Eric Siu compares his Wall Street analyst salary, about $80,000 base plus small bonuses over 2.5 years, to what he made later in tech and media sales where commission-based pay let him earn much more. The shift shows how compensation structure, not just the job title, determines real income.
Everybody thinks I made all of my money on Wall Street. Absolutely not. I was on Wall Street for 2 and a half years, and I was making an analyst salary and bonus. It's not that exciting. The base was $80,000. You got a $10,000 signing bonus, and then the first year you worked, you got like a stub bonus. It wasn't like a performance-based bonus. It was just like, thanks for like being here. So that was like another $10,000. When I left Wall Street and moved into tech and media sales, that's when I started to really make the big bucks because my salary was still roughly the same, but now I ate what I killed.
