I find that people who are truly good actually love what they do. I don't know if I fit in that category, but I remember walking to work a few weeks ago thinking about one particular project: 'if I wasn't here I'd be doing this for free'. That said, I'm paid above average for the industry.
The best combination of passion and reward I've ever seen has been small hedge funds and quant shops. They're smart, love what they do, and have equity and fat bonuses. I've been lucky enough to be both work with and be rejected by these guys and it's one of the few cases where I truly believed the 'one percent' angle.
I'm not being caustic with the simple search, a few of those have excellent resources and discussions. You can also research the top recruiting firms in NYC / London who specialize only in Quant dev related roles. Top-3 financial firms require an Extremely high level of math, PHd. (for Senior roles), no job hopping, a target school (very rarely State schools), etc.
Edit: My own Boolean's recruiting for entry-level Quant Developers. Very specific criteria. CS Degree (no EE / Math programmers), Target schools, (but, "top" state schools allowed), NO Masters / PHD (an argument over too much specializing or saturation of education, meaning, the fund wanted to teach the hire).
They would relocate / sponsor from anywhere in the world. Only very specific schools from out of country (like India, the The Indian Institute of Technology was the only school to look at).
site:linkedin.com (inurl:pub | inurl:in) (BS | BA | “B.A.” | “B.S.” | Bachelor) (2006 | 2007 | 2008) SQL (java | vb | "c++") (logic | algorithm | multithread | concurren* | "multi-thread") (Princeton | Yale | Harvard | Columbia | Cornell | Stanford | "Carnegie Mellon" | Rutgers | Amherst | Brown | Penn | Pennsylvania | MIT | “m.i.t.” | Duke | Northwestern | Tufts | "New York University" | NYU | Dartmouth | “cooper union” | bucknell) (-PHD -“P.H.D.” -“p.h.d”)
(BS OR BA OR “B.A.” OR “B.S.” OR Bachelor) AND (“computer science” OR “CS” OR “C.S”) AND SQL AND (java OR vb OR "c++") AND (logic OR algorithm OR multithread* OR concurren* OR "multi-thread") AND NOT (PHD OR “P.H.D.” OR “p.h.d”)
The best combination of passion and reward I've ever seen has been small hedge funds and quant shops. They're smart, love what they do, and have equity and fat bonuses. I've been lucky enough to be both work with and be rejected by these guys and it's one of the few cases where I truly believed the 'one percent' angle.