The latest round of bonuses at U.S. investment banks is punishment for investment bankers. This also penalized some salespeople and traders. For developers, however, the picture is mixed.
The bank doesn’t comment on bonuses, but recruiters and sources at Bank of America said bonuses were being squeezed for some — usually senior roles, but especially talented midlevel developers who were paid last year.
“Great people get paid,” says a senior developer below the MD level at JPMorgan. “Our swimming pool is at the same level as last year.”
At the top, there seemed to be more disappointment. Bonuses for senior technologists at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are down 5-10% in 2021, according to a headhunter who places managing directors in technology jobs in London and New York City. Peter Wagner, managing director of tech recruiting firm Affinity NY, said banks had a “significant reduction” in tech staff.
Some regions appear to have suffered more than others. Bonuses have been cut to 20% of salaries for some of Goldman’s key executives, another headhunter said privately. New data from Levels.fyi backs that the vice president of machine learning and artificial intelligence engineering at Goldman Sachs in New York reported a $100,000 bonus, more than 50% of his annual salary. On the other hand, a VP Engineer for Backend Distributed Systems in London gets a bonus of just 25%. At Morgan Stanley, there was only one recent post on Levels.fyi showing a bonus of more than 50% of salary: a developer in New York with over 20 years of experience.
While bonuses are nice, salaries in London haven’t risen with inflation, says a JPMorgan tech insider.
However, there is also a touch of generosity. On the forum site Blind, a senior developer at JPMorgan with nearly 20 years of experience says he makes $300,000, including a $110,000 bonus, up 10 percent from last year. Another headhunter said Wells Fargo was unusually generous with technologists in a recent round of bonuses.
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