I was thinking of interviewing at companies like two sigma and jane street. What is the starting salary(base + bonus) for a dev at these places, want to know if its worth considering. I am quite good at programming and have strong CS skills but don't know much about things like stochastic calculus etc.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Two-Sig ... 241045.htm

Are these still accurate, seems to be bit on the lower side.

If money is your concern and you're strong in CS you should apply to Google. In the NYC and SF Bay areas the salary can be in the $200k/yr range.From what I'm hearing of the NYC market right now for devs, generally speaking in non-finance you can get around $160 - $170K/yr and in the big banks it can be around $180k. Rough figures of course.

Glassdoor has seemed low to me every time I've looked up my own past jobs. I also don't think they include bonuses, which could be large. You should absolutely go for Two Sigma and Jane Street. You might also be interested in Quantlab in Houston.I'm not sure why people are attracted to Google. A friend of mine just finished her CS PhD and took a developer job with them for just $115k. It seems like so many people want to work there that even PhDs get low pay and menial tasks.

Commodore - was your friend working in NYC or SF? Salaries in small cities can certainly be lower because they're adjusted for COL, but I'd be very surprised if she was only getting paid that much in NYC or SF.I think ppl go to work for Google for the name - for a developer it's a very good name to have on your resume.

Yes, Why do people join Google ?Partly of course it's branding and unless like me you're in recruitment, the relative strength of employment brands is unintuitive.For instance when on the phone I mention UBS to an American PhD in science or tech they quite often think I'm talking about a delivery company...Google markets very well to people at entry level and of course compared to the pay for teaching etc that PhDs get, it looks huge. There is also the notion that share options will make you rich, which for someone who has no finance background skips over the fact that this requires Google to keep growing at the excellent rate it has enjoyed.Part of their employment marketing is that in theory you could be working on Google cars, watches, phones, curing cancer, spacefligfht, movies, music, finance, etc indeed unless your ambition is to start mining iron ore, there is a chance you can do it at Google.Also because of the number applying to work at Google, getting accepted is an endorsement, employers know so little about potential employees from CVs that look roughly te same, so many of them like to see applicants who've got over high filters. So the benefit of getting a job at Google last a long time....but not forever. I did three years at IBM's labs when it was the most powerful firm in the world and the labs were the interesting bit. No one is impressed by that now :(Optionality as we all know has value and Google offers this to all and delivers it enough that there is little feedback into the entry level PhD market.Of course, like others here I went to a university that has won a couple of dozen Nobel prizes, holds extremely valuable patents in fields as diverse as pharma and cement manufacturing (which paid for the new engineering building), where there was an exorcism held at midnight by a Bishop in the Church of England, where the law department didn't have a ground floor because it was built over a nearly abandoned Jewish graveyard and where we built a nuclear reactor in the centre of the 6th biggest city in the world, which we then buried underneath the site going to hold the Olympics.OK, your university didn't do that, but you had equally fun possibilities when you went to Uni, the fact that you didn't win a Nobel, or like me you didn't believe the Christian Union really was going to exorcise the Chapel, is much the same thing as at Google.Fact is, most of us turn up, on average we do averagely well, on average get an average allocation of excitement and then move on.My roommate had at 17 devised a novel processor that was licenced by his school making them serious money. Last heard he was doing average work for a firm you've never heard of at pay that will impress no one here. But he might have been something special...Google has the same % of dull shit jobs as every other tech firm.Google pitches itself as just like we hoped university would be, but with more money.On the other hand banks campus recruitment is so bad, that when I bump into it, I sometimes wonder if it is done so badly on purpose.This has led to an entertaining non-tradeable arbitrage.Banks complain to me that they don't get he calibre of students applying that they want from amongst Sci/Tech PhDs.I offer to sort this out, for money of course and very occasionally they take it up and love the result.Actually they don't love it if you include those who job it is to actually do this.Some weeks ago, one bank which qualifies as glamorous, was whining about the mediocre quality of the people they were getting. In a different conversation, they'd made it clear that for the right people in this specific area, there were no formal bounds on what they would pay and mentioned as a lower bound, twice what the average was for PhDs in banks and more than Google paid.As the conversation dragged on, they mentioned one place, which in its area is arguably the top in the world and certainly the top in Europe that they'd love to suck people out of, but as it was a very prissy (their word) academic institution that "obviously" hated banks, they weren't even allowed to come visit. The institution didn't, but they didn't know the whole story (they get serious money from a competitive firm, which for various reasons isn't public)This allowed me to be pointlessly smug. I took out my phone and showed them am email from the PA to the head guy of this place, saying she was sorry I couldn't come on the date they suggested and would I like to come on a more convenient one ?It was pointless because despite me demonstrating I could reach the people they wanted and be taken seriously, "that's not the way we do it". Business is like that of course, just because you have something that a bank wants and thinks that it needs at a price that they already pay for something they know is less valuable, doesn't mean they will buy from you.I learned that years ago, so it doesn't piss me off.... much.

