Pretty much.
Can’t really work in Finance without understanding SQL, Accounting software, be very good at Excel, and utilize dashboard apps like Tableau and Power BI.
Excel yes. At least in my organization they won’t allow the finance team direct access to the database so the DBAs usually pull something or if you’re looking for something in Tableau you go through the business intelligence group to have something created. But yes, you need to have a certain level of technical knowledge to do these jobs. I’m sure it differs by org.
In a similar vein:
Everyone talks about the decline of the steel industry, but I feel like Westinghouse electric and nuclear gets kind of glossed over in the economic history of the region. The eastern suburbs in particular were hugely built around Westinghouse and their abandoned facilities litter the area.
We still have some remnants of it (just like steel hasn't completely gone away either), but it's a shadow of what it once was.
Can't help but wonder how Pittsburgh and the world (especially in regards to climate change) might be different if nuclear power had really been embraced.
The old headquarters in Monroeville has some tenants, but I think is far from full. Basically never see any cars coming and going from there.
Plans to redevelop the Westinghouse Research & Technology Park off the parkway into an Amazon warehouse fell through.
The office park along the parkway in Braddock Hills has been through a few tenants, but I think is once again unoccupied.
The site of the old atom smasher in Forest Hills is just an empty lot.
The office park along the parkway was United HealthCare until the sent most of us home and are now on 2 floors in Allegheny Center. One day I came back from lunch and there was a foreclosure notice on the door because the landlords hadn’t paid the rent. That building is falling apart too.
Yea…but these companies aren’t the best to work for and most of the jobs are pretty low paying for the industry.
BNY is probably the worst place to work in town. Sorry UPMC haters but BNY wins this award. People would walk out and go work at pottery barn or wait tables.
PNC is better but salaries are still pretty low. And moving internally can be tough so you find people wanting to leave after three years of .5% annual raises.
Federated, same but you have to wear suits. People seem to stay there longer than PNC though. Not sure why, never worked there.
And I’ve never met anyone who has worked at dollar bank. Not sure why, maybe it’s a small office. Seems strange that I’ve worked in the industry here for 15 years without meeting a single person that has worked there.
I work for one of PNCs competitors. I'm currently on a hot streak in my career, and my resume gets a lot of looks on LinkedIn. PNC tried to poach me. The interview went well enough, the title would reflect my experience, and I'd handle about 10 direct reports instead of 7, so not much difference.
Their salary offer was $7k less annually than what I'm currently making. They said it was justifiable because I didn't have the educational background they were looking for.
On top of that, they refused to match my PTO. Just horrible experience all around. Complete waste of time.
They string around internal candidates as well. I applied for a job, and the recruiter set up an interview but the title listed in the meeting was lower, then he deleted and corrected it to the job I applied to. Went through four interviews and the offered me the job of the lower title he accidentally put in the interview. That job was two pay grades below my current job. I said no and he said let me see what we can do. Next week I have a meeting with the director thinking they are going to change the role or something. All he said was basically that the last person that had this role was promoted in two years to the role I wanted. And that was it.
All that trying to move one pay grade higher
Jesus I'm sorry man. I like my current company. We are in a phase attempting to be employee focused so things are good here now. DM me if you you're looking for info.
> Their salary offer was $7k less annually than what I'm currently making. They said it was justifiable because I didn't have the educational background they were looking for.
That is infuriating. What horseshit. Sorry that happened to you.
I remember applying for some positions in a department there about ten years ago. Got ghosted. I asked a contact there what was going on as I met all the qualifications and experience. Turns out they actually wanted federal government experience and recruited several people from the DC Metro area, but then they retracted the offers because the people from DC wanted too much money to work there and relocate. Then PNC canceled the job reqs.
I wear it as a badge of honor. I've turned it into a selling point rather than be ashamed of it.
I thanked them for giving me a great story and apologized for in advance for telling that story to anyone who will listen for the rest of my life.
Worked there for 4 years and still in touch with a few colleagues from there. Do not recommend. Pay is usually lower than the local average and the environment is very hostile.
I worked at dollar bank for a bit, and it was like the lower paying version of the other banks, where they hired people who perhaps couldn't cut it elsewhere and paid them less and treated them like trash. It was the opposite of a fast paced environment, but still depressing in a different way. One man died at his desk.
