Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

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Last time I looked at the finance industry, which was admittedly a while ago, I saw a C++ job that listed the salary as being around $100k. Sounds reasonable.

In New York City. Oh.

Compare to Google salaries, on levels.fyi for example. I know they're not theoretical or inaccurate because I worked at Google for a while. If you really want to do C++ professionally, that and maybe other FAANG companies seem like they'd give you much higher quality of life.

But the truth is, if you're a C++ developer, you may as well just take up another programming language and get paid more. The data doesn't lie:

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#technology-top-paying-...

C++ was basically the first programming language I really learned, but I seldom use it in the industry, because I don't know why I would intentionally pick a pay cut to do harder work. (I consider C++ to be "harder" than many of the languages above it in pay grade even when doing the same work, for most tasks.)

Salary at an HFT doesnt tell an accurate story. I'd be shocked to learn any quality c++ dev at an HFT pulled down less than 500k last year, and I'd expect most to be well above that.

Maybe they’d have more luck hiring if they told a more accurate story.

Hiring C++ isnt especially hard because our pay is opaque. Recruiters will tell you immediately what total comp you can expect and they'll let you know what you can contractually guarantee year 1.

Hiring for C++ is hard because C++ is hard and most people are quite bad at writing even somewhat reasonable code.

I was told $300K about a decade ago and I told them no. I was already making more than that at a big tech company with a much easier pace of work. $500K would have peaked my interest, why didn’t they tell me $500K if that was an option?

A quick google search is suggesting that $200K for the top end of experience, when I was told $300K they said it was as high as they go. Where is the rest of this compensation coming from? Maybe they could give stats for bonuses but when enquired it seemed that the bonus pool was being eaten up elsewhere and the C++ devs were in the back of the line for that.

200k for the salary part might be the highest salary they offer.

Often bonuses can be >100% of the salary. Bonuses vary based on firm performance. The advice is typically "Live within your salary, don't let your lifestyle creep up to demand your full total compensation". HR typically emphasizes that the bonus is not guaranteed (unless you negotiate a guaranteed bonus for some number of years [1-2] after hiring).

Also, salaries/TC have gone up in the last 10 years.

To get the aforementioned $500K it would need to be an average of 150% bonus. And that’s just to equal the FANG equivalent plus some extra for the added intensity. The firm should be able to give historical averages. And I was given the distinct impression that the developers were last in line for the bonus pool, which may have changed in the intervening 10 years, but they should advertise that.

This. I think these firms would have an easier time hiring engineers away from FAANGs, if they realised that FAANG engineers don't precisely understand how the bonus system works. (I think the vagueness is actually seen as a feature of the bonus system!)

They were quite explicit that management, traders and quants take the initial passes at the bonus pool and not to expect much out of it. 100% seemed to be the max not the minimum. They made it clear that C++ devs are support staff and hence second class citizens. And as a second class citizen in a support role it would be hard to make the case for a personal performance bonus.

I think any experienced c++ dev knows there is good money in HFT. Hiring for HFT is also hard, I imagine, because the industry is parasitical. Id like to look at my work and feel that it is contributing something net positive to society.

Same with the poker machines. Recruiters gotta recruit, but I’d just make my own meth if all I cared about was the money.

HFT can cover a wide range of diff types of firms/latencies. Bonus structure also makes it so the salary might not be as high, and bonuses can be contingent on performance. This might be true at some of the larger firms on successful desks, but I don't think it is true across the board.

I don't think I know of many buy side firms that pay any less than Google, Microsoft or Meta. Salary just tends to be relatively small compared to the bonus or return on invested capital in the fund.

That's probably why finance is having problems. I know plenty of great C++ devs out here in flyover country. A lot of shops that hire them go bust, or outsource, and they move on to something else because finance is clueless about how to scoop them up (pay a lot, do remote, or establish a branch office).

I really like the fact that you get paid way more than C++ if you do PowerShell programming.

Google pays its C++ devs very well. Would you suggest those devs try to pivot to Java/Python/Golang also?

Google has basically thrown the towel in the ring when it comes to C++ considering they're building a replacement like Carbon and also using rust in and more places so they're likely pivoting to those two instead

I mean no, if you're happy at Google doing C++ then by all means you can probably keep doing it for a while. I don't think pivoting is particularly hard for experienced devs, so it's probably fine to hold it off, though I could be wrong.

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