I was interested in working at Apple so I messaged a few of my alum friends. All of them said they worked around 60 hours a week. Nope, can't pay me enough to work 60 hours a week.
I wish I knew then what I know now :) I put in 100+ hours a week for a tech firm because interesting/love what I do/blah. And all I have to show for it is stock that increased a little bit.
Oh lucky guy. I've heard enough of these stories without even that. But startups are highly voluntary so I take that relatively lightly compared to corporate responsibility of Apple et al.
That idea is now a myth, only a handful of wall-streeters break the 1-2 million mark according to various industry surveys (generally you can earn a lot more if you are a principal or a portfolio manager at a successful hedge fund, but those are outliers, the truth is that the belief everyone on the buyside is living a model and bottles lifestyle (or might be able to) is a huge misconception). IMHO, the best shot at becoming rich remains entrepreneurship.
Forgot the exact numbers, but it's something like six months you live there and work most of your waking hours, then six months vacation, and the pay is stupid high (and living on the platform while you work there means you have almost no personal expenses during that time).
And, again, personal expenses go down to almost zilch while living on-base.
My mom's boyfriend is in the National Guard. Every few years, he gets activated and deployed somewhere for a year or two. Every time he comes back, he takes the money he saved by not having to pay for anything for a year and buys himself an expensive new car. Last time, he bought a Dodge Challenger SRT8.
I did get paid for those types of weeks a long while back (billed hourly - 50-80 hour weeks - nice rate). It does get painful after a year or two, and the winter in the northland is a bit harsh since you aren't seeing much sun.
There was an interesting article in Fortune a while ago. The tldr was that you shouldn't get mad that Wall Street pays too much, but that the rest of corporate America pays too little. When companies are building war chests in the tens of hundreds of billions, and also feel the need to collude to prevent "poaching", you have to wonder.
The sad part is that people in technology sometimes love the work so much, that they are willing to put in more than they should on pure economic terms. The finance and consulting types are more ruthless about their own worth.
EDIT: My minimum wage comment was more about making a point. Banker types like to say they make lots of money but make less per-hour than a McDonald's employee.
No, its not lower than minimum wage, even at the low end of that range, and even if they worked all 168 hours of every week.
$300K / 8,760 hours a year (assuming a non-leap-year, and 24/7 schedule) = $34.24/hour
Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr; even with the +50% premium for overtime after the first 40 hours in a week, that's only $10.88/hr for the overtime hours. So its literally impossible to clear $300K a year and be making less than minimum wage, without some kind of weird time warping ability that lets you work 3+ years of 24/7 work in one calendar year.
EDIT: To respond to the edit of the parent post...
> My minimum wage comment was more about making a point.
What point is made by this drastically false claim?
> Banker types like to say they make lots of money but make less per-hour than a McDonald's employee.
If that's true (along with the compensation numbers you present), that tells us that one of the following is true:
1. Bankers are innumerate,
2. Bankers are ignorant of their own compensation,
3. Bankers are ignorant of the compensation of low-wage workers, or
4. Bankers are being dishonest, perhaps in an effort to deflect criticism of their compensation compared to other workers.
Looks like you are one order of magnitude wrong, even at just 300K a year working 100 hours a week that's over $50 an hour.
When I graduated college, base salaries in banking were about $65,000, which leads to $12.50 / hour. After their first bonus check, this doubles, of course, but that first year can feel pretty bad. Still not minimum wage, but I think the point they want to make is that, yes, we make lots of money, but is it worth it with the hours. In comparison, a $120,000 tech job at a big company (not counting equity), working 40 hours a week with 2 weeks vacation comes to about $60 / hour.
The difference is that the professional services compensation grows at a much faster rate than the tech compensation, unless you happen to pick the next Google/FB/whatever and get on-board early on.
Any banker type that says something like that is an asshole or is really bad at math. Assuming he's a competent banker he's probably not actually bad at math and is just an asshole.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_A...
A. Ask any of the original Mac team if they'd have skipped the opportunity.
B. Most of them have done quite well for themselves.