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I am an HFT Programmer

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Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#221

Post by gaius »

locopati wrote: post #154
ZephyrP wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Experience programming does not necessarily translate to experience working with a team of developers within a business environment.

100% true. And this should be obvious: none of get paid to write code. We get paid to solve other people's problems. Experience that matters is experience of doing that, Working in your own projects - unless you have actual users, who can confront you with scenarios you didn't expect - isn't really that transferrable.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#222

Post by ig1 »

jpz wrote: post #171
ig1 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am speaking of my last 15 years in London working in derivatives/front office IT, and interviewing for many jobs in front office IT. It is very exceptional to find banks that will organise IT to report into the front office structure - this doesn't occur, and I almost never hear of such a thing when I see job specs.

It's not all of IT, but it's not unusual for quant dev type roles to report to the front-office (either singly or as part of a dual-reporting structure). The reporting doesn't have to be direct for dev bonuses to be tied to PnL either, what I've seen happen at some places is that a certain percentage of the desk bonus pool is assigned to the development team and the development team management than decide how to split that pool among the developers.

Go to efinancialcareers and search for "PnL bonus" if you want to see some examples of job specs mentioning it.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#223

Post by dereg »

sliverstorm wrote: post #192

Would it be foolish to try to play with HFT (or perhaps "medium" frequency or something) as a private entity? Or is this something essentially only available to Wall Street? Not looking for money, it just seems like it'd be interesting to explore.

You'd need access to a) tremendous leverage and b) proximity to the exchange that you'd want to trade on (the profit opportunities disappear when faced with greater latency).

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#224

Post by lolcraft »

frou_dh wrote: post #61
DasIch wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. What is the point of making so much money if you don't have time to spend it or have anything that resembles a life for that matter.

The savings account that still exists after you quit.

Time can be exchanged for money. Money can't be exchanged for time.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#225

Post by bwanaaaa »

So many intelligent replies here. And to think some of the best coders do not live in the US - think of Skype (Estonia), Tim-Berners Lee, Linus Torvalds, etc... Their contributions tower above anything done by any one person on Wall Street. Yet Wall Street has only contributed to the common good by paying taxes. Even then they seek to game the system and have also managed to get the government to give them more than they ever paid (think bailout). Their scrooge-like aversion to philanthropy, charity, education, or any research to help the human condition is what annoys. Certainly those of you who code for the street have food in your belly, but when will you decide to fix your monstrous employer? They don't even have to know.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#226

Post by bwanaaaa »

bignoggins wrote: post #130

This is slightly OT, but can anyone recommend a good book for understanding the modern finance industry (IB, quant, trading) and its impact on the economy? Finance in general is just a giant black box to me.

Here is where the coders of Wall street can help us understand--making their efforts more transparent. They dont have to reveal details of their code--but a few blogs about what they are doing, what they are achieving, and they aim for would be nice

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#227

Post by gaius »

benthumb wrote: post #97

This fellow's braggadocio is off-putting. Especially the dig he makes at the expense of Google. I mean, I wish he'd clarify what he's talking about when he says that the "engineering talent is just not there"... just not where?

Ermm, at Google? Seems a simple enough sentence construction to me.

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#228

Post by gaius »

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#…

some bank sunk millions (and maybe billions) into infrastructure just to run that crap even moderately fast

Why, were they running Ruby on Rails?

Re: I am an HFT Programmer

#229

Post by Tomis »

jrockway wrote: post #117
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#…

So true. Finance attracts the most incompetent egomaniacs possible. I love getting lectures about how to design software from someone who has written: if x == 0: return "Monday"; elif x == 1: return "Tuesday"; ... This should be a criminal offense.

I have a better one. Project manager replaced enums with strings and instead of the switch statement he put a long list of if-s (without the else-s, too), and a lot of obfuscated crap between the braces.. Guess who had to sort out that mess? Also, the motivation for that horror was related to how those string parameters were visible in intellisense (because they were made static members in a class). Don't even ask.
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