Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 195 posts

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#71

Post by cwperkins »

colordrops wrote: post #64
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I liked this article because the roll of the programmer on wall street has been going down recently from my perspective. Programmers used to work along side quants and were well respected. This was generally because practicing quants didn't used to be able to program. This was especially true in the 80s and 90's where programmers and quants where almost valued identically as one required the other to make things happ…

I apologize for the off the wall comment. Every time I read about wall street programming, I've got this subliminal voice in the back of my head wondering how anyone could find the motivation to do this work. I'm obviously revealing my biases against the financial industry here. Also, I'm unable to make myself do work if I don't see it contributing to some greater vision or cause. Are there people out there who love…

There's actually quite a lot of puzzle solving involved that makes it interesting. I think there are a lot of misconceptions of the industry at large and it suffers from bad PR after the global financial crisis. It's an interesting software problem to try and write algorithms that can earn alpha regardless of what is happening in the market. If anything computers have made our markets more efficient and it is great for price discovery.

It may not be the same as creating a product or service that people love or solves a need, but it is an interesting problem to tackle.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#72

Post by wbl »

throwawaygrad93 wrote: post #68
naturalgradient wrote: post #3

Can anyone comment on how competitive salaries are there actually? Right now, for top tier PhD graduates in machine learning, it's about 300-400k at big tech companies starting out, and ~200k for master's degrees. From what I read and heard, banks are not really willing to pay up competitively for software?

I'm a senior at an HYPSM school, currently looking at offers from one of {Google, FB} and one of {Jane Street, Old Mission, Five Rings, HRT, Virtu}. The offers are about the same at about 200-250k depending on bonus and stock performance -- the big tech company upped their stock grant to meet the expected bonus at the trading company. It's not obvious to me which one will be more in a few years, and it seems like hou…

Face the market you work market hours. Tech doesn't have that limit. Both are cyclic, but FB is probably here to stay. Finance can be very dynamic: think LTCM.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#73

Post by colordrops »

cwperkins wrote: post #71
colordrops wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize for the off the wall comment. Every time I read about wall street programming, I've got this subliminal voice in the back of my head wondering how anyone could find the motivation to do this work. I'm obviously revealing my biases against the financial industry here. Also, I'm unable to make myself do work if I don't see it contributing to some greater vision or cause. Are there people out there who love…

There's actually quite a lot of puzzle solving involved that makes it interesting. I think there are a lot of misconceptions of the industry at large and it suffers from bad PR after the global financial crisis. It's an interesting software problem to try and write algorithms that can earn alpha regardless of what is happening in the market. If anything computers have made our markets more efficient and it is great f…

See that's the thing. I don't know what "earning alpha" means and why I should care, and working on "price discovery", which is also something I am unaware of, sounds more like a punishment than a reward.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#74

Post by throwawayhypsm »

throwawaygrad93 wrote: post #68
naturalgradient wrote: post #3

Can anyone comment on how competitive salaries are there actually? Right now, for top tier PhD graduates in machine learning, it's about 300-400k at big tech companies starting out, and ~200k for master's degrees. From what I read and heard, banks are not really willing to pay up competitively for software?

I'm a senior at an HYPSM school, currently looking at offers from one of {Google, FB} and one of {Jane Street, Old Mission, Five Rings, HRT, Virtu}. The offers are about the same at about 200-250k depending on bonus and stock performance -- the big tech company upped their stock grant to meet the expected bonus at the trading company. It's not obvious to me which one will be more in a few years, and it seems like hou…

It may be close for the first year or so due to the signing bonus, but 3-4 years in if you're performing at the expected level at a trading firm you should be making double the 200-250k number, and I doubt the tech firms match that kind of compensation (at least for most people).

Another factor you may wanna consider is the opportunity cost -- how hard would it be for you to work at GOOG/FB if the trading firm job doesn't work out? And vice versa?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#75

Post by throrwawayquant »

wbl wrote: post #72
throwawaygrad93 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a senior at an HYPSM school, currently looking at offers from one of {Google, FB} and one of {Jane Street, Old Mission, Five Rings, HRT, Virtu}. The offers are about the same at about 200-250k depending on bonus and stock performance -- the big tech company upped their stock grant to meet the expected bonus at the trading company. It's not obvious to me which one will be more in a few years, and it seems like hou…

Face the market you work market hours. Tech doesn't have that limit. Both are cyclic, but FB is probably here to stay. Finance can be very dynamic: think LTCM.

