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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

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Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#551

Post by mort96 »

orf wrote: post #519
marssaxman wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it would have been helpful to actually say that given that this is not a forum aimed at or primarily populated by people who work in or around finance. In a general context, "8:30 to 5 and you can't work from home" sounds like a description of the standard 20th century business schedule.

Are you really, truly not familiar with the idea that the finance industry stereotypically requires long hours and values work over all else, at an institutional level? OP could have spelled it out, but in any communication there is a level of shared knowledge. When you read a comment that you understand to be complaining about making nearly a million dollars whilst working 9/5 in the office, a more charitable path w…

When OP wrote they were required to work in the office 8.5 per day, I assumed that they were required to work in the office 8.5 hours per day. I agree with the other guy, if OP meant to claim they were required to work 16 hours in the office per day, they should've spelled that out and not relied on people to guess.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#552

Post by mort96 »

b4je7d7wb wrote: post #436
userbinator wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're completely misreading it Re-read your original description again. Nowhere did you say you had to work 16h a day.

It is implied by not allowing to work from home. There wouldn't be a need to work from home if it was a 9-5 job.

Before covid, working from home wasn't really a thing at the company I work for. That meant I arrived at the office some time before 10, was there for around 8 hours, then left. That's what "not being allowed to work from home" means to most people.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#553

Post by mort96 »

steve918 wrote: post #131
TillE wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a professional C++ developer for the past 20 years, I think this sums it up well. A modern project should be able to use most of C++17 at least. Even if you still need to target some ancient garbage like Windows XP, you can use an MSVC toolchain that supports C++17. That's a good basis to work from. So your real concern is the moldy old code that's written for C++03, that's still not using std::unique_ptr…

If C++03 is old code then you're in one of the outer circles. The code base I'm working on has "Old style" C function declarations that predate C89.

Do we have a reason to believe the code base you're working on is representative or is it just an anecdote?

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#554

Post by FpUser »

coliveira wrote: post #178
bitL wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just embedded, robotics or automotive have pretty low C++ salaries while much higher for Java or even JavaScript... C++ devs are punished for being more capable.

It's not an issue of capacity, it is demand. C++ developers cannot write websites in C++, so big companies will have to pay somebody else.

>"C++ developers cannot write websites in C++"

I actually doing all web backend using C++. I do not render to HTML though. All JSON based RPC. Rendering done by front end JavaScript.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#555

Post by jcelerier »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #374
nostrademons wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AAA games with one-time payments are still exploiting psychological inefficiencies; there is a reason why we are evolutionarily hard-wired to pay attention to fast-moving visual settings where action is required from us. For those who say "but I like to play video games" - yes, that's the point. Day traders like to speculate, and gamblers like to go to the casino. Your downside is capped with one-time payments, but a…

Arguing that one-time payments with up-front pricing are exploitative is pretty silly. That's the basis for the entire economy since we invented money thousands of years ago. If it's exploitative then you're basically lumping all economic transactions into the same bucket, which makes it fairly meaningless.

> That's the basis for the entire economy

this close to getting it

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#556

Post by jcelerier »

kilgnad wrote: post #137
klaussilveira wrote: post #19

Heh. I'm pretty proficient in modern C++, and it is my favorite tool for a lot of things, but my PHP job pays way more than any C++ position available. Did an interview once for Senior C++ Engineer, embedded software in the medical device space. All went good, until the offer: $100k. Articles like this are nothing more than a desperate attempt at getting younger generations to learn said topic, so companies can pay t…

I'm curious about why. It seems like the economics of supply and demand should make it so that C++ roles pay higher. There's less C++ devs, C++ is harder, demand is still high. Why are the salaries low?

Are there really less? In the school I did in france you leave having some experience in c, c++, java, some python, some lisp.. not js or rust

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#557

Post by orf »

mort96 wrote: post #551
orf wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really, truly not familiar with the idea that the finance industry stereotypically requires long hours and values work over all else, at an institutional level? OP could have spelled it out, but in any communication there is a level of shared knowledge. When you read a comment that you understand to be complaining about making nearly a million dollars whilst working 9/5 in the office, a more charitable path w…

When OP wrote they were required to work in the office 8.5 per day, I assumed that they were required to work in the office 8.5 hours per day. I agree with the other guy, if OP meant to claim they were required to work 16 hours in the office per day, they should've spelled that out and not relied on people to guess.