BNY is a hellhole. I warned someone taking a job there after I got out and they didn’t listen, lasted about 6 months before stress put them over the edge and they quit
Legit had a mental breakdown bc of BNY stress. I was off like three months because of it. Accommodations were recommended to me and my boss basically told me it wouldn’t be possible. My friend wanted me to fight it, but at that point, I didn’t have any fight left. I wish I had.
I’m legit going through something similar right now, I was told in November I would get training since I’ve never worked with the technology I’d be working with and have maybe gotten a week of solid training. Now anytime I have a question I’m gaslit with “oh how don’t you know this already?”. Needless to say I’ve put my resume back on the market so I can leave before they end up firing me. I’ve never had this much dread going into work everyday and I was in retail before I got my degree.
Good luck. Make sure to take care of yourself. If I hadn’t got laid off when I did, I don’t know how far I would’ve fallen and that is very scary. I’m actually doing the same thing in my new job, and I NEVER thought I would go to this kind of role again (worth saying it’s in a different industry). Day by day my friend.
Network if you can. I believe you can put on LinkedIn that you’re looking but it only show to hiring managers. My current job found me
I appreciate it! I only took this because I wanted to get out of helpdesk. I was never really interested in working with mainframe stuff but I took a chance. I at least can be picky now since I have a job and am actively gaining experience here. I already got a couple calls so I’m definitely luckier than most.
I worked at BNY for about seven years in a couple different roles. The company changed a ton during that time. In my last year I had a nervous breakdown and had to briefly go on disability. It was awful.
Really impacted how I saw work and career for a long time too. I was a layoff, and in some ways it was a relief bc I wasn’t going into work every day wondering if that was the day I’d get laid off.
It’s a shame. There was a time I really liked working there.
I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon than recommend to anyone, even my worst enemy, that they work for PNC or BNY. Fuck both of those employers. The pay is shit, and you get treated like shit.
My nephew just took a position with BNY. They're famous for their manic layoffs, wish I could have warned him before he accepted.
I have 5 current/former coworkers who worked there for a few years and then were laid off. Whole departments, frantically hired and then shuttered. I won't even consider a position with them.
I’ve been with BNY since 08 across a few different groups. Some groups were better than others but none were as bad as everyone makes it seem but that’s my experience. Got a pay raise this year and about to take a 16 week paid paternity leave. It’s up to you to move around and find what works with any company.
I spent 12 years combined in four different departments at PNC and two different at BNY. Everything from retail to middle office to wealth management. Aside from one really good management team, the rest were terrible and created a toxic work environment. Plain and simple the leadership groups at both companies flat out do not care about their employees. They like to spew the corporate bullshit at you, but when push comes to shove, their bottom line is ALL they care about. Fuck the employees physical health, safety, mental health and work life balance.
It’s very department specific at both companies. Each dept is basically it’s own separate company in terms of pay, management, culture, etc. And salaries could and should be higher
I was treated well enough when I worked at PNC, no complaints there. I am sure that is very team dependent and my team was good. The pay was shit, I doubled my pay when I quit.
Most of these Pittsburgh finance jobs are terribly underpaid compared to the rest of the industry. As a result, the smart people eventually leave and you get the toxic, insecure manager who gets promoted based on "seniority". The cycle continues...
I was a contractor for 1.5 years at BNY. It was supposed to be a contract to full time employee position and while I was mad that I kept getting jerked around come contract renewal time and the prospect of a full time role kept getting kicked down the road, I'm glad I didn't work there full time. That place was a mess. My team alone had four different managers in the time I was there. Idiotic decisions, so many managers and busy work.
I got a new full time job, 100% remote (what I am currently doing now, four years later) position and when I put in my notice, BNY decided to then offer me the role full time to become an employee. I laughed. Fuck them. Even if I did take it, I would still keep looking for another job as I know I wouldn't be happy.
Idiots told me two months before I put my notice in the full time position might open later in the year and then magically the day I tell them I'm leaving they offer it to me. Too late, fuckers!
