How far will house prices fall [volume 5]

[BurtonLazars]

ooid said:

True but I highly doubt if the best of the best would ever stay in the U.K. anymore. It’s been pretty hard to recruit quite good employees.There is no incentive really. Start at 60k, maybe hit 100k in a few years, and take only £66k of that to home? What’s the point?

Yes we see the same.

[BurtonLazars]

DanL said:

Insane - I’d bet money you’re overpaying. Best of the best or not, how much more is someone with experience, or how much worse is someone very very good for (say) £80k?

You can’t get them, there isn’t enough. Someone good is £100-150k so you pay £60k and try to hang onto them.

[CraigyMc]

DanL said:

Insane - I’d bet money you’re overpaying. Best of the best or not, how much more is someone with experience, or how much worse is someone very very good for (say) £80k?

It depends if you're building something down to a cost or up to a quality, I suppose. It's true that as sectors evolve, the players generally move towards the former until it blows up in their faces.

If something has literally billions of <insert whatever is of value as a financial instrument> flowing through it, the overhead of the engineers is meaningless unless the overhead is a significant proportion of the P&L. If they are under, say 10%, nobody will bat an eyelid at it. That number might vary a bit between financial institutions, but it'll be there.

The cost of doing things 99% as well as is humanly possible is not much higher in the grand scheme than doing it 90%, but the results can completely overwhelm the saving you might make on the overhead. The difference between 90% and 99% might be simply down to staff quality rather than population. Costs can be controlled through staff numbers rather than pricing. A significant enough problem with our systems could obviate the entire cost of running IT for the place for several decades, rendering the savings involved in downskilling and near or offshoring critical stuff so moot you'd laugh at the tradeoff.

The other thing is, "define very, very good". It might mean "quite good at coding, gets everything done on time". It might mean "potential future chairman of the BoE or Fed". It depends what you're looking for. Often, hiring isn't about the job that needs doing now, it's about the next few years and the qualities of really bright people tend to be adaptability and invention. You might get a great coder for today on £80K but you might not get someone able to deal with the upcoming fusion of IT and whatever in 5 years unless you pick generally bright people today who might not be the best coders today.

[NickCQ]

Yes, perspective is very important. Someone told me a few years ago that a grad bank trader costs less in salary than their Bloomberg terminal costs to rent! Not sure whether that is still the case though.

[CraigyMc]

NickCQ said:

Yes, perspective is very important. Someone told me a few years ago that a grad bank trader costs less in salary than their Bloomberg terminal costs to rent! Not sure whether that is still the case though.

Nah. Bloomberg is about 20k a year or something.

[Flooble]

Strewth, I'm genuinely gobsmacked at those numbers.

I know the current or relatively recent figures for several firms in the area and none of them are/were touching those amounts - granted not finance or even related fields but I'm still quite amazed. I clearly made a few wrong choices in my career.

I can remember only a few years ago going to the MD to try and get one of my 5-year experienced devs an increase to 45K so I wouldn't lose him. Good job he didn't know what you lot were offering!

[hungry_hog]

NickCQ said:

I think that's probably overdoing it for "new grads". You should get there in a buyside firm 3-4 years post-graduating but you wouldn't walk out of uni into "six figs"

Thread name should say how far will house prices rise, with "decent" suburban 3 bed terrace houses in London easily over 1m

On salary front, some US boutique investment banks will pay 55k starting and same again bonus for the top performers
For the bulge brackets more like 50+ (30 to 40)

Quant hedge funds will probably pay even higher on base, bit less on bonus. You probably need to be Maths Olympiad super freak / "you find Cambridge Maths degree too easy" to get in though

[Pit Pony]

It's weird. Perceptions on pay.

My wife thinks anyone on more than £45k is mega rich.

[The Rotrex Kid]

Continued here

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...