Fintech CTO debunks illusion of "glamorous" $423k tech jobs

There are many reasons to want to be an engineer in fintech, the pay often chief among them. This is especially true for B2B infrastructure fintech Plaid, which - as we have observed, is the highest paying fintech for software engineers, who earn an average of $423k there in 2023. However, the high pay doesn't necessarily correlate to a thrilling environment. 

On a podcast with venture capitalist Miguel Armaza, Plaid's CTO Jean-Denis Greze cautioned aspiring fintech engineers to temper their expectations. "It's not as glamorous as people make it out to be," he says, "sometimes we're just moving letters around on the internet."

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This is especially true at entry level. Greze says he tells Plaid interns that they'll need "to be really comfortable transforming strings into strings." And yet, he says the job is still fun for Plaid engineers what with its mission and impact on the fintech ecosystem. 

Employees online seem to share that opinion. On jobs forum blind, one review even relishes the lack of glamour saying there's "less drama than most places [they] worked." However, opinions on work-life balance at Plaid are more mixed with many saying it's "team dependent."

Greze says working in engineering is more fun than other corporate roles. He graduated from Harvard Law School and spent a number of years as a lawyer but hated it, saying "my worst day as an engineer was better than my best day as a lawyer."

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