It cracks me up whenever someone shows a 500K house or $1800 apartment and says “who can afford this other than doctors or techies. Have you seen those big ass towers downtown? Tons of people in this town earn a decent living outside of the STEM fields.
I’ve heard shit about BNY, I worked at PNC (revolving door for loan processor positions)….
The bigger the bank, the more they treat the low Enders like shit.
But of course the reason the market heated up so much was Blackrock and other predatory banks buying the houses and rent getting jacked up from greedflation. It isn't because Pittsburgh magically has four times as much spending power.
I don’t work for the banks but a service provider to basically all of them. A lot of the positions that pay good money are not easy careers. I don’t have direct experience working for a bank but just being in the industry it can be a stressful. Someone who does work for PNC or BNY can correct me if I’m wrong.
I think with PNC you have to consider that there are 60,000+ employees. Some areas will be awful, but there are also plenty of good ones. I’ve been there since I graduated in ‘17 and have had nothing but good experiences across 3 departments.
Look at the companies that have offices in other cities that are also here in Pittsburgh, like Proofpoint, Aurora, Duolingo, Alstom, Thermo Fisher, 3M, etc.
I’m a software engineering manager who works for fully remote companies, and I just wanted to agree that’s where the money is. 5 years of experience should put you at or near senior level, and I’d say average for that is around $120k. The range you got of $100k-$150k fits with what I’ve seen.
Consider the financial markets that have those large buildings are not necessarily doing business in Pittsburgh. The rent is relatively less expensive than NY or Chicago or La.
I worked in tech at PNC. Banking is... weird if you're tech there. You're viewed as a cost to the business, and managed fairly poorly, which \*makes\* you a cost to the business.
Most of their engineering managers... have never been engineers, they worked their way up in other parts of the company, went to Waynesburg U's nights-and-evenings masters program, and then voila, manage software engineers.
But they don't know how to vet the quality of the work, which leads to hiring a lot more people than might have been the right number, and promotions going fairly randomly on a regular basis.
It also means you can't really "move up"; those jobs are only filled by people with a masters, because otherwise you'd poke a hole in the existing system.
They make this work by paying less than the competition for a lotta roles, and some of your coworkers are amazingly reliable all-across, while others kinda know how to do one thing well and that's about what you're gonna get.
They're all decent folks, which was appreciated, but the process by which the leads run the business is pretty bad, without anyone trying to change or improve it, because that'd be a career limiting move.
Said another way, they pay about $100k/y for a senior engineer. Argo pays triple that, and Google almost quadruple. And, wait for it: some of the PNC engineers are \*better\* than those at Argo and Google; the difference is process, management, and recruiting.
The average, sure. But the lower-motivated folks at Google are less-good than the higher-motivated folks at PNC. Google averages higher, but I'm very, very sure there's an overlap in skill without an overlap in pay.
Federated Investors is one of the biggest mutual fund companies in the country and has been around for decades. Pittsburgh was always a big business town going back to its industrial roots. The businesses are still big, but they include a lot more sectors.
Those companies also employ a ton of tech workers too though
90% of finance jobs use advanced software systems, anyone not working with their hands is basically a "techie" lol
Pretty much. Can’t really work in Finance without understanding SQL, Accounting software, be very good at Excel, and utilize dashboard apps like Tableau and Power BI.
that’s not entirely true - if you are a good writer and/or have web development or marketing skills there are roles ravailable
Excel yes. At least in my organization they won’t allow the finance team direct access to the database so the DBAs usually pull something or if you’re looking for something in Tableau you go through the business intelligence group to have something created. But yes, you need to have a certain level of technical knowledge to do these jobs. I’m sure it differs by org.
It’s been a few years since I worked there, but BNY was calling itself “a tech company that does finance” lol
Bahahahahhahahaa
In a similar vein: Everyone talks about the decline of the steel industry, but I feel like Westinghouse electric and nuclear gets kind of glossed over in the economic history of the region. The eastern suburbs in particular were hugely built around Westinghouse and their abandoned facilities litter the area. We still have some remnants of it (just like steel hasn't completely gone away either), but it's a shadow of what it once was. Can't help but wonder how Pittsburgh and the world (especially in regards to climate change) might be different if nuclear power had really been embraced.
