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I am an HFT Programmer

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Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#211

Post by [deleted] »

rgarcia wrote: post #182
zedshaw wrote: post #34

This is a huge load of bullshit. 99% of the "banking programmers" are some of the worst coders in the world. A vast majority of them just babysit a Bloomberg terminal, barely understanding the supposed math they use all day. Others just babysit an Excel spreadsheet, or worse, develop whole applications in Excel then try to get a real programmer to "build it". The lower echelons are even worse and just make shitty C#…

Banking != HFT. I've worked at both a bank and an HFT firm, so I think I have some perspective you might find interesting. To make a broad generalization from my experience, "Traders" at a bank are mostly non-technical Excel junkies. It seems like in your experience they also went by the title "Programmer", which I agree is a gross misnomer. Besides that, I think the most important thing to realize is that at banks,…

[deleted]

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#212

Post by nl »

nl wrote: post #196
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"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. Except it isn't true (depending on your definition of "real money"). It's not especially hard to make high 6 figures (and even low 7 figures) as a consultant, if you specialize and sell yourself well. This may be low by the standards of the $20M…

Obviously either my maths or my facts are wrong here because I'm being killed with the downvotes.

Explain where I went wrong please?

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#213

Post by yummyfajitas »

pak wrote: post #205
yummyfajitas wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did HFT "destroy everything, requiring a trillion dollar government bailout" to fix?

Oh, just because it hasn't happened yet, we should pretend it isn't possible? You remember the flash crash. That took out the market for a day. People waved their hands and said it was an innocent mistake. Nothing changed. When scads of people were writing CDO's and swaps and other clearly garbage papers in 2007, they probably used your logic to justify their recklessness, and here we are.

Oh, just because it hasn't happened yet, we should pretend it isn't possible? You remember the flash crash.

You mean the minor event precipitated by a fat fingered human and corrected in an hour or so by HFTs?

If you have a plausible disaster scenario involving HFT's, state it. So far, near as I can tell, your argument is merely "omfg finance stuff I don't understand it might destroy the world!"

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#214

Post by kayoone »

mkramlich wrote: post #161
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Depends on what you want to do. Some mobile apps or small webapps might work, but anything more ambitous will suffer from the time tradeoffs you have to make. What i learned from constantly doing things on the side: If you are really passionate about an idea, dedicate all your time to it.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#215

Post by vessenes »

skybrian wrote: post #138
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…

I've never bought the liquidity argument. Ordinary investors don't need to buy and sell at any time. They'd be happy buying and selling once a day (as with mutual funds). What if the market consisted of a deep daily or hourly auction with lots of buyers and sellers matched up to discover a fair price? How is the current system better than that?

I'm currently launching an exchange. Liquidity is EVERYTHING. Your hourly auction idea is one way to provide it of course, and some exchanges do just this at special times, or at start of trading.

There really isn't a 'current' system actually, at least not as you probably understand it. There are hundreds of markets, with different rules, many of them can place orders between them.

None of this shows for someone putting in a 'buy' at E*Trade, though.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#216

Post by mayanksinghal »

ig1 wrote: post #162
18pfsmt wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As opposed to no-one having access, a restricted access is a much better idea. I was not aware that HFT algorithms are that 'personal', now that article makes even less sense! What seems extremely blasphemous is that this person outrightly denies the importance of creativity and innovation that goes into Product designing at (pardon my ignorance, and bias for real tech firms), say, Google.

What I do get from the port is this: HFT people are extremely smart - extremely closed circle. They know algorithms and optimization. Speed is of utmost importance. They know more ways to optimize than I will ever know (Actually I don't even need to. I can very well work on something more significant). And they earn a lot (Well I will earn enough for my satisfaction, so I don't give a flying SegFault).

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#217

Post by eurohacker »

its when simple quants make bonuses 20M per year - causing worldwide economic crisis - and the country is defaulting

then you think that something must be wrong with the American economic policy and tax system

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#218

Post by wladimir »

wheels wrote: post #152
Cushman wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...is that not what I'm saying? Your grandfather took a situation where he had an advantage and leveraged it to make money. That's what programmers should be doing, too, if they want to make money.

It sounded like you were making a special case for being a software developer (since you tied it specifically to a CS curriculum). If your statement is simply, "Having useful skills that other people don't pays." then, well, uhh, duh.

Currently it seems the special case is for software developers, though.

Everyone in my environment is finding it terribly hard or impossible to find jobs, or are going out of work, and I get job offers from all over the world. It feels unfair somehow, and I really don't want to sound elitist.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#219

Post by QuoVadis7 »

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…

People see market makers as scalpers when in fact they're providing a valuable service: they're creating liquidity.

The problem is, in the trading companies no one cares about liquidity (like, say, people at Google would care about search results quality). The thing they care about most is just money and all the nice things you can spend your money on - cars, entertainment, bars, discos... no one cares about the thing they do. So actually this point about liquidity really looks like a mere excuse to me.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#220

Post by nazgulnarsil »

"the way I make money is opaque to people with no economics background"

"rabble rabble moralizing rabble rabble!"

you people do realize that normal people think the same thing about software developers right?

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