Fascinating read. I love code horror stories such as this.
The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
121–130 of 177 posts
Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#122Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#123The OP details how poor software engineering practices brought down a 1.4B market marker with 1400 employees in 2012. Some of the issues mentioned include: - Keeping synthetic test data generation as part of a production build. - Keeping dead code for years. - Re-purposing a feature flag. - Refactoring without regression tests. - Manual deployments without peer reviews. They forgot to update one of their servers with…
Rushing out a release without proper software engineering hygiene.
Sounds familiar. From everything listed above, it would sounds like this must have been yet another one of those "Just F-ing push the change the server now, dweeb, the traders are going crazy" environments. That is to say: the real problems were most likely cultural, and not about the sum of a certain set of bad practices.
Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cannot confirm this. ~300k is pay (excluding sign-on) fresh out of college at a big HFT -- sufficiently senior devs make 7 figures.
> sufficiently senior devs make 7 figures I can confirm, known firm, manager role, offer was $1,3M full cash.
Could anyone (successfully) apply for such a position with no referral but CV only?
Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of this is unforgivable, but reflecting on it I also realized that software engineering at quant firms has an almost impossible mandate. You want something akin to the extreme rigor of mission critical software (airplanes, cars, NASA, etc), while also remaining nimble enough to modify strategies as market conditions rapidly evolve.
That's a weird statement. The extreme rigor on the one hand seems to require a value judgement of the real benefits to HTF that I'm not willing to make. The remaining nimble'ity, on the other hand, is an odd word to use over agility or old fashioned responsibility . The benefit is proportional to it, but not exclusively. The rapidly evolving market conditions concern regular trade too. Swift reactions are expected in…
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Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#126My experience in quant finance is that strong engineering teams are viewed as cost centers and are not well compensated the way they are at “real” tech companies, especially when the firm isn’t doing well. Management foolishly tends to only value seeking alpha, rather than reliability of existing alpha.
Unsurprisingly poor management tends not to realize when their software is built on a house of cards.
Definitely saw bugs cause large losses (8 digit numbers).
Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has lived on the West Coast of the US for decades, I have never heard any American call (), brackets.
Chiming in as someone who has lived decades in both South East US and North East US. I've also never heard () called "brackets" only "parentheses". This includes in and out of programming circles. I assumed the comment saying "parens: ()" was talking about US, but the replies seem to be interpreting the opposite.
Never? You guys don't use the BEDMAS acronym in grade school for teaching order of operations?
I've only ever called them brackets.
Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chiming in as someone who has lived decades in both South East US and North East US. I've also never heard () called "brackets" only "parentheses". This includes in and out of programming circles. I assumed the comment saying "parens: ()" was talking about US, but the replies seem to be interpreting the opposite.
Never? You guys don't use the BEDMAS acronym in grade school for teaching order of operations? I've only ever called them brackets.
> BEDMAS
Was PEMDAS for us.
Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chiming in as someone who has lived decades in both South East US and North East US. I've also never heard () called "brackets" only "parentheses". This includes in and out of programming circles. I assumed the comment saying "parens: ()" was talking about US, but the replies seem to be interpreting the opposite.
Never? You guys don't use the BEDMAS acronym in grade school for teaching order of operations? I've only ever called them brackets.
> You guys don't use the BEDMAS acronym in grade school for teaching order of operations?
No, didn't use any acronym for that in grade school, and when I did encounter one used in grade schools, it was PEMDAS, not BEDMAS.
Re: The $440M software error at Knight Capital (2019)
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my lifetime, “parentheses” has been the canonical way to refer to () in the US. “Brackets” is an umbrella term that can describe one or all of (), {}, and []. If you’re in a context where only one of the bracket types would normally be used, you can just call them “brackets.” Since many people never really use [] and {}, “brackets” casually refers to (). To disambiguate, you can call () “open brackets”, [] “square…
> Since many people never really use [] and {}, “brackets” casually refers to (). I have never heard anyone call () "brackets". Is it more regional than just the US maybe?
Same. I've seen {} and [] both called braces and brackets, though usually in that respective order. The ambiguity is precisely why they are also called curly braces and square brackets. The double naming is more concrete.
I've never seen or heard any programmer call () brackets or braces. It's always parentheses. I may have heard a math or science teacher call them all brackets or braces, however, since they are synonymous there outside of odd exceptions like interval notation.