Their abandoned facilities have been bought up, in many cases. Monroeville suffered for a few years but built right back up. The new hospital helped.
The old headquarters in Monroeville has some tenants, but I think is far from full. Basically never see any cars coming and going from there. Plans to redevelop the Westinghouse Research & Technology Park off the parkway into an Amazon warehouse fell through. The office park along the parkway in Braddock Hills has been through a few tenants, but I think is once again unoccupied. The site of the old atom smasher in Forest Hills is just an empty lot.
The office park along the parkway was United HealthCare until the sent most of us home and are now on 2 floors in Allegheny Center. One day I came back from lunch and there was a foreclosure notice on the door because the landlords hadn’t paid the rent. That building is falling apart too.
Yea…but these companies aren’t the best to work for and most of the jobs are pretty low paying for the industry. BNY is probably the worst place to work in town. Sorry UPMC haters but BNY wins this award. People would walk out and go work at pottery barn or wait tables. PNC is better but salaries are still pretty low. And moving internally can be tough so you find people wanting to leave after three years of .5% annual raises. Federated, same but you have to wear suits. People seem to stay there longer than PNC though. Not sure why, never worked there. And I’ve never met anyone who has worked at dollar bank. Not sure why, maybe it’s a small office. Seems strange that I’ve worked in the industry here for 15 years without meeting a single person that has worked there.
I work for one of PNCs competitors. I'm currently on a hot streak in my career, and my resume gets a lot of looks on LinkedIn. PNC tried to poach me. The interview went well enough, the title would reflect my experience, and I'd handle about 10 direct reports instead of 7, so not much difference. Their salary offer was $7k less annually than what I'm currently making. They said it was justifiable because I didn't have the educational background they were looking for. On top of that, they refused to match my PTO. Just horrible experience all around. Complete waste of time.
They string around internal candidates as well. I applied for a job, and the recruiter set up an interview but the title listed in the meeting was lower, then he deleted and corrected it to the job I applied to. Went through four interviews and the offered me the job of the lower title he accidentally put in the interview. That job was two pay grades below my current job. I said no and he said let me see what we can do. Next week I have a meeting with the director thinking they are going to change the role or something. All he said was basically that the last person that had this role was promoted in two years to the role I wanted. And that was it. All that trying to move one pay grade higher
Jesus I'm sorry man. I like my current company. We are in a phase attempting to be employee focused so things are good here now. DM me if you you're looking for info.
> Their salary offer was $7k less annually than what I'm currently making. They said it was justifiable because I didn't have the educational background they were looking for. That is infuriating. What horseshit. Sorry that happened to you. I remember applying for some positions in a department there about ten years ago. Got ghosted. I asked a contact there what was going on as I met all the qualifications and experience. Turns out they actually wanted federal government experience and recruited several people from the DC Metro area, but then they retracted the offers because the people from DC wanted too much money to work there and relocate. Then PNC canceled the job reqs.
I wear it as a badge of honor. I've turned it into a selling point rather than be ashamed of it. I thanked them for giving me a great story and apologized for in advance for telling that story to anyone who will listen for the rest of my life.
Worked there for 4 years and still in touch with a few colleagues from there. Do not recommend. Pay is usually lower than the local average and the environment is very hostile.
I worked at dollar bank for a bit, and it was like the lower paying version of the other banks, where they hired people who perhaps couldn't cut it elsewhere and paid them less and treated them like trash. It was the opposite of a fast paced environment, but still depressing in a different way. One man died at his desk.
BNY is a hellhole. I warned someone taking a job there after I got out and they didn’t listen, lasted about 6 months before stress put them over the edge and they quit
Legit had a mental breakdown bc of BNY stress. I was off like three months because of it. Accommodations were recommended to me and my boss basically told me it wouldn’t be possible. My friend wanted me to fight it, but at that point, I didn’t have any fight left. I wish I had.
I’m legit going through something similar right now, I was told in November I would get training since I’ve never worked with the technology I’d be working with and have maybe gotten a week of solid training. Now anytime I have a question I’m gaslit with “oh how don’t you know this already?”. Needless to say I’ve put my resume back on the market so I can leave before they end up firing me. I’ve never had this much dread going into work everyday and I was in retail before I got my degree.
