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I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
61–70 of 193 posts
Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#62Looks like OP did get a lot of fun though. Now it's time to gather everything and apply for the next hedge fund job -- as a contractor. Oh and I hope OP didn't get the time to pick all bugs for the ex company so maybe that's on his contracting list too.
Oh, but that's the problem: because their tenure at this "hedge fund" was so short, and the job market is so lousy, they've effectively been blackballed from finance.
Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#63Nobody deserves to be treated like this, but unless it’s in a contract in actual cash terms, treat all compensatory promises from your employer as Monopoly money. This goes for bonuses as well as equity payouts.
Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#64Count yourself lucky that you got out with your liberty. It's not unheard of for quants that try to leave to be criminally prosecuted and placed in isolated incarceration. Getting fired sounds pretty good, no?
Flash boys by Micheal Lewis.
I think the coder was arrested but it didn’t go much further than that… I don’t think it has happened again since the early 2010.
Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#65I just do not believe this story. Nobody in the right mind will fire key software engineer 48 hours after system goes live. This is where all the bugs/problems show up and you need all hands on deck to fix them. Six months after launch when all problems are solved - absolutely, you can fire engineer. 48 hours after launch? absolutely not.
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Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#66Been there done that. It’s better to get out, they will only ruin your algorithm with their lack of understanding.
Suits with an algorithm will eventually drive it into the ground in the long run.
Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#67>A typical week for me included working between 70 and 80 hours a week. I worked almost every weekend, and almost every day for the entire time, without a single day of holiday.
>I could have simply worked 40 hours a week. Had I done so, it is likely I would still be employed, still building the platform today.
>but have I snookered myself and made myself unemployable for working too effectively during my last role?
Was this really effective working.
Overtime, working weekends and no vacation isn't effective working just squeezing work time into a tight schedule.
That's the road to burn out.
Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#68Not to slight the author, but Rust seems like quite a hard language to learn on the job.
Starting with knowledge of another statically typed language, Rust really isn't that hard. Borrow checker gymnastics take a few days to get over after which one can get relatively productive. There's plenty of code samples on GitHub and mature crates to get going on the db and web layers.
As a primarily Python programmer, I did not feel over-burdened by learning Rust. Sure, I never learned how to deal with lifetimes, never wrote a macro, and probably used clone a few places where I did not have the need. I was almost certainly leaving performance on the table. Yet the language gives you so many guardrails that I always felt like my code was doing the correct thing.
Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#69I just do not believe this story. Nobody in the right mind will fire key software engineer 48 hours after system goes live. This is where all the bugs/problems show up and you need all hands on deck to fix them. Six months after launch when all problems are solved - absolutely, you can fire engineer. 48 hours after launch? absolutely not.
If it saves them a lot of money on paper, yes, they will just hire someone else
I built a system at an old job that as far as I know has been in operation for over 10 years, completely untouched. I left the company that long ago, interviewed about three years ago for another position in the same department, where someone disclosed it was still up and running, without modification. I’m sure someone had to read the code at some point, but they could have fired me right after it was built and suffered no great loss because of it. I guess I should’ve spent some more time overengineering the whole thing or introducing subtle bugs if I wanted job security, as I have seen others do.
Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
#70I just do not believe this story. Nobody in the right mind will fire key software engineer 48 hours after system goes live. This is where all the bugs/problems show up and you need all hands on deck to fix them. Six months after launch when all problems are solved - absolutely, you can fire engineer. 48 hours after launch? absolutely not.
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