This (and its converse) are exactly the advice I give to undergrads who, here at the University of Chicago, are heavily recruited by both local and NY finance firms. I like to point out that if you love money, you will be among others who do and will probably enjoy your job and especially the pay. And if you don't, hearing about a trader's addition to his Rolex collection or figuring out "opportunities" in an exchange's rules or implementation will destroy your soul.
BTW, I don't give this advice in a loaded way - my wife and many of my friends work in finance.
As a recent uchicago grad, let me say your advice, while well intentioned, isn't quite sound. Work in finance is not as lucrative as work with finance. I was in finance for about a decade....at gs, bofa etc...the thing is, firms don't let you daytrade, or buy/sell naked calls, or short sell equities, or flout 90 day holding period rules, or trade stocks in the restricted blacklist, or...I could give you an dozen ways ib's ringfence you. Otoh, if you work in the valley and you know your shit, you can pull in 200k and wear shorts and torn tshirts to work, not be subject to any bureaucracy, and get your tradestation account and go nuts. Sell naked calls all day and nobody will bug you.
Certainly! If you want to trade on your _own_, then being in a financial firm - particularly a market maker - is a bad choice.
But if you just want to work 9-5, pull in your 200k (which goes pretty far in Chicago!), and enjoy your money, it's a pretty risk-free path.
I should caveat that my advice is given to CS undergrads looking to do tech-related work. I have more limited experience with people in other roles who want to be, say, traders on a desk.
Ah! In that case, professor, a couple more caveats. Chicago prop shops notoriously underpay. The IB's pay higher, but still less than google/fb/twitter. All of my uchicago classmates are in finance with roughly 50% in chicago, rest in nyc. With graduate degrees they don't pull in 200k...atleast as per the reported stats on the career counsel pages. So cs undergrads pulling in 200k in chicagob while working 9-5 in the finance industry....very unlikely. But if there is such a person out there, he/she is amazingly lucky. 200k goes very far in chicago. You could buy a nice 3 bdrm house with acreage about half hour from the loop and still have money to spare.
Not a prof, sadly - last year of my PhD, though! Thanks for the additional info on your peers.
I don't know what the undergraduate pay is like for 20-somethings. All of my friends (and wife) are > 30 and were experienced developers before entering the field. Most of them have bases above 200, but _all_ have total comps well over 200.
I'd be surprised if you make more at Google Chicago than at, say, Getco or Citadel as a new college hire developer. I'll ask around.
Certainly, though, if you accept with one of the butcher shops you should not be surprised to be treated like raw meat. The last time my wife was transitioning, she certainly experienced some offers that were just insulting. But these were also places just barely scraping by, so it shouldn't be a big surprise.
Of course, many of the top shops won't even hire new college grads in CS. They don't have or want to build the infrastructure required to take someone from barely pulling together a few thousands of lines of code to writing realtime software.
This (and its converse) are exactly the advice I give to undergrads who, here at the University of Chicago, are heavily recruited by both local and NY finance firms. I like to point out that if you love money, you will be among others who do and will probably enjoy your job and especially the pay. And if you don't, hearing about a trader's addition to his Rolex collection or figuring out "opportunities" in an exchange's rules or implementation will destroy your soul.
BTW, I don't give this advice in a loaded way - my wife and many of my friends work in finance.