit, so they prefer to take a corp fin job instead.
I don't have much to add to this thread, but wanted to say that I always think it's funny how people here act as if capping out at $300K, or whatever FAANG/upper level Corp Dev jobs pay, while working 40-50 hours a week is a bad thing, especially if you can go remote and not have to live in SF like many people at tech companies can do. $300K is an obscene amount of money that most people will never come close to. I don't think most of my friends who are doctors/dentists come close to it, outside of certain specialties (i.e. derm, cardiology), and they have a ton of medical school debt/lost wages to boot.
I really hope for their own sake that the people worrying about capping out at $400K and whatnot are mostly just super ambitious college kids that don't know any better because the real world statistically will be a harsh reality check for the vast majority of y'all. Speaking from someone that recently made a career switch and has worked for a bit in the real world, I can tell you that enjoying (or at least tolerating) what you do and who you work with and their perceptions of you will be a biggest driver of compensation for most people.
Fuck me. I keep trying to edit this dumpster fire of a comment and fucking it up.
I work in an area heavily dominated by Tech/Startups. A lot of my friends, family, and college alumni work in tech. Doesn't make me an expert, but I figured I'd chime in. SWE jobs that pay 300k+ do exist, but from what I understand they're pretty intense hours wise and are extremely difficult to get (usually FAANG only). A few comments on blind do not constitute an industry norm.
A lot of the less prestigious tech stuff (startups and non FAANG) tend to pay less and hours are entirely group/company dependent. Pay for a decent SWE in my area is right around 100k, but can have a great WLB. Some startups are absolute sweatshops though. They keep people around with promises of equity and an eventual IPO. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Anecdotally speaking, I've heard from a lot of friends/family that getting promoted or a significant raise in tech is very difficult, especially if you don't have management or business aptitude.
Banking and tech are very different. Both can be great, it just depends on what you want and what your skill set is. That being said, please don't think that tons of 400k 20 hour a week tech jobs are just falling out of the sky for CS majors from no name schools. Absolutely not reality from what I've seen.
I'm in IB and there is so much copium going around this thread. People can't handle that they made the wrong career choice.
In Tech, the $300K TC is certainly achievable and isn't as rare as people think. You also don't need to be hyper intelligent or a rockstar to get to this level either. Go check Levels.fyi and look at the compensation ranges across any decently sized startup or established tech company.
Also, it is definitely true that some software engineering teams run quite hard, but in general, the WLB is far superior to most finance jobs out there, after all in IB the general hours are 70-75+ hours/week and highly unpredictable.
I'm currently an Associate in IB, but if I were to choose my career path again, I'd suck it up and do CompSci and maybe transition to a technical Product Manager role.
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