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Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

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Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#261

Post by anothereng »

_benj wrote: post #45

I’m usually hesitant to share but I’ve been doing commodities trading. There’s a humongous amount of BS out there about trading or day trading but the fact is that people do it and make it, and my best friend being a consistently profitable trader for the last 4 years didn’t help my skeptic case… At any rate, turns out that the challenge of trading is less of a technical or financial one. Sure, one needs to understan…

anyone can make money on a bull's market. When everything goes up your stock also goes up. I recommend you find something else

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#262

Post by _benj »

anothereng wrote: post #261
_benj wrote: post #45

I’m usually hesitant to share but I’ve been doing commodities trading. There’s a humongous amount of BS out there about trading or day trading but the fact is that people do it and make it, and my best friend being a consistently profitable trader for the last 4 years didn’t help my skeptic case… At any rate, turns out that the challenge of trading is less of a technical or financial one. Sure, one needs to understan…

anyone can make money on a bull's market. When everything goes up your stock also goes up. I recommend you find something else

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#263

Post by riku_iki »

_benj wrote: post #249
riku_iki wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> about slippage, commission, over fitting my stuff to my test data this all kinda solvable, you add slippage, commissions to the profit calculations, and use separate eval data split(or 1, 2, 3, 4) to check how model is overfitting?

Yes, all of it is solvable. I think my point is that is my impression (at least from the algo trading subreddit) that many approach it as a computer problem, which it is if one is doing what Jane Street is doing and has that kind of execution in the ns scale… but for retail traders I think one needs to learn what trading actually is, what market inefficiencies are there, usual behaviors of markets, money managements,…

My hope is that I have good enough skills to build machine/deep learning model which will be able to recognize patterns base on historical data.

I am more wondering how big is opportunity for solo trader and if I should try to do this or work on some other ideas.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#264

Post by _benj »

riku_iki wrote: post #263
_benj wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, all of it is solvable. I think my point is that is my impression (at least from the algo trading subreddit) that many approach it as a computer problem, which it is if one is doing what Jane Street is doing and has that kind of execution in the ns scale… but for retail traders I think one needs to learn what trading actually is, what market inefficiencies are there, usual behaviors of markets, money managements,…

My hope is that I have good enough skills to build machine/deep learning model which will be able to recognize patterns base on historical data. I am more wondering how big is opportunity for solo trader and if I should try to do this or work on some other ideas.

I think a way that you can think about it is from a risk perspective. One rule passed down among traders is to not risk more than 2% you account size in any single trade. For a $50k account that would be $1k. Now let’s say that your system gives you 2 times your risk (2R) with a 60% win rate, and let’s say that in average you make 10 trades a month… you can run those numbers and see if they make sense for you.

There’s usually an inverse correlation between win-rate and accuracy. If you increase your risk you can be right more often but your rewards are smaller. Alternatively you can be more “selective” with tighter stops and thus lower risk and is likely that you’ll be wrong more often but that the winner will be bigger…

I believe that you can have the skills to build a system that can detect patterns from historical data, but notice how, for example, from the previous calculations the problem of trading is less of a “technical” problem and more of a market, risk management, money management, statistical kind of problem.

Then there’s the emotional part of, you still have the power to stop your system… if it has had 4 or 6 losses in a row… are you still keeping it up? Loosing is inevitable in trading, but how much loosing can you handle? Have the market conditions changed? How do you measure that?

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#265

Post by borgdefenser »

_benj wrote: post #251
xyst wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doing commodities trading. Game is rigged for big players. You are gambling. > best friend being a consistently profitable trader for the last 4 years didn’t help my skeptic case… Last 4 years have been a boon for day traders. Any idiot with a decent sized portfolio and appetite for risk can make a living. However you are literally staring at graphs all day. Not very fun or rewarding or contributing much to society…

I mean you are right… I think somebody said that where you believe you can or you can’t you are right. This is funny tho > Game is rigged for big players. You are gambling. That’s the whole point of the thing, I’m not playing their game! Look at, say, wheat… a report comes out with adjusted supply/demands (USDA releases those), then if players need to buy/sell a few million bushels of wheat… well, you don’t buy/sell…

The game is not rigged towards big players either.

