SWE Facebook –> SWE at hedge fund

Growth mindset.

Then it is not same pay when you have uncertainty?

Apart from a few exceptions (two sigma, de shaw, perhaps jane street), swes are treated as second class citizens in finance. That’s a big shock for most people moving from tech. Keep that in mind when making a decision.

Sure, if they offer $400k base salary, go try it out.

If they're not guaranteeing the first year bonus, walk.

In finance, the further you are from the revenue, the closer the glass ceiling. This means that if you are a quant analyst influencing the portfolio allocation and thus profits, you have unlimited earning potential. But you’ll need a PhD for that, and will need to be a C++ expert. That’s not you? Then you’ll be a fixed cost to the company. You can still do well, but you will max out in comp. I contracted with hedge funds in IT for 12 years. My comp went from $200K to nearly $400K as a Corp-to-Corp. But note that the high end was a fluke and I cannot get that back. So even with my expertise in the field, the most I can get today on the free market is around $300K, I can quickly get that up to $325K if I don’t take much time off and have some time to prove to the client how awesome I am. From there I might get to $400K and that would be my max as a contractor. This puts me where Blind posters with 5 yoe on the west coast claim to be — and I’ve been an engineer for 25 years. But the visibility in these spots is great: you know everything and you’ll get Joe his reports which need to foot to 25 billion dollars and 4 decimal places. So welcome to your glass ceiling. To break through it in Corporate America, learn how to eat ass, perfect the art of corporate politics (I mean fucking nail that shit), and give up on some parts of you which you thought were your soul. Because your entire soul will only block you from perfecting the ass-eating and politicking.