<p>Those bonuses you’re talking about, where they’re 1x-1.5x the base salary, only occur if the person is senior and has some contractual guarantees or if the market is doing well. The market isn’t doing well. Your top-end number is 110k (which isn’t really the highest, although I guess if you’re only looking at big IBs it’s not far off), which is something first and second years will not make this year, and it’s actually not a lot of money in the context of brilliant engineering students who go to top 10 applied science colleges. The difference is that the “financier” will work longer, while the software engineer coming in to a position a few tiers above entry level with a signing bonus will do harder work but work fewer hours.</p>
<p>If you’re concerned about money the reason to go into finance, or law and even accounting for that matter, is not for the salary you get in your first or second or fifth year. It’s for the salary you could have 20 years from now, or the amount you could charge to consult. People in other fields will match it, people in other fields will probably do better. There are IT positions for counties in Iowa that pay upwards of 90k with 3 years of work experience, government jobs have all federal holidays off, 8 hour work days, full benefits, multiple weeks of sick and vacation time a year, and if you’re not working for a county or state that’s hemorrhaging money once you’re 5 or so years into it you’ll basically be in a position where it will be impossible for you to ever be fired. The potential “cap” on what you can make in most of the business world is much higher, while that IT guy might still be making more 6 years into it than the law associate. The decision most people have to make is whether they want to work hard for a few years to make a significant amount of money (<$250,000/yr), or whether they want to work hard for decades with a much higher potential but not guaranteed pay-off.
Or you could be lucky, which is better than being good.</p>