Are these really starting salaries?$180k for a developer = roughly £120k.I think the starting salary for devs and quants in London is roughly £60-80k = $90-120k. Are London salaries that much lower?

For Computer Science PhDs from Carnegie Mellon University (ranked # 1 in USA) in CS:Tech firms (Microsoft, Google, Amzn, Facebook, HP, etc.) are offering starting GROSS $160 K - $200 K. This includes bonus, stock, etc.In Finance sector, the salaries are $120 K - $140 K base + $50 K bonus.These are for PhDs from a top-ranked CS department. I have more than 30 data points for this profile.I think with only B.S or M.S. the salaries would be substantially lower than this.Glassdoor salaries are much lower than expected. I think if someone reports a salary in 1996 to Glassdoor, Glassdoor will report that same salary in 2015. This is obviously not the case because even with 2% annual inflation, the 2015 salary should be 50% higher than the 1996 salary.

QuoteOriginally posted by: emacAre these really starting salaries?$180k for a developer = roughly £120k.I think the starting salary for devs and quants in London is roughly £60-80k = $90-120k. Are London salaries that much lower?It's very unlikely that a non-quantitative, fresh out of college/grad school developer with just a B.Sc. or even an M.Sc. would be starting out at $180k, even in NYC or SF. There may be a few outliers at places like Google or Goldman Sachs perhaps, but it certainly wouldn't be the norm even there I'd imagine.

Occasionally a new grad developer will have some utlra-specialist skill, or rather 2 skills.Sometimes a firm will pay "what it takes" to get something done, but to get money in the tail of the distribution requires that you can find each other and that you have the negotating skills to get it.But they sometimes won't pay, some of you travel to work on the DLR in London, when it was being grown to it's current size I was offered the job of making the computer controlled trains actually work.I wasn't all that keen, but the agent said the cash was good, which it wasn't, but the interview was. It used a technology that not only was rare, but I had been in the team developing it.They explained their plans and stated various delivery dates confidently as if they were facts.They seemed a bit ambitious to me and since I was in interview mode, I asked politely the reason for their confidence."It's been working in Toronto for four years", they said."No it hasn't" I replied, coming out of interview mode.They were a bit taken aback by this, since I claimed no knowledge of the rail industry at all."Yes it is", they repeated.I explained. "The software they say they are using didn't exist in any form 4 years ago, they'd have needed it 5 years ago and the CPU it requires didn't exist then either.""That's not true", they insisted."I was in the development team, we shipped the first version 3 years ago and not only didn't it do the things you need then, it doesn't do them now"You need a real time operating system and it isn't one"I then listed various deal breakers.They were impressed, this was a billion dollar project and the suppliers had been lying and since part of my job had been close combat fighting with dodgy IT vendors there was literally not one person in the country would could do the job nearly as well as me.A week later the agent rang and explained that they were trying to shaft me. When even the recruiter thinks you shouldn't take the job, you know it is bad.They wanted to pay me less than half the going rate for a bog standard developer, because "they say you're only an engineer Dominic and since this is an important project, you should accept it".He then explained the expenses agreement where it seemed that I'd be paying personally for shuttling between Toronto and London, I'd be working for free.You may recall that this project was famously plagued with technical hitches and even to this day the "automatic" trains regularly needed to be nursemaided by "operators".They did hire a guy, in such a small pool, we all knew each other and as far as I could tell he'd had a job installing the software and no clue how it actually worked or even how to use it.

