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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this all just a matter of supply and demand? There are a lot more young people willing to work in this industry than there are positions, so those people who actually get the jobs have to put up with all kinds of stupid shit.

I've never understood why these employees (who are clearly quite intelligent) don't just pursue another career where they have more leverage. After all, I don't think they have any particular love for banking. Being on HN, the obvious suggestion would be software development (not a bad choice, considering the current state of the market), but there are a lot of other options out there as well.

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Because banking makes a hell of a lot more money.

The intern was set to make £45,000 / pa (not including bonuses) as an Analyst, but I suppose it opens doors.

For an entry level position that's probably 1.5-2.5x what a software dev could expect to make in the UK. In my experience at least.

London is different in this manner - an entry level software developer position (at a consultancy, bank, hedge-fund, etc) can go from 35k-45k.

Outside of London (as I'm sure you're aware), this could be offered as a senior developer salary.

I'm in London, albeit not in a bank or hedge-fund. Perhaps I should be asking for a raise :)

In that industry bonuses will increase your salary by double or more... Junior analysts in a big bank/hedge fund can expect to make as much (or slightly more) than a senior programmer in Silicon Valley.

I work in that industry, and that's not quite the case any more. Bonuses for junior analysts can reach up to around 50% (which nearly every other profession could never expect), but they would never exceed base salary.

Anybody saying otherwise has been reading too many tabloids.

You can find out more details about salaries in this area by using a site like glassdoor.com. This 100%+ bonus culture is simply not true (now).

100+% bonuses still exist, but for VP and higher and in high-performing groups. Analysts aren't getting those post-2008.

Typically a VP in a high-performing group will outrank an ED or MD in a lower-ranking group (say, $150+300k vs. $300+100k).

According to people working in the industry in NYC that I talked to, a lot of the bonuses dried up after the financial crisis. Nowadays, the income for someone starting out (not an intern, but as a full time job after college) is only $80-90k.

That's not a bad salary for an intern position, especially if there are bonuses involved. In a lot of industries, internships are unpaid or very poorly paid. Software development pays rather well, but I certainly didn't make that kind of money on summer jobs.

This was not the salary for the internship - this is the salary of the position that this guy was about to be offered -- after his internship

It was probably the same salary for the internship minus bonus's - the IBD interns here are all on 45k + 1k signing, grad is normally about 5k signing and a bonus guaranteed by HR at at least a set level.

> The obvious suggestion would be software development

Looking anecdotally at friends in software and in finance (I went to a school with a great reputation for both cs and business ) , a good software engineering (at a good company) is not trivial to get into. On the flipside, banking was what you did if you had no discernible skills.

It is rather a matter of missing regulations.

And what regulation(s) would you suggest? People always suggest "more regulation!" as if it's some magical panacea.

And don't forget, if your regulations are too difficult to conform to, these banks and hedge funds will simply move operations to somewhere less stringent.

Well, we could remove their existing optout from the Working Time Directive. As to the "but they'll just leave for the Third World!" claim below:

1) it's a networking-based industry. Everyone would have to move at once, or at least a very large chunk.

2) They would have to move to somewhere in the same time zone (finance has outposts in NY, London and Singapore/HK that cover the day in 3 8-hour trading days). I suppose that's less relevant if you're working 20 hours a day.

3) They'd have to move to somewhere similarly cosmopolitan to London. No point in making all that money if you can't walk out the door and find somewhere to spend it in your few precious hours off. That rules out much of the African continent, although there are expat clusters in Angola and UAE.

Regulations seem to me a lot less magical than the free market. I live in a country with a lot of regulations when it comes to working time and it does not seem to harm. It is one of the strongest economies in the world. I guess the market can live with it.

There are strict limits for extra hours. As an employee working more than 48 hours per week is allowed only as an exception and working more than 60 hours per week is simply put illegal. Extra time has to be balanced with free time. We also have a minimum of 24 payed vacation days. Most people have more.

There are regulations (European working time directive). The problem is that employers will ask you to waive the rights afforded to you by that directive...

In continental EU legislation (AFAIK unlike USA), no contract can waive rights provided by legislation.

If a job contract includes provisions that explicitly give up some of basic job limits (say, no vacation, unpaid overtime, limits of shift/week length, etc) - then, barring very few exceptions (listed in the same legislation), those parts of agreement are null and void. It's the same as it's everywhere for minimal wage - even if you sign a contract that you'll work for $0.05/hour, then that provision anyway means $[minwage]/hour.

Working time directive is one that you can opt-out of https://www.gov.uk/maximum-weekly-working-hours/weekly-maxim...

If you fail in software, then you're just an out-of-work programmer. If you fail in banking, you take a two-year timeout at Harvard Business School and raise a search fund before you're 30.

The upside of software is arguably better (fatter rightward tail, more interesting work, more impact, less tied to NYC and London) but the insurance is not there.

> If you fail in banking, you take a two-year timeout at Harvard Business School and raise a search fund before you're 30.

Uhh, what? How many people can get into HBS? I don't think it's that simple.

OTOH, if you fail in software, you just find another job - that's what the market is like right now.

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