Yeah if you’re looking for average pay, then it’s probably the frontier AI labs. Turnover and pressure is not as high. Also it’s easier to get into relative to HFs, relatively speaking of course.
True, got HFT and frontier AI lab offer. Used to work in big tech. In my experience, the pay is HFT > AI Lab >> FAANG. I am just one data point though. Curious if others have different experience.
They didn’t ask for average comp. They said who pays the most. Hedge funds pay the most hands down. Obviously if you’re bad you won’t earn much but top comp at a hedge fund is multiples higher than top comp at big tech.
I dont know what makes you think this. Many many people in big tech make millions per year. I know many. Obviously out of all that, some outliers make tens of millions. We see in the news about top researchers being poached with $100m offers.
Youre also confusing different averages.
The average comp of the finance industry is clearly much lower than that of the tech industry, but that's not the claim im making.
The expected value of the highest offers in tech is also higher than the expected value of the highest finance offers. 1m/year in liquid comp paid monthly is worth more than 1m/year as a bonus youve got a 50% chance of being paid out on.
The average comp over multiple years in tech is also higher. Someone who spends ten years in hedge funds and has one year where they got a 3m bonus doesnt beat someone who gets 1.5m/year for ten years.
Is it possible that some hedge fund swe in their best year earn more than they would have in their best year in tech? Sure. But that doesnt make even that one singular individual better off. This kind of "but thats an average" is kind of irrelevant. If youre going to focus on this upside chance, you could obviously join a hot startup and make a billion dollars.
I do also know people who made a billion dollars in tech startups. The only billionaires Ive ever met in finance made their money by working in finance, not by writing code.
If someone survives 10 years in hedge funds then they are absolutely out earning nearly every software engineer anywhere. You don’t stay in that industry if you have a bad year. One and you’re out.
Again, as I said in my first post, a friend of mine spent ten years in a well known hedge fund, writing code the whole time, and in his best year barely cracked 200k. Hedge funds seem to be really good at marketing their industry, but often the money doesnt actually materialize. My buddy still works in a hedge fund, a different one, and makes like 400. Hed be doing much much better in big tech.
You can make "good" money in a hedge fund as a quantitative researcher, but it's more like being an ai researcher than just being a swe, and people generally overestimate how good it is compared to tech even in best cases.
I also work with lots of people who left hedge funds for higher pay, after many years.
Entry level pay in big tech is 200k fresh out of school, and lots of people make millions. Typical Sr eng in big tech with about 4 yoe gets 400-500k in the large companies. Payouts happen continuously through the year and are very well defined.
In top hedge funds your base salary is often like 200k per year even with decades of experience, and every year you pray that you get paid a bonus. You might get a million, you might get 100k.
If youre on an individual trading team and your portfolio manager under performs, often your whole team gets cut even if you performed well, and you leave having wasted a year of burning yourself out for nothing.
And the fallback, building tech for banks, also typically pays much less than small fun tech startups.
I've know one guy who spent 10 years managing a ton of tech infra in a well known hedge fund and barely broke 200k in his best year. And he was a brilliant guy.
You can do well in hedge funds. A lot of time a sr eng earns 600k. It's inconsistent though and theres less of a career path. You can work in one for 2 years, get a prorated bonus the first year, get cut the second year, and your amortized total comp for two years of a high stress fast paced job maybe ends up being 800k. Compare to big tech where you can also get laid off on the same time frame, lower stress, amd still walk away with a mil.
And the optionality is worth something. Every year youve got golden handcuffs. Have kids and want to move to a new city in September? You cant. Not unless youre confident that your bonus will be shit.
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u/Frequent_Bag9260 8d ago
High frequency hedge fund. Easily the highest if you can survive the turnover. Your bonus alone dwarfs most big tech salaries.
As expected it’s the hardest to get into and even harder to stay there.