A single person can trade limit orders with almost no transaction cost with enormously deep markets. The modern world has made the markets incredibly inefficient, prone to massive overreactions on basically everything.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#266

Post by robomartin »

bloomingkales wrote: post #253
robomartin wrote: post #179

> I'm curious what other kinds of work other former developers got into and if they like it. Speaking in general terms, age discrimination in tech (not just software development) is, in my opinion, a really serious problem. It's like society discards you after a certain point in time, even though you are likely more capable than most younger candidates. I am going to point the finger squarely at YC on some of this, s…

So what is the conclusion here, that DEI needed to include aging workers? That’s going to be tough sell in this society.

> So what is the conclusion here, that DEI needed to include aging workers?

No. Absolutely not.

If I am 60 and you are 30, I can do the job and do it well, I should not be excluded because of my age. You can replace age with any other category that makes sense, like race, disability, sexual orientation, etc. Candidates should not be excluded this way.

A basketball team should not include me because I am not tall and exclude someone who is significantly taller and better qualified (experience and skills).

Another proper basketball team does not exclude me because I am not super tall. They evaluate my skills and experience and compare it that to others who might be taller or shorter than me. If I can do the same or a better job than the others --if I can deliver the required value-- they could hire me. If I cannot compete with others, they should not.

It's interesting how the term "inclusion" turned out to deliver discrimination...precisely what we thought we set out to eliminate from society.

Age discrimination is an easy and silent form of discrimination that has lots of victims while few perpetrators are brought to task for practicing it.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#267

Post by zippyman55 »

sillywabbit wrote: post #217
sillywabbit wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're doing something for fun, cheating just ruins the experience. If you're doing something for the result, or for a trophy, cheating becomes more appealing.

I really hate cooking.

Cooking can be fun. Take a simple recipe and refine it until you are an artisan. I made little pizzas at work. It was fun but I upped my game significantly. I only needed a toaster oven, a rolling pin, store bought dough. But used high quality ingredients.

The fun for me was in the refinement to perfection.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#268

Post by [deleted] »

gcheong wrote: post #240
mark_l_watson wrote: post #122

I am in my mid-70s now and for the first time in my life I can’t find part time work. I have had three really good leads in the last four or five months but in each case there was no job unless I accepted a full time position. Sadly at my age, I don’t have the energy for full time work, so it is what it is. My wife is happy I am not working, and she literally would not accept it if I tried a full time gig, even just…

Someone of your caliber could probably get some fractional job gigs, for example: http://fractionaljobs.io/

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#269

Post by Johanx64 »

robomartin wrote: post #266
bloomingkales wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is the conclusion here, that DEI needed to include aging workers? That’s going to be tough sell in this society.

> So what is the conclusion here, that DEI needed to include aging workers? No. Absolutely not. If I am 60 and you are 30, I can do the job and do it well, I should not be excluded because of my age. You can replace age with any other category that makes sense, like race, disability, sexual orientation, etc. Candidates should not be excluded this way. A basketball team should not include me because I am not tall and…

> If I am 60 and you are 30, I can do the job and do it well, I should not be excluded because of my age.

On paper, yes, you shouldn't be excluded because of age. In practice, it doesn't work like it. 60 is basically retirement age for a reason, and it's been stretched to ever higher numbers due to demographics and strain on social spending pyramid schemes.

60 year olds do do not perform like 20-30 year olds unless they have some extraordinary secondary characteristics that make up for it.

Yes, everyone will step out of their way and bend backwards to accommodate 55yo John Carmacks and alikes with impressive track records and impressive resumes where their experience and skills. Unless you have those things you won't in forseeable future be on equal footing with a 25-30yo.

Re: Ask HN: Former devs who can't get a job, what did you end up doing for work?

#270

Post by riku_iki »

_benj wrote: post #264
riku_iki wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hope is that I have good enough skills to build machine/deep learning model which will be able to recognize patterns base on historical data. I am more wondering how big is opportunity for solo trader and if I should try to do this or work on some other ideas.

I think a way that you can think about it is from a risk perspective. One rule passed down among traders is to not risk more than 2% you account size in any single trade. For a $50k account that would be $1k. Now let’s say that your system gives you 2 times your risk (2R) with a 60% win rate, and let’s say that in average you make 10 trades a month… you can run those numbers and see if they make sense for you. There’…

> but notice how, for example, from the previous calculations the problem of trading is less of a “technical” problem and more of a market, risk management, money management, statistical kind of problem.

I agree. It just happened I built such system already which models strategy over significant period of time, and accounts statistical/risks indicators, transaction price, sleepage, etc. I built it for forex eur/usd pair (probably hardest market to beat), while results were positive, I decided that they are not strong enough, and I keep wondering since then if predicting patterns in commodity futures is easier, and I should try to relaunch my effort..

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