> Apart from finance, pay is lower than web languages. And finance is small.
And it's blasted to hell with bureaucracy, red tape, toxic work environments and a reputation for having to deal with infrastructure best described as "fossilized". Banks have no one to blame but themselves (and maaaaybe a bit the sometimes insane requirements of financial regulation agencies) for being unable to attract programmers.
At least in Germany, the fintechs have never had much trouble attracting developers... so it's not the finance industry itself, here in Germany it is definitely a culture problem in the established banks that historically have treated IT purely as a cost center instead of the integral part of business they are.
i have worked for several investment banks, and have always been highly paid, and had top-notch hardware and software to work with - i am sure that most competent banks realise that they are basically software hosts.
Investment banks aren't your typical consumer banks though - less red tape (because they're not consumer banks), less historical baggage (consumer banks have accounts that are sometimes well over a century old, which makes everything that touches account data incredibly sensitive as the data needs to be always consistent), and way more money available. There's a reason why a lot of advances in communication came from the needs of the investment banks, particularly specialized hedge funds / "quant banks".
And it's blasted to hell with bureaucracy, red tape, toxic work environments and a reputation for having to deal with infrastructure best described as "fossilized". Banks have no one to blame but themselves (and maaaaybe a bit the sometimes insane requirements of financial regulation agencies) for being unable to attract programmers.
At least in Germany, the fintechs have never had much trouble attracting developers... so it's not the finance industry itself, here in Germany it is definitely a culture problem in the established banks that historically have treated IT purely as a cost center instead of the integral part of business they are.