June 12th, 2011, 2:02 pm
A few bits of context here...This latest drop of numbers is for the "headline" of what people see themselves as, I'm trying to separate "management rank" from function.There is also a known effect that you may think of yourself as a QD, but if you're in an IT department you will be paid less than in other departments.That means an MD who cuts code and bosses around other quant developers is a QD, even if his job title says he is management, so the average numbers are actually lower than I had expected.If you were to sample people whose business card said "Quant Developer" you'd get a lower range.This why there are boxes on the survey to separate IT QDs from FO QDs since in every observable attribute they may be identical but being in an IT department will knock a chunk off your pay, especially in bonus.Yes, we are checking these numbers and I'm not in any way offended be the suggestion that I need to double check.I am at heart a scientist and that requires the discipline of exposing your results to open discussion.Also I hope I don't need to explain that the value of data is a function of how unexpected it is.I'm showing them because I want a reality check since I'm in unexplored territory here. I've looked quite hard and there is not one decent data source to compare my results against, in fact at first I thought there were literally none, until I signed an NDA and got numbers that made me laugh. My numbers cannot be perfect, but they're going to be better than anyone else's by a serious margin.