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

I am an HFT Programmer

developers.slashdot.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 246 posts

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#161

Post by mkramlich »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #57
cletus wrote: post #39

I worked for a time in finance and investment banking. Problem-wise it can be pretty interesting but it's important to distinguish between two classes of developers. 1. Traders; and 2. Non-traders. Engineers who are traders are typically called "quants" (quantitative traders) as they write software that employs trading strategies to make money, as one or more of spread trading (trading between the bid-ask spread), pr…

"The only way for an engineer to make real money is to be a quant, found a startup or join an early stage startup." This statement should be included in every CS curriculum.

I'm at the point where I think the smartest advice, by default, to give to any software engineer (probably folks in any field) is to intentionally lead a hybrid lifestyle: 1) hold down a "day job" for the steady paychecks; while 2) be working towards a business of your own on the side. That way you get the best of both worlds. The safety of "guaranteed" income (plus lots of other benefits of being an employee) while also increasing your odds of getting the much higher income ceiling, and asynchronous pay, and greater freedom/control, and ROWE, from owning/selling a business. Plus when you work for others you're almost always pigeon-holed into certain narrow roles, whereas if you are The Man you can pick and choose roles better and take on a wider variety of roles, which in turn helps justify larger total eventual payoff.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#162

Post by ig1 »

18pfsmt wrote: post #86
[deleted] wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I've never worked at anything but a company with "closed-source" code, but all engineers within the company had access to all product code via SVN. From reading other comments, it seems the quants are paid relative to their code's performance in the market, and this culture of not sharing code is probably understandable under those circumstances. In other words, Shaw doesn't seem to be recognizing the competitive nat…

I'm sure the same's true in any industry where code contains tradable trade secrets, keeping code on a need-to-know basis makes sense. For example I imagine not everyone at Google has access to the page ranking score algorithm, because a rogue employee could easily sell that information for millions of dollars.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#163

Post by hugh3 »

dkersten wrote: post #144
veyron wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replying to bmj (not sure why i don't see a reply link ...) For me, and I think for a lot of other people on HN, retirement means not having to work for the money. Which, for people in some areas of the world, isn't really that much. And in that vein, if you don't have to worry about the money, you can afford to say "no, I would rather go see my daughter's choral concert than work". Obviously I would keep myself busy…

not sure why i don't see a reply link HN has a reply cool off period. The more nested a comment, the longer the cool off period.

Is that the reason?

I always get around it by clicking "link" -- that always brings up a reply box.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#165

Post by illumin8 »

orijing wrote: post #35

It's true, and it's somewhat discouraging. When I was in my last year in college, I applied to various types of companies, in different stages of life, plus a quant fund. In the end, while the salary/potential bonus for the fund was very enticing (despite not having graduated yet), I stuck with the middle-of-the-road tech company. (I also looked at Google and Dropbox but decided to go to FB). Google was desperate for…

Dude, I'm glad you took the FB offer. Don't discount the value of money. Stay there until the IPO, get your much deserved money, and then have the freedom to work wherever you want to work for the rest of your life.

You must be very intelligent to get so many offers from some of the best companies, but if you don't know what to do with $500K yet, please don't spend it all. Save it and retire. I'm not saying retire from coding or doing what you love, but having F-U money means you can continue to do what you love no matter what happens. This is worth more than having a fun job.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#166

Post by jpz »

ig1 wrote: post #159
jpz wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of crappy developers that's true. If you look at the serious pieces of infra inside the front offices for pricing and risk however, there are some smart people that have done some good software. Quite often however those projects are degraded as stewardship of these projects is inconsistent, and long tenure is not always there, so you don't get continuity in terms of engineering talent. Frequently this…

It depends on the bank, at some banks front-office developer bonuses are pay out of the desk bonus pool rather than a tech bonus pool.

It is rare these days in my experience - it creates an appropriate separation of concerns to have the management alignment distinct (that can be interpreted to be a Sarbannes Oxley requirement.)

There can be budgeting for specific desk profits in the relative bonus pools decided in IT, but bonus makes up a smaller percentage of developer total comp generally unless you are approaching management.

If you are desk dev and hack Excel and Access for the front office that can help your case in regards bonuses, but this isn't true software development of course.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#167

Post by ig1 »

jpz wrote: post #166
ig1 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the bank, at some banks front-office developer bonuses are pay out of the desk bonus pool rather than a tech bonus pool.

It is rare these days in my experience - it creates an appropriate separation of concerns to have the management alignment distinct (that can be interpreted to be a Sarbannes Oxley requirement.) There can be budgeting for specific desk profits in the relative bonus pools decided in IT, but bonus makes up a smaller percentage of developer total comp generally unless you are approaching management. If you are desk dev…

This is from my experience in London, I guess NYC might be different due to regulatory concerns.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#168

Post by darklajid »

ZephyrP wrote: post #121
wyclif wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting one crucial problem. Younger developers may or may not have more energy, but one thing they don't have is experience. Never, ever, underestimate experience.

Something of a false mutual-exclusion. Due to the massive influx of cheap computing hardware in the late 90s, There are 17-22 year old people who have been programming and studying math & CS for 10 years. 10 years is a lot of experience.

So - if we happened to be ~16-20 in 1990 and had a good start with a commodore/amiga/vc-20 whatever - is that relevant?

Sure, the experience is bound to be more similar to current hardware, but you can easily be 40 now (I'm now, early thirties) and claim a little more experience.

The next argument could be 'is experience > $someThreshold enough'?

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#169

Post by kenjackson »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #57
cletus wrote: post #39

I worked for a time in finance and investment banking. Problem-wise it can be pretty interesting but it's important to distinguish between two classes of developers. 1. Traders; and 2. Non-traders. Engineers who are traders are typically called "quants" (quantitative traders) as they write software that employs trading strategies to make money, as one or more of spread trading (trading between the bid-ask spread), pr…

"The only way for an engineer to make real money is to be a quant, found a startup or join an early stage startup." This statement should be included in every CS curriculum.

But it depends on what is real money. If your dad is a doctor and your mom a lawyer, sure. But if you grew up poor then 150k loos like real money.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#170

Post by brunoc »

cletus wrote: post #39

I worked for a time in finance and investment banking. Problem-wise it can be pretty interesting but it's important to distinguish between two classes of developers. 1. Traders; and 2. Non-traders. Engineers who are traders are typically called "quants" (quantitative traders) as they write software that employs trading strategies to make money, as one or more of spread trading (trading between the bid-ask spread), pr…

Is there any way to play "quant dev" with representative mock data (or historical data even) with similar constraint, etc? I doubt I have the constitution to do this for real but it would surely be a fun game.
Post reply on HN