QuoteOriginally posted by: ElysianEagleQuoteOriginally posted by: emacAre these really starting salaries?$180k for a developer = roughly £120k.I think the starting salary for devs and quants in London is roughly £60-80k = $90-120k. Are London salaries that much lower?It's very unlikely that a non-quantitative, fresh out of college/grad school developer with just a B.Sc. or even an M.Sc. would be starting out at $180k, even in NYC or SF. There may be a few outliers at places like Google or Goldman Sachs perhaps, but it certainly wouldn't be the norm even there I'd imagine.Yes, but I am talking about quants with PhDs in quantitative subjects. As far as I know, in London the starting salary is £60-80k base.

QuoteOriginally posted by: emacQuoteOriginally posted by: ElysianEagleQuoteOriginally posted by: emacAre these really starting salaries?$180k for a developer = roughly £120k.I think the starting salary for devs and quants in London is roughly £60-80k = $90-120k. Are London salaries that much lower?It's very unlikely that a non-quantitative, fresh out of college/grad school developer with just a B.Sc. or even an M.Sc. would be starting out at $180k, even in NYC or SF. There may be a few outliers at places like Google or Goldman Sachs perhaps, but it certainly wouldn't be the norm even there I'd imagine.Yes, but I am talking about quants with PhDs in quantitative subjects. As far as I know, in London the starting salary is £60-80k base.Developer shmeveloper, quant shmuant, phd shmehd, no one at entry level is getting $180K cash salary at any desk I've been at.Unless of course risk mgmt does not count as a quantitative discipline. In which case, please excuse the ramblings of a lunatic.

QuoteOriginally posted by: slackerQuoteOriginally posted by: emacQuoteOriginally posted by: ElysianEagleQuoteOriginally posted by: emacAre these really starting salaries?$180k for a developer = roughly £120k.I think the starting salary for devs and quants in London is roughly £60-80k = $90-120k. Are London salaries that much lower?It's very unlikely that a non-quantitative, fresh out of college/grad school developer with just a B.Sc. or even an M.Sc. would be starting out at $180k, even in NYC or SF. There may be a few outliers at places like Google or Goldman Sachs perhaps, but it certainly wouldn't be the norm even there I'd imagine.Yes, but I am talking about quants with PhDs in quantitative subjects. As far as I know, in London the starting salary is £60-80k base.Developer shmeveloper, quant shmuant, phd shmehd, no one at entry level is getting $180K cash salary at any desk I've been at.Unless of course risk mgmt does not count as a quantitative discipline. In which case, please excuse the ramblings of a lunatic.I have seen many Finance PhDs who just graduated get salaries of $300 K - $500 K from the Hedge Funds. Happens every single year. Even in academia they are starting at $250 K. So what is so strange about that.12% of Harvard and Stanford MBA class got jobs in PE. Their average starting salary plus bonus was $345 K. I think VC also has good numbers.

QuoteOriginally posted by: traderjoe1976QuoteOriginally posted by: slackerQuoteOriginally posted by: emacQuoteOriginally posted by: ElysianEagleQuoteOriginally posted by: emacAre these really starting salaries?$180k for a developer = roughly £120k.I think the starting salary for devs and quants in London is roughly £60-80k = $90-120k. Are London salaries that much lower?It's very unlikely that a non-quantitative, fresh out of college/grad school developer with just a B.Sc. or even an M.Sc. would be starting out at $180k, even in NYC or SF. There may be a few outliers at places like Google or Goldman Sachs perhaps, but it certainly wouldn't be the norm even there I'd imagine.Yes, but I am talking about quants with PhDs in quantitative subjects. As far as I know, in London the starting salary is £60-80k base.Developer shmeveloper, quant shmuant, phd shmehd, no one at entry level is getting $180K cash salary at any desk I've been at.Unless of course risk mgmt does not count as a quantitative discipline. In which case, please excuse the ramblings of a lunatic.I have seen many Finance PhDs who just graduated get salaries of $300 K - $500 K from the Hedge Funds. Happens every single year. Even in academia they are starting at $250 K. So what is so strange about that.12% of Harvard and Stanford MBA class got jobs in PE. Their average starting salary plus bonus was $345 K. I think VC also has good numbers.man, have I been in the wrong hedge funds all these years lol.300K-500K cash salary for a fresh, zero experience phd right out the gate!! boy, I hope our guys are not reading this forum!The PE game is a different ball of wax that don't impress me much though. Those extra 40 hours per week dilutes that sum a lot.