At least two of the financial firms on OP's list are known for working you more than market hours, the average is well into the 60+ hours per week.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#76

Post by thibautx »

colordrops wrote: post #73
cwperkins wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually quite a lot of puzzle solving involved that makes it interesting. I think there are a lot of misconceptions of the industry at large and it suffers from bad PR after the global financial crisis. It's an interesting software problem to try and write algorithms that can earn alpha regardless of what is happening in the market. If anything computers have made our markets more efficient and it is great f…

See that's the thing. I don't know what "earning alpha" means and why I should care, and working on "price discovery", which is also something I am unaware of, sounds more like a punishment than a reward.

Price discovery means that anyone can find a fair price for some asset. For example, algorithms that provide liquidity in agriculture products ensure that farmers can easily liquidate their inventory, as well as hedging their risk through derivatives.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#77

Post by log_base_login »

colordrops wrote: post #64
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I liked this article because the roll of the programmer on wall street has been going down recently from my perspective. Programmers used to work along side quants and were well respected. This was generally because practicing quants didn't used to be able to program. This was especially true in the 80s and 90's where programmers and quants where almost valued identically as one required the other to make things happ…

I apologize for the off the wall comment. Every time I read about wall street programming, I've got this subliminal voice in the back of my head wondering how anyone could find the motivation to do this work. I'm obviously revealing my biases against the financial industry here. Also, I'm unable to make myself do work if I don't see it contributing to some greater vision or cause. Are there people out there who love…

I think it helps to understand that the financial sector provides capital that serves to energize virtually every other sector in every industry.

Without finance, there is no biomedical research (private especially). Without finance, there is no aerospace advancement. Without finance, there is no alternative energy. Being able to facilitate a more liquid, more transparent financial sector is, in my opinion, a calling worthy of any programmer who seeks to make the world a better place.

Your assignment of people as 'questionable' is likely an artifact of the 2007 recession, and that kind of thing is a personal choice. I can guarantee you that there are 'questionable' people in every sector and in virtually every company. Sometimes people are great, and sometimes they aren't. Their field of employment has very little to do with what makes them that way, and I think that it's a little ignorant to be so casual (and I say this because you are certainly not alone in your judgment) with how you view people.

Remember how, as children, we are taught to not judge books by their covers? Why do the same with a programmer who works in finance? Sure, some of the work may be a little pedantic, like squeezing an extra millisecond out of an algorithm, but hey, that's computer science in general, and I liken that to an F1 racing team spending hour upon hour sculpting the perfect frame for their car.

Sorry for the rant, I've spent a decent amount of time working on financial algorithms, and what you said touched a nerve.

Have a great day!

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#78

Post by stochastic_monk »

tomrod wrote: post #67
otakucode wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has offshoring ever been a significant factor in this arena? Given the profoundly proprietary nature of the systems being built, I would think that unlikely. Offshoring development is a good way to find your custom software reskinned and sold to a competitor without much legal recourse. Also, is 'mainstream' programming that common of a need? I had read (here on a HN comment thread) awhile ago that many organizations…

Huh. I see C++, Java, and Python as the go-to languages with my wall-street programming and modeling acquaintances. Very little esoterica.

Jane Street's famous for its obsession with OCaml.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#79

Post by shortoncash »

corporateslave6 wrote: post #17
naturalgradient wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah that matches what I have heard. HFT/HF is paying up but overall, as someone who is coming up on making the decision, it's hard to see the upsides of finance. Losing all visibility/ability to publish/being a first class contributor and not second class dev..

I wouldnt get into HFT, its commoditized. The future of finance is in processing huge volume (internet scale) unstructured data and analyzing it in real time. HFT of website data if you will, right now we are in the infancy

HFT has matured.

But, I agree, finding alpha through alternative means at internet scale has been around for at least a decade, but things are getting more interesting now.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#80

Post by throwawaygrad93 »

throrwawayquant wrote: post #75
wbl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Face the market you work market hours. Tech doesn't have that limit. Both are cyclic, but FB is probably here to stay. Finance can be very dynamic: think LTCM.

At least two of the financial firms on OP's list are known for working you more than market hours, the average is well into the 60+ hours per week.

Which ones?
Post reply on HN