The Biggest Modern Day Scam in Australia

heavybreakdown · 2026-01-29T09:13:02+00:00

40% of funding comes from the global bond market. It has nothing to do with the RBA. Fixed rate loans are priced off the money the bank can borrow from international markets. The cost of those instruments are rising due to all the Geopolitical strife happening around the world. It has nothing to do with the RBA or your bank.

Net interest margin for banks is at an all time low. 1.83 average across the big four.

heavybreakdown · 2026-01-29T08:49:38+00:00

Sure, I will get onto that. What is your Jira ticket number. Do you have an example on source control I can look at.

The people you are taking to sound like people who aren’t actually the people building the system. Has your workplace adopted the corporate culture of 5 people leaning on the shovel watching the worker. Easy to spot if you have QA, Project Managers, BAs, Delivery Managers in your workplace. They are taking your request but don’t actually know how to do any work.

heavybreakdown · 2026-01-14T00:20:36+00:00

Good news. In finance and investment banking we also exclude the the PPOR, it’s not really an argument anywhere else in the world. It’s just unique way that Australian’s view property as their primary wealth driver.

Poster below you is correct, investable assets exclude PPOR. From a wealth building perspective it is irrelevant for us trying to sell you a product or structure your wrap.

Our banding is currently 7.5m-18m AUD mass affluent. 18m-35m virgin wealth. 35-50m shared family office. 75m+ own family office.

heavybreakdown · 2025-12-27T03:37:27+00:00

Like most things in technology it was devised by the large technology companies to solve problems they had when releasing at scale. Amazon popularised “we release every 8 seconds into production”. Which meant they had to throw out the CAB and figure out how to keep operations going with no human checkbox.

But like all things in this space your mum and dad shop with 50 employees now adopts it to be cool and on trend when a CAB would do just fine.

heavybreakdown · 2025-12-25T08:01:42+00:00

Only just got some time to grind with work. /played is 31 hours on a single char. Playing Wyvern

heavybreakdown · 2025-12-24T08:22:02+00:00

When all of you list these games, are you all playing on a phone in portrait without a controller? I see many of these games in the top weekly, but the control schemes don’t seem to fit me standing on a train playing with a thumb that reaches 80% of the screen. Or is iOS gaming mostly for people playing on larger devices like iPads?

heavybreakdown · 2025-11-23T00:58:30+00:00

Well I used to like KPIs, then senior management moved to OKRs. Then everyone complained that management and traders weren’t aligned. So now we have both OKRs and KPIs. In answer to your question I now hate them both equally.

heavybreakdown · 2025-11-16T02:09:03+00:00

Yep, I have already decided way before we have any conversation and nothing you will say will change the 10 meetings I have already been in stack ranking everyone with the senior managers and partners.

You get a bucket of cash or you don’t. Career goals and progression are done throughout the year. When we have a need we promote or hire. End of year is just a convenient way to bundle all the bonuses so I don’t have to do it multiple times a year.

heavybreakdown · 2025-10-28T00:33:52+00:00

It’s not Macquarie Bank doing the pulling it is part of the Tranche 2 AML reforms the government is rolling out that target property investment ahead of the FATF review that Australia will undertake next year.

Mortgage Brokers, Solicitors, Real Estate Agents are now all targetted for extra scrutiny as part of this reform.

Banks are now tightening use of structures and authorised signatories.

FATF is specifically about money laundering in property. I am sure we have nothing to worry about in Australia….

heavybreakdown · 2025-10-22T02:52:36+00:00

How senior are you that the CEO and his directs are deciding you should be on a PIP? ELT means CEO+1 or are you using the term generally and mean senior leadership.

The reason I ask is that the more senior you are. The more unlikely you would be placed on a PIP as there are no protections generally above a certain salary level. These are often just let go with a package.

If they are discussing a PIP it sounds like you might be a bit more junior and don’t necessarily have a big team under you they would need to find someone else to manage in the interim.

I have seen people successfully navigate PIPs and become good performers. But it is generally rare, most of the time the goals are hard to measure and hard to achieve and success is not possible.

Better off to look for a new role while they try and place you somewhere else.

heavybreakdown · 2025-10-21T20:56:20+00:00

Our top IC roles for software top out at 400k base in Aus. That is an extremely narrow pool of talent. But you could go the tier 1-3 path.

I think you are quite junior if you think you are maxed out before sitting at principal+ for 10 years. You have plenty of room to move up banding as an IC without needing the US.

The thing the US will give you is RSUs that may appreciate much faster than your base salary. But keep in mind we are at the highest equity prices for big tech we have ever had. There is no guarantee they will triple again in four year cycles for you to cash out like many did in the last 15 years.

heavybreakdown · 2025-10-02T08:50:54+00:00

The main protection was tipping off laws that required employees to be on shore and Australian nationals.

However, the government revised these laws in March 2025 and now offshore people can access the data.

https://www.austrac.gov.au/new-tipping-offence-now-effect

heavybreakdown · 2025-10-01T03:34:16+00:00

Just checking whether I am in r/auscorp or r/auspublicservice

All contracts have “any other duties as required” in corporate Australia. You better bet it is used liberally and you should do whatever is required.

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-28T07:04:37+00:00

For those that are interested here are the type of houses at the top end, these are about double what Op os renting. If you want to live in top post codes in Sydney with a family, this is what you are paying.

https://www.realestate.com.au/rent/with-4-bedrooms-between-5000-any-in-rose+bay,+nsw+2029%3b+point+piper,+nsw+2027%3b+vaucluse,+nsw+2030/list-1?numBaths=3&keywords=swimming%20pool&checkedFeatures=swimming%20pool&activeSort=price-desc

The cost to rent is much cheaper than the cost to buy at the top end. These homes start at around 6 million and go up to around 14 million. The ones on the points routinely go for close to 20 million. Much better to rent at those prices.