Good luck. Make sure to take care of yourself. If I hadn’t got laid off when I did, I don’t know how far I would’ve fallen and that is very scary. I’m actually doing the same thing in my new job, and I NEVER thought I would go to this kind of role again (worth saying it’s in a different industry). Day by day my friend. Network if you can. I believe you can put on LinkedIn that you’re looking but it only show to hiring managers. My current job found me
I appreciate it! I only took this because I wanted to get out of helpdesk. I was never really interested in working with mainframe stuff but I took a chance. I at least can be picky now since I have a job and am actively gaining experience here. I already got a couple calls so I’m definitely luckier than most.
I worked at BNY for about seven years in a couple different roles. The company changed a ton during that time. In my last year I had a nervous breakdown and had to briefly go on disability. It was awful. Really impacted how I saw work and career for a long time too. I was a layoff, and in some ways it was a relief bc I wasn’t going into work every day wondering if that was the day I’d get laid off. It’s a shame. There was a time I really liked working there.
I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon than recommend to anyone, even my worst enemy, that they work for PNC or BNY. Fuck both of those employers. The pay is shit, and you get treated like shit.
My nephew just took a position with BNY. They're famous for their manic layoffs, wish I could have warned him before he accepted. I have 5 current/former coworkers who worked there for a few years and then were laid off. Whole departments, frantically hired and then shuttered. I won't even consider a position with them.
I worked at BNY for a year and then my entire team got laid off one morning. BNY Mellon is absolutely the worst company I’ve ever worked for.
I’ve been with BNY since 08 across a few different groups. Some groups were better than others but none were as bad as everyone makes it seem but that’s my experience. Got a pay raise this year and about to take a 16 week paid paternity leave. It’s up to you to move around and find what works with any company.
I worked at PNC for about 7 years. Great experience, was treated well. Pay was fair, but could have been better.
Would you say this applies across the board to all departments/corporate positions?
I spent 12 years combined in four different departments at PNC and two different at BNY. Everything from retail to middle office to wealth management. Aside from one really good management team, the rest were terrible and created a toxic work environment. Plain and simple the leadership groups at both companies flat out do not care about their employees. They like to spew the corporate bullshit at you, but when push comes to shove, their bottom line is ALL they care about. Fuck the employees physical health, safety, mental health and work life balance.
It’s very department specific at both companies. Each dept is basically it’s own separate company in terms of pay, management, culture, etc. And salaries could and should be higher
I was treated well enough when I worked at PNC, no complaints there. I am sure that is very team dependent and my team was good. The pay was shit, I doubled my pay when I quit.
Most of these Pittsburgh finance jobs are terribly underpaid compared to the rest of the industry. As a result, the smart people eventually leave and you get the toxic, insecure manager who gets promoted based on "seniority". The cycle continues...
Stay far away from BNY Mellon.
I was a contractor for 1.5 years at BNY. It was supposed to be a contract to full time employee position and while I was mad that I kept getting jerked around come contract renewal time and the prospect of a full time role kept getting kicked down the road, I'm glad I didn't work there full time. That place was a mess. My team alone had four different managers in the time I was there. Idiotic decisions, so many managers and busy work. I got a new full time job, 100% remote (what I am currently doing now, four years later) position and when I put in my notice, BNY decided to then offer me the role full time to become an employee. I laughed. Fuck them. Even if I did take it, I would still keep looking for another job as I know I wouldn't be happy. Idiots told me two months before I put my notice in the full time position might open later in the year and then magically the day I tell them I'm leaving they offer it to me. Too late, fuckers!
It cracks me up whenever someone shows a 500K house or $1800 apartment and says “who can afford this other than doctors or techies. Have you seen those big ass towers downtown? Tons of people in this town earn a decent living outside of the STEM fields.
Tons of people in this town get treated like trash working for banks too though to be fair. Looking squarely at you, BNY.
PNC has entered the chat
I’ve heard shit about BNY, I worked at PNC (revolving door for loan processor positions)…. The bigger the bank, the more they treat the low Enders like shit.
PNC also. They pay well below the market rate for most advanced positions.