They are required to work 8.5 hours a day. They are unfortunately, like many other jobs, expected to work more.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#558

Post by mort96 »

orf wrote: post #557
mort96 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When OP wrote they were required to work in the office 8.5 per day, I assumed that they were required to work in the office 8.5 hours per day. I agree with the other guy, if OP meant to claim they were required to work 16 hours in the office per day, they should've spelled that out and not relied on people to guess.

They are required to work 8.5 hours a day. They are unfortunately, like many other jobs, expected to work more.

I understand that, yes. But that's not what the original comment says. If the complaint is that ~16 hours is expected, the comment shouldn't focus exclusively on the fact that 8.5 hours is required.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#559

Post by nostrademons »

bobsomers wrote: post #384
nostrademons wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask most financial institutions they would say the service they provide is "liquidity" - they let you put your money in or take your money out at any time (in exchange for securities), as well as make decisions about where you want to allocate your capital based on your personal view of the world. This always fell a little flat to me (hence why I left the financial industry early in my career), but it's pretty…

> If you ask most financial institutions they would say the service they provide is "liquidity". I've honestly never understood this. Economics 101 teaches us that artificially manipulating supply (liquidity) is at direct odds with a free market's ability to do price discovery. If there is effectively infinite supply of any security (because all these high frequency firms are instantly hedging out the risk against th…

HFTs and other market makers are time- and risk-shifting supply & demand. In a functioning market, you can always find someone else to take the other side of the trade if you wait long enough, but you may not be able to find them now. Particularly in market panics, where all the buyers tend to disappear at once.

What a market maker does is say "Sure, I'll take the other side of the trade - right now, at this price, even though I don't actually need or want the security. And I'll take on the risk that I might not be able to find a counterparty later. I trust my knowledge of the market enough to believe that the price I've offered you is one where I can profitably unload it later." And if they're wrong about gauging future supply & demand, they go bankrupt. Markets function on survivorship bias; repeat this cycle for long enough and the only market makers left are those that are extremely good at gauging future supply & demand and using it to set spot prices.

On some level, they're arbitraging risk & rationality. A retail investor makes a trade that is locally rational - perhaps they need to sell stocks to pay taxes, or purchase a home, or they've lost their job and need a savings cushion. And many of these events affect multiple people all at once (eg. everyone paying taxes on Apr 15, home sales peaking in the spring and declining in December, a recession causing people to lose their jobs all at once), which leads to temporary declines in demand that don't at all reflect the discounted value of all future cash flows of the stock market. Market makers smooth out these fluctuations, buying & selling stocks when it's globally rational based on the fundamentals of the companies and holding inventory when short-term supply does not match long-term supply.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#560

Post by valdiorn »

elteto wrote: post #550
valdiorn wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent poster explained this very poorly, but it's not as simple as "office hours are x to y". You are responsible for a trading system that's turning over hundreds of millions a day. If you're not in the office by 8am or whatever, that's not a "hey you were a bit late this morning" - it's a major "wake up the CEO the engineer on call is not present and we're not trading"! It's BAD. your train ran late? Doesn't matte…

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, that sounds rough. I do know that support roles in the finance industry hit _hard_ and the difference between one person's work environment can be the complete opposite of someone else in the same position in a different company, or even in the same company but a different team. I spoke with someone recently who is in sales for a large finance behemoth we've all heard about an…

I'm a developer in a quant role, and basically every job I've looked at in this market has similar requirements. See my other comment in this thread about the absurd support burden at XTX markets.

I was at Man AHL for 5 years after leaving GR and that is a pretty laid back company in comparison. I was not on a trade critical team per se, but some of our system were used for pre-flight checks. As such, if there was an issue the on call person got called at 5 am to sort it out. If not resolved within an hour or so, the cio/cro got called and had to decide whether to trade regardless or not. Thankfully not a common issue but definitely at least a call or two every time you did support.

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