Seems the rational solution is to decrease the income of "monkeys", not make things worse by increasing the number of overpaid employees.
Are financial programmers under paid?
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Seems the rational solution is to decrease the income of "monkeys", not make things worse by increasing the number of overpaid employees.
You are missing the point. I know lots of traders that have made millions, and believe me, they can't even walk on shit, let alone water.
Let me give you an analogy. I love seafood, any seafood, but I particularly like sushi. It is like a drug to me.
When I go to my favorite sushi place, I _always_ sit at the counter. I do this because I want to see and interact with the cooks. When I am done, I leave a tip based on a percent of my bill for the waitress, and the same percent for the cooks in their jar. In many restaurants, the cooks see only their salaries, and the waiters see the big tips. Why??? I see no reasonfor this inequity. I really like restaurants where at the end of the day, the tips from the waiter/waitresses are distributed evenly amonst the cooks as well. Not amongst the other waitresses and waiters, but between themselves and the cooks.
So if you make $50 in tips as a waitress, maybe you give $15 to the cooks. And if I make $35, I give maybe $8 to the cooks.
Do you see? The waitress gets the tip, but it is a team effort. Nothing to do with walking on water.
Well, you are beginning to see, and that is exactly what is happening at a lot of places. For example, at Simplex,
http://www.simplexinvestments.com/
this is exactly what is happening.
But I challenge that programmers making $80k a year are overpaid in a financial firm. Not by a mile.
And if you are rewarding your traders alot, reward your programmers alot too.
I would agree that it is a stretch calling someone making 2x median income as being "overpaid".
simplex investments is an absolute joke, I advise nobody to work there being that you WILL be fired within 6-9 months.
Of course. Anything else makes no sense.
Trying to fix one mistake by making an even bigger one rarely works. If "monkeys" are overpaid - stop overpaying them. Problem solved.
Well, I don't know what to say, except that is not real world. And my contention is not that programmers are underpaid in relation to the median worker, but to their brethren in the same firm. We can start a different thread for your contention, but I suspect there is no interest.
Traders make tons of money without imo much risk. If you trade your own capital you can make whatever you please. The reason firm traders are paid so well is because they generate revenue for their firm and it is so easy to quantify. My initial claim is that programmers generate the revenue as well, but it is harder to quantify, hence their compensation is skewed badly in relation to their place in the food chain at a trading firm.
IMO it's more complex than that. The compensation scheme generally used is far too weighted towards the short term and doesn't accurately reflect the long term risks being shifted from the individual to the firm.
But it's all beside the point - if there is a job where people are being vastly overpaid and you think you could do the job - then go do it!
Problem solved.
Agreed.
So then the answer is that we should all be traders if we want to be paid consummate with our contribution, or at least aspire to be? Who will program our computers then? Will we all be required to have EE degrees as well to become traders? Don't laugh, that is happening as we speak.