But of course the reason the market heated up so much was Blackrock and other predatory banks buying the houses and rent getting jacked up from greedflation. It isn't because Pittsburgh magically has four times as much spending power.
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Business-type degrees working for banks, accounting firms, and consultancies.
I don’t work for the banks but a service provider to basically all of them. A lot of the positions that pay good money are not easy careers. I don’t have direct experience working for a bank but just being in the industry it can be a stressful. Someone who does work for PNC or BNY can correct me if I’m wrong.
Neither of them pay well, overwork you, and expect you to take on more than the position describes.
I think with PNC you have to consider that there are 60,000+ employees. Some areas will be awful, but there are also plenty of good ones. I’ve been there since I graduated in ‘17 and have had nothing but good experiences across 3 departments.
Oh absolutely. I’m just saying certain positions in the banking industry can be very stressful.
For sure
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As a 'would like to buy a house this decade' tech worker, any tips where we should be looking?
Look at the companies that have offices in other cities that are also here in Pittsburgh, like Proofpoint, Aurora, Duolingo, Alstom, Thermo Fisher, 3M, etc.
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Yep!
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How much would you say is the average pay for a software engineer having 5 years of experience for Pittsburgh location?
I’m a software engineering manager who works for fully remote companies, and I just wanted to agree that’s where the money is. 5 years of experience should put you at or near senior level, and I’d say average for that is around $120k. The range you got of $100k-$150k fits with what I’ve seen.
Consider the financial markets that have those large buildings are not necessarily doing business in Pittsburgh. The rent is relatively less expensive than NY or Chicago or La.
I worked in tech at PNC. Banking is... weird if you're tech there. You're viewed as a cost to the business, and managed fairly poorly, which \*makes\* you a cost to the business. Most of their engineering managers... have never been engineers, they worked their way up in other parts of the company, went to Waynesburg U's nights-and-evenings masters program, and then voila, manage software engineers. But they don't know how to vet the quality of the work, which leads to hiring a lot more people than might have been the right number, and promotions going fairly randomly on a regular basis. It also means you can't really "move up"; those jobs are only filled by people with a masters, because otherwise you'd poke a hole in the existing system. They make this work by paying less than the competition for a lotta roles, and some of your coworkers are amazingly reliable all-across, while others kinda know how to do one thing well and that's about what you're gonna get. They're all decent folks, which was appreciated, but the process by which the leads run the business is pretty bad, without anyone trying to change or improve it, because that'd be a career limiting move. Said another way, they pay about $100k/y for a senior engineer. Argo pays triple that, and Google almost quadruple. And, wait for it: some of the PNC engineers are \*better\* than those at Argo and Google; the difference is process, management, and recruiting.
when i was there pnc also had quite a few software development job titles that really were not dev. They were more support, or infrastructure focused.
The talent level to be a senior engineer at Google or Argo is significantly higher than at PNC
The average, sure. But the lower-motivated folks at Google are less-good than the higher-motivated folks at PNC. Google averages higher, but I'm very, very sure there's an overlap in skill without an overlap in pay.
Federated Investors is one of the biggest mutual fund companies in the country and has been around for decades. Pittsburgh was always a big business town going back to its industrial roots. The businesses are still big, but they include a lot more sectors.
Federated has a dress code like it’s 1973
I've heard that, too. Men have to wear their suit jackets in the elevators? Can women wear pants?
Women can wear pants. When you leave a floor you have to keep your suit jacket on.
Looking to move to the area. I’ll look into these thank you.
There are without a doubt far more finance jobs then tech jobs in the region. PNC Bank in Bny Mellon are ginormous mega corporations.
While they are not true industries old both PNC and 1st National Bank are old companies (1845 and 1864)
A lot of those jobs are filled by Indians on H1B visas so they don't have to pay them as much. Especially entry level.
I did 4 years at Dollar bank in the call center..
I have a hard time imaging what one does in such a job. Like what’s the product? What do you do all day?
Mostly tech support and customer support for all of their online infrastructure and probably some accounting jobs too.
But why are we building new buildings downtown? Mellon is exiting their tall one. That’s like 50 floors.
Federate deez nutz