Frequently asked questions
Quick answers about prints.fyi — what it is, how to submit, how verification works, privacy guarantees, founding-member status, and more.
The basics
- What is prints.fyi?
- prints.fyi is a crowdsourced compensation transparency platform for finance professionals. Verified contributors submit their comp; the site aggregates the data and shows medians, percentiles, and cross-firm comparisons without ever revealing individual submissions.
- Who is it for?
- Anyone working in or considering finance. The MVP covers investment banking only (bulge bracket, elite boutique, middle market). Sales & trading and equity research are next, then private equity, private credit, hedge funds, long-only, and prop trading.
- Is it free?
- Yes — submitting and viewing aggregate data are free for verified contributors. The model is one verified comp submission = full access.
Submitting your comp
- How do I submit?
- Sign up with a personal email, then verify your employer via a one-time link to your corporate email (one click). After that, fill out a short wizard: firm / level / group / comp / performance bucket. Done in about 3 minutes.
- Can I submit more than once?
- One entry per (firm, performance year). If you change firms or it’s a new performance year, submit again. You have 90 days from each submission to edit or delete it from your account page; after that the entry locks.
- What if I’m not in investment banking?
- We launch with investment banking only. Sales & trading and equity research are next. If you’re in S&T, equity research, private equity, hedge funds, asset management, prop trading, or another division, leave your email at the top of the submit page and we’ll notify you when your cohort opens.
- My firm isn’t listed.
- Send us a note via the feedback bubble in the bottom corner of any page (or email hello@prints.fyi) with the firm name and your corporate email domain. We’ll add it within a day or two.
- What happens if my numbers look unusual?
- Submissions that fall far outside the existing bucket (more than 2.5 standard deviations from the verified median, in buckets with three or more prior verified submissions) are flagged for admin review before counting toward aggregates. This catches both honest mistakes (wrong currency, missed a zero) and adversarial entries. You’ll still see the submission on your account; it just doesn’t affect the aggregates until reviewed.
Verification
- Why do I need to verify my employer?
- Anyone can claim to make $500k as an Analyst 1 if there’s no verification. The whole point of prints.fyi is that the data is trustworthy — which requires proving the person submitting actually works where they say they work. Verification also unlocks the full database.
- How does verification work?
- You enter your corporate email (e.g. you@gs.com). We send a one-time magic link to that address. Click it, and we record that you’re verified at that firm. We hash your email and discard the plaintext immediately — we never store your work email address.
- Does having a corporate email mean I’m in IB?
- No — and we’re aware that a JPM corporate email holder could be in tech, ops, or back office, not IBD. That’s why we restrict the submission form to IB titles and groups only, flag statistical outliers for review, and plan to add document verification (pay stub / offer letter) for the highest-confidence tier. If you’re not in IB, please leave your email for your division’s eventual launch rather than submitting in the wrong bucket.
- I left my firm. Can I still submit?
- Yes — you can submit historical comp from a firm you’ve since left. As long as you have an active verification somewhere (or verified at that firm historically), your submission counts as “verified user” even if not currently firm-verified.
Privacy & anonymity
- Is my submission really anonymous?
- Yes. Your account is created with a personal email (Clerk), which we never publicly link to any specific submission. The corporate email you use to verify is hashed and discarded — we can never recover the plaintext. Aggregate displays use k-anonymity gating: no bucket shows percentiles until it has at least 5 verified submissions.
- What is k-anonymity gating?
- No bucket (firm × title × year × group × performance year) is displayed publicly below a minimum verified-submission threshold. That keeps any single submission from being inferable from the published aggregates. Smaller cohorts get bucketed more coarsely.
- Can I delete my account or submissions?
- Yes. From your account page you can edit or delete any submission within 90 days of submission. You can delete your account at any time; prior submissions are anonymized (user link removed) rather than deleted, to preserve the integrity of the aggregates other contributors have built on.
- Will my employer see my submission?
- No. Your individual submission is never displayed — only the aggregate. Your employer can see the same medians + percentiles everyone else can, but cannot identify you specifically.
Founding member status
- What’s a founding member?
- The first 500 verified contributors in each industry get a permanent founding-member badge (Founding IB Member #1 through #500, then PE #1 through #500, etc.). The badge is permanent and never re-issued — even if you delete your account, that number is retired.
- How do I claim one?
- Verify your employer, submit your comp, and the badge is assigned automatically. The cohort is per-industry, so when we open S&T, PE, etc., there’s a new 500-badge pool for each.
- What do I get with the badge?
- Visibility — it shows in the site header and on your account page on every visit, and on personal referral landing pages you share. Status-only; no special data access. We may add founding-member perks (early access to new industries, etc.) later.
Data + aggregates
- How much data do you have?
- Pre-launch we’re seeded with title-ladder mappings (so a Goldman VP, a Morgan Stanley ED, and a UBS Director sit on the same canonical level) and firm metadata for ~50 firms. Submission coverage grows as verified contributors join. Buckets need ≥5 verified submissions before percentiles render — until then we show counts only.
- How do you ensure data quality?
- Three layers: (1) restricted dropdowns at submission time (canonical titles, IB-only groups), (2) tiered verification (firm-verified beats verified-user beats unverified), and (3) statistical outlier flagging on submission that holds suspicious entries for admin review before they affect aggregates. We’ll add community flagging and trust scoring as the user base grows.
- What currency are the aggregates in?
- Submissions are stored in the currency the contributor reports (USD, GBP, EUR, HKD, SGD). Bucket-level aggregates display in the primary currency for the office city — NYC in USD, London in GBP, Hong Kong in HKD, etc.
Referrals
- How do referrals work?
- Every user gets a permanent referral link from their account page. When someone signs up via your link and lands a verified submission, the system marks the referral as completed. You see a tally of pending vs. completed referrals (anonymized — only action and date, never identity).
- Do I get anything for referring?
- Right now, indirect value only: more verified contributors in your bucket → faster percentile unlock → more useful data for you.
Support
- How do I contact the team?
- Click the feedback bubble in the bottom corner of any page, or email hello@prints.fyi. We read everything.
- I found a bug.
- Please tell us via the feedback bubble — include the URL where it happened and what you expected to see.
Didn’t find your question?
Use the feedback bubble in the bottom corner, or email hello@prints.fyi. We read everything.