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

91–100 of 195 posts

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

#91

Post by colordrops »

linkmotif wrote: post #81
colordrops wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn’t close your mind to it. Finance attracts “questionable people” but finance is also very interesting on many levels and is a central part of life. Work through some finance math. Calculate an IRR. See how it works. If anything there’s a lot of great human history in it.

Thanks. I'm trying to be diplomatic here with my criticism and appreciate the positive and informative responses despite my negativity. You are right, finance is critical to social function and perhaps I've only been focusing on the negative aspects.

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

#92

Post by codebolt »

smallnamespace wrote: post #38
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…

> This, coupled with the fact that few programmers were trained in fields like stochastic calc, Anecdotally though, I've met plenty of coders who did this to themselves by refusing to learn more about the domain or the business. They basically silo'd themselves, then wondered why their colleagues didn't treat them as an integral part of the team when they couldn't speak the language or understand the concerns. Taught…

> Coders who understand their domain well are immensely valuable, and are easily worth at least 3x, because they don't over- or under-engineer a solution, and because they can conjure up with technological solutions for problems that nobody else in the company can even conceive of.

This is a crucial point to me. Being able to code is good, but being able to code well while also having an intermediate or expert understanding of the domain that you are working within is what is going to set you apart in the long run.

In the industry, developing software can usually be seen as the process of creating a tool that will help to better solve a problem. It seems strange to me that you would want someone who doesn't have a solid understanding of the nature of the problem (or the solution) to be designing and building the tool, just because they claim to be good tool-makers.

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

#93

Post by cm2187 »

smallnamespace wrote: post #38
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…

> This, coupled with the fact that few programmers were trained in fields like stochastic calc, Anecdotally though, I've met plenty of coders who did this to themselves by refusing to learn more about the domain or the business. They basically silo'd themselves, then wondered why their colleagues didn't treat them as an integral part of the team when they couldn't speak the language or understand the concerns. Taught…

Couldn't agree more. I have met so many programmers in banking who seem to actively avoid having to learn anything about a bank, not even complex math.

In theory, project managers are supposed to bridge the gap between the business and programmers, however my experience is that they usually understand neither the business nor the IT side, and are only adding more confusion.

People with both knowledge of both worlds are incredibly rare and valuable.

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

#94

Post by cm2187 »

codebolt wrote: post #92
smallnamespace wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This, coupled with the fact that few programmers were trained in fields like stochastic calc, Anecdotally though, I've met plenty of coders who did this to themselves by refusing to learn more about the domain or the business. They basically silo'd themselves, then wondered why their colleagues didn't treat them as an integral part of the team when they couldn't speak the language or understand the concerns. Taught…

> Coders who understand their domain well are immensely valuable, and are easily worth at least 3x, because they don't over- or under-engineer a solution, and because they can conjure up with technological solutions for problems that nobody else in the company can even conceive of. This is a crucial point to me. Being able to code is good, but being able to code well while also having an intermediate or expert unders…

> It seems strange to me that you would want someone who doesn't have a solid understanding of the nature of the problem (or the solution) to be designing and building the tool, just because they claim to be good tool-makers.

I couldn't agree more and this is my main objection to "AI will replace [insert any job here]".

A lot of problems are inaccessible to programmers just because not enough of them seem to be willing to understand them. Complex rules about accounting in large companies seems to be one of them for example. This is why I think AI will certainly overtake many professions but mostly professions that are required on a large scale and that are easy to understand: driving, cleaning a house, building a house, ironing, cooking, assembling objects, etc. For complex accounting or legal issues, I am a lot more skeptical. You don't need complex AI to run accounting systems, they can easily be done with regular software. However in large companies you still have huge accounting departments booking and maintaining these complex logics by hand (excel), a lot could be automated now. And the same reason why they haven't been automated in C# now will apply to AI in the future.

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

#95

Post by ForHackernews »

throwaway129999 wrote: post #33
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 in the range of 3-5 years out of undergrad, working at a quant firm. My total gross comp for this year will be about 400-450k, majority of that is bonus. By quant firm I mean either a proprietary trading firm (no outside investors) or a hedge fund (takes outside money), but not a bank. I have a CS background but have self-studied in stats, and received mentorship from people with strong math backgrounds. Main adv…

This sounds really interesting to me. Are there other downsides to watch out for? I imagine the security environment is very restrictive: no work from home? No root access on your workstation?

What kinds of skills do you need to get into this area?

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

#96

Post by joepanda »

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…

You are completely ignoring the enormous value that financial activities provide for society. Efficient capital markets, risk pricing and exchange are fundamental ingredients to an effective economy. Do you think these businesses get paid for nothing?

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

#97

Post by webkike »

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 can program way better on average than a quant, but what does that matter to a quant

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

#98

Post by blunte »

jabretti wrote: post #61
blunte wrote: post #49

Step back and consider the immense intellect and creativity being devoted to just making money.

Yes, but step back and consider the immense intellect and creativity being devoted to getting laid, or speculating about what's going to happen on Game of Thrones, or thinking up clever things you should have said half an hour ago, or complaining about what's wrong with Star Wars these days. Or arguing on the internet. Just a teeny portion of our species' intellectual output winds up creating or discovering anything…

I don't think intellect is much of a factor in getting laid. My bet here is that intellect, or at least use of intellect, has an inverse effect on success in that area :).

The biggest difference between my example and your examples is that it's a job. This talent pool is using their working hours (and quite often most of their waking hours) pursuing a goal that provides almost nothing to society.

The "finance industry" that we're talking about here is self-serving and in most cases is having no positive relationship with the lights or the supermarket.

The transportation industry, by comparison, has a profit motive but ultimately turns human creativity and intellect into things that arguably make life better for a large number of people.

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

#99

Post by blunte »

mertd wrote: post #65
blunte wrote: post #49

Step back and consider the immense intellect and creativity being devoted to just making money.

Same could be said for "just finding cat videos."

Hardly. How many people, MIT grads, for example, spend 10 hours of paid work day "just finding cat videos"?

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

#100

Post by lordnacho »

dogruck wrote: post #45
lordnacho wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think it's pretty good. I get recruiters calling me all the time, a lot of them are quoting £150-200k total comp. That's for a guy with over a decade's experience in financial coding. By contrast on StackOverflow the salaries that you can see tend to be much lower for the non-finance things.

The trading-coding positions they’re referring to in that article have total comps that can be far greater than 200k pounds.

I'd put it like this, the bulk of positions are around what I quoted. That's for senior people who aren't managing large teams, just run-of-the-mill squaddies.

There's also a few jobs where the pay is unlimited. Typically you need a track record but you'll also get a cut of the profits.

And then there's management, which is another level as well.

Post reply on HN