The reason top tech generally kept out of NYC until recently is that they had trouble competing against investment bank salaries.
This only changed as top tech (especially FAANG) comp increased to catch up.
The less charitable interpretation is that top tech found itself compelled to pay more and more due to the talent crunch, until after all the increases it finally caught up with average NYC pay. Now, since it already pays at NYC-competitive levels, it might as well open offices in NYC and enjoy the talent pool there.
Sure, Google and FB pay more and so do top investment banks / hedge funds in math/stat/algo positions . However, those simply are not the bulk of fintech employees.
The majority of fintech SDEs at GS,Morgan,etc. are working on software engineering and maintenance work. These roles pay closer to the $100k number than Amazon's quoted $150k. At least for new hires.
My Amazon comp has been more than competitive with FB, Uber, Google.
[Disclaimer/Source: work at Amazon]
Can you expound on this?
Those fin-tech companies almost certainly pay more than Amazon already. IIRC amazon has a cap of 275k for base pay, which means even if you're James Gosling that's the most you're getting, the rest has to come from RSUs which amazon also has a terrible vesting structure for. Amazon is regarded as a top-tier tech company, but their pay is not on par with any of the other companies (Google, FB, Uber, etc).
More tech presence is good, but I don't think big name companies are going to be too worried about their employees leaving to get paid less and have fewer benefits.