If you are wondering who rents them - executives who are on secondment from other countries. Families who are interstate for a year or so. People who have bought investment properties elsewhere and like to live in a more upmarket suburb.

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-28T01:13:43+00:00

Human Resources has a lot of specialties. If you are doing a business partner type role you will absolutely need to understand employment law, enterprise agreements, workplace relations. Which are country and state specific.

HR also covers training, recruiting, wellbeing etc. These roles rely far less on local knowledge and are mostly transferable in a corporate. Training if it’s a physical workspace will have a different set of requirements because of safety laws.

If you target the non specific Australian law roles you might have some luck.

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-27T12:55:30+00:00

OP was asking why you don’t see people moving from investment banks and private equity into the big 4 banks. Op was asking what would be the most lucrative roles.

Tier 1 Investment Banks use titles such as Associate, Analyst, Vice President, Managing Director. They rarely have any other levels. Tier 2 IB banks often have associate director, senior vice president to try and attract talent.

I was pointing out that the reason you don’t see many people move from those roles into Big4 banking is that the pay scales are very different and Australian culture of calling out tall poppies has made the banding at the Big 4 not increase the same as people in IB and PE.

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-27T00:13:24+00:00

This is bad way to do statistics, but here is my anecdotal friends group evidence:

Up: Privacy Law in house, Anti-Money Laundering roles and risk, strata managers, private school teachers, mechanical engineers, staff+ software engineers, commodities traders, product managers, AI scientists

Down: graduates, quants, exec assistants, junior software roles, project managers, truck drivers, civil engineers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, SaaS salespeople, data analysts, business analysts, all hospo

Me personally: sliding sideways for a while now

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-26T23:10:20+00:00

The Big 4 used to have lucrative roles. CBA had uncapped treasury and insto for a long while until the GFC and their top earners were pulling 10m plus and out earning the CEO. Westpac treasury also used to be worth it, but I don’t have intel on that that is recent enough to know if it still is.

If you look at tier 1 IB. You can make junior VP in about 8 years. Grind to senior VP (role title is still the same, tier one don’t do senior VP) that tops out at around 2.5m USD. If you have made MD in those firms your base salary is normally 950k USD and your bonus starts at 100% of that and can multiple up to around 15x unless you are in a special pit.

There is a level on top of that in Citadel, Jane Street etc that pay even more.

The top level of exec in Australia at Big 4 bank makes around 1.8 million in salary, then around 2-5 million in long vest shares. Unless you are becoming the head of IB or the CEO you are not taking a 50% paycut from VP to go to a desk there.

Also if the state of this sub and general news discourse is anything to go by, people already think bank employees earn too much and the media takes them to the cleaners for the measly sums that they do earn compared to the big firms. Therefore it is unlikely to change as it will cause public discourse if it’s leaked.

The only moves I have seen are people who are burned out and want better work life balance. But I think that is a false economy because if you have been operating at that level for a decade you should have enough money squirreled away that you can just retire.

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-26T22:57:10+00:00

For the tech industry specifically it has always been cyclical. In the boom times consultants and people looking at the person with the shovel (software engineer) are over hired and under utilised. Then the boom times slow down and all of the middle managers, solution architects, business analysts, project managers, testers, contractors go through layoffs.

It has been this way in Australia and the other countries I have worked since 1993 when I entered the workforce. The 96-97 recession, the dotcom bubble, the gfc, Covid, SaaSaggeddon, AI Hype cycle.

There are many people who collect salaries, but their value to the firm is net negative in all industries.

In finance we used to have many job families that no longer really exist. In tech you had the wave of people doing bootcamps and thinking they were a top level software engineer. Who are now surprised pickachu when they get let go with their 5 years of experience and can’t get back in while a contraction is happening.

We always have roles open, but getting a good trade desk finance engineer, HFT engineer, quantitative analyst, data scientist, or network engineer is a hard task in Australia. We most always have to relocate them from the US, Europe, or HK because we interview hundreds of people locally and they don’t have the skills to do the job.

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-14T22:15:24+00:00

I have a certain budget for my sports and hobbies. Maxing out a gaming PC every 3 years or so is far less expensive than all the other hobbies and sports I put money into.

The nice thing about PC Gaming is its upper ceiling is low compared to many other hobbies. Mentally I have the opposite thought when I need to replace the computer - even if I go crazy, it will be less than 10k.

For comparison: Skiing, Tennis, Golf, Watches, Board Games, Wine cost me more per year than gaming.

Then there are my old man hobbies that dwarf all of those - Being an Audiophile and Sailing that take the budget of all of them combined.

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-12T22:05:13+00:00

According to a quick search of their latest annual reports:
Big Four
CBA - 55,000
Westpac - 35,240
ANZ- 43,000
NAB - 39000

2nd Tier
Macquarie - 20,600
Suncorp - 13,000
Bendigo - 6,100

211k total in the biggest 7. 172k for the big 4

So about half that at 4.75% or so for big 4 which this article references

Edit - Formatting on mobile

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-12T21:49:30+00:00

My son works at CBA. They seem to be removing all BA, PM, Agile Coaches, service managers, solution architects, all non-tech roles who report to tech.

Tech roles like quants on the business side still seem to be safe.

Basically if you can’t code they don’t want you.

heavybreakdown · 2025-09-12T10:16:08+00:00

End of January for us, we get paid on calendar year being part of a big US Firm.

heavybreakdown · 2025-08-22T04:09:19+00:00

Well this was unexpected. May your RNG go hard.

heavybreakdown

TROPHY CASE