QuoteOriginally posted by: ShaikQuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: CrashedMintthere are hundreds of comparable sites but those two explode.hundreds of sites which do exactly the same what instagram does?! you're being delusional. there's a few similar apps, but not hundreds. if this is a lottery, then there's like 50 tickets sold, and one of them is $1bln payout.Grass is always greener on the other side. There are millions of startups failing for 1 successful billion dollar company. not everyone can be a founder of google or facebook, neither can he be a Jim Simons or a D.E shaw.Unless you are the founder, or in the first few tens of employees(or be in first hundred employees of once in lifetime company like facebook, google) IT does not make a lot of money. Not all startups are generous enough to give their employees reasonable equity.If you take the median salaries or 'expectation of salaries' or any reasonable measure of averaging the pay..I think quant pays more than IT.Define good salary. Most good IT folks make good money. One swallow does not a summer make but I know one C++ guy who makes $150 per hour as a consultant. He took up a Quant dev role paying $160k base with promise of $120k bonus. He left in 8 months because he felt IT consulting was better. I know a trader who insists he makes a lot of money and he seems like he confuses "Max" with "Avg" and his lifestyle does not add up. It is fashionable to bitch about how crap and low life's IT folks are like it was fashionable for java folks to bitch about Microsoft a few years back to look cool. But Quantmeh is right. Forget about making millions in startup. An average salaried IT person who is really good makes good enough money. Good enough is what counts.

QuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2QuoteOriginally posted by: ShaikQuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: CrashedMintthere are hundreds of comparable sites but those two explode.hundreds of sites which do exactly the same what instagram does?! you're being delusional. there's a few similar apps, but not hundreds. if this is a lottery, then there's like 50 tickets sold, and one of them is $1bln payout.Grass is always greener on the other side. There are millions of startups failing for 1 successful billion dollar company. not everyone can be a founder of google or facebook, neither can he be a Jim Simons or a D.E shaw.Unless you are the founder, or in the first few tens of employees(or be in first hundred employees of once in lifetime company like facebook, google) IT does not make a lot of money. Not all startups are generous enough to give their employees reasonable equity.If you take the median salaries or 'expectation of salaries' or any reasonable measure of averaging the pay..I think quant pays more than IT.Define good salary. Most good IT folks make good money. One swallow does not a summer make but I know one C++ guy who makes $150 per hour as a consultant. He took up a Quant dev role paying $160k base with promise of $120k bonus. He left in 8 months because he felt IT consulting was better. I know a trader who insists he makes a lot of money and he seems like he confuses "Max" with "Avg" and his lifestyle does not add up. It is fashionable to bitch about how crap and low life's IT folks are like it was fashionable for java folks to bitch about Microsoft a few years back to look cool. But Quantmeh is right. Forget about making millions in startup. An average salaried IT person who is really good makes good enough money. Good enough is what counts.What did the C++ guy consult for? $150 per hour seems very high. It can easily beat $160k base + $120k bonus.

QuoteOriginally posted by: ShaikQuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: CrashedMintthere are hundreds of comparable sites but those two explode.hundreds of sites which do exactly the same what instagram does?! you're being delusional. there's a few similar apps, but not hundreds. if this is a lottery, then there's like 50 tickets sold, and one of them is $1bln payout.Grass is always greener on the other side. There are millions of startups failing for 1 successful billion dollar company. not everyone can be a founder of google or facebook, neither can he be a Jim Simons or a D.E shaw.Unless you are the founder, or in the first few tens of employees(or be in first hundred employees of once in lifetime company like facebook, google) IT does not make a lot of money. Not all startups are generous enough to give their employees reasonable equity.If you take the median salaries or 'expectation of salaries' or any reasonable measure of averaging the pay..I think quant pays more than IT.An average senior engineer with 5 years experience can easily make $200k-$300k in the silicon valley. Does that sound comparable to the quant pay at the same experience level?

QuoteOriginally posted by: londonerAn average senior engineer with 5 years experience can easily make $200k-$300k in the silicon valley.yeah, now we go into another extreme marking up numbers in IT

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerAn average senior engineer with 5 years experience can easily make $200k-$300k in the silicon valley.yeah, now we go into another extreme marking up numbers in ITWell, maybe the senior engineers are not viewed as pure IT. They are computer science PhDs who do applied research in technology companies, such as LinkedIn, Groupon, Netflix, Google, etc. And the numbers are REAL.

QuoteOriginally posted by: londonerQuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerAn average senior engineer with 5 years experience can easily make $200k-$300k in the silicon valley.yeah, now we go into another extreme marking up numbers in ITWell, maybe the senior engineers are not viewed as pure IT. They are computer science PhDs who do applied research in technology companies, such as LinkedIn, Groupon, Netflix, Google, etc. And the numbers are REAL.But are they the average? How big is the sample?

QuoteOriginally posted by: HansiQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerQuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerAn average senior engineer with 5 years experience can easily make $200k-$300k in the silicon valley.yeah, now we go into another extreme marking up numbers in ITWell, maybe the senior engineers are not viewed as pure IT. They are computer science PhDs who do applied research in technology companies, such as LinkedIn, Groupon, Netflix, Google, etc. And the numbers are REAL.But are they the average? How big is the sample?The sample size is small, say 4. These are my brother and his friends. Moreover, this is the number quoted from the recruiters who have a large sample size. To be clear, $200k-$300k is the whole compensation package, not just the base. It is still very appealing compared to the quant jobs, isn't it?

QuoteOriginally posted by: londonerQuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerAn average senior engineer with 5 years experience can easily make $200k-$300k in the silicon valley.yeah, now we go into another extreme marking up numbers in ITWell, maybe the senior engineers are not viewed as pure IT. They are computer science PhDs who do applied research in technology companies, such as LinkedIn, Groupon, Netflix, Google, etc. And the numbers are REAL.they're real, agreed. they're 3 sigma far from average, imho. reality check: go to LinkedIn and search for jobs at Google, there's 5 jobs with salary over 200K, none of them is remotely close to an avg sr eng with 5 years experience.

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerQuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerAn average senior engineer with 5 years experience can easily make $200k-$300k in the silicon valley.yeah, now we go into another extreme marking up numbers in ITWell, maybe the senior engineers are not viewed as pure IT. They are computer science PhDs who do applied research in technology companies, such as LinkedIn, Groupon, Netflix, Google, etc. And the numbers are REAL.they're real, agreed. they're 3 sigma far from average, imho. reality check: go to LinkedIn and search for jobs at Google, there's 5 jobs with salary over 200K, none of them is remotely close to an avg sr eng with 5 years experience.Did you include bonus, stocks and stock options?

QuoteWhat did the C++ guy consult for? $150 per hour seems very high. It can easily beat $160k base + $120k bonus.The figure he quoted was $1200 per day which approximates to $150 on a 8 hr basis. He does not do anything great. Standard C++ IT stuff. And unlike typical WS folks he is very open with his salary. I have known him for 10 years and he is just open with that information as with a lot of other not so good details. So I trust him.

QuoteOriginally posted by: londonerDid you include bonus, stocks and stock options?bonuses in IT? you must be kidding me. they're very small.don't get me wrong, 200K earning are not impossible. for 5 year experience, I can see this happening only on a very sweet contract with a lot of overtimes.

QuoteOriginally posted by: HansiQuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2Seriously - you never know which topic can suddenly flare up. If DC could provide us with the entire message board data, it might be a great case study in Data Mining. It will be interesting to observe how topics diverge. I am sure "Canada", "Montreal" , "Strip C..." would be highly correlated with TJ and Farmer. But still this message board offers great potential for analysis of human behaviour.I'm not completely sold on the idea that Farmer is actually human.He's twisted and evil, more machine than man.

QuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2QuoteWhat did the C++ guy consult for? $150 per hour seems very high. It can easily beat $160k base + $120k bonus.The figure he quoted was $1200 per day which approximates to $150 on a 8 hr basis. He does not do anything great. Standard C++ IT stuff. And unlike typical WS folks he is very open with his salary. I have known him for 10 years and he is just open with that information as with a lot of other not so good details. So I trust him.In his case, he was doing better than many quants in the street...

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerDid you include bonus, stocks and stock options?bonuses in IT? you must be kidding me. they're very small.don't get me wrong, 200K earning are not impossible. for 5 year experience, I can see this happening only on a very sweet contract with a lot of overtimes.yes, bonus is small. What about stocks and stock options??My brother and his friends normally don't work more than 8 hours a day.

QuoteOriginally posted by: londonerQuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: londonerDid you include bonus, stocks and stock options?bonuses in IT? you must be kidding me. they're very small.don't get me wrong, 200K earning are not impossible. for 5 year experience, I can see this happening only on a very sweet contract with a lot of overtimes.yes, bonus is small. What about stocks and stock options??My brother and his friends normally don't work more than 8 hours a day.Probably he gets around 150K base at google and with stocks of around 100-150 stocks vesting every year. It could come upto 200-300k. Thats only at google.And about 8 hours a day, thats very true. You could get away with 6 hrs or less work most of the days at google.Other companies like groupon may have same base but have less stock benefits and might not reach 200k.