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Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

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Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#171

Post by vasilipupkin »

marvin wrote: post #169
robbyt wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dollar is massively over inflated in major US cities. Studio apartments in Manhattan sell for $800-950k. A loaf of decent bread costs $6-8. A beer costs $8 (plus tip). I know that Norway is also expensive, but is it this bad?

This isn't the whole explanation, unfortunately (I really want to understand this relationship). A beer costs more in Norway, a good loaf of bread would be $6 (although you could probably get a cheap one for $2-3), a studio apartment in Oslo would be $300k-ish. So the biggest price difference is in the rents, or the housing prices. I would probably increase my savings by a factor of five or more if I had a salary lik…

In Norway you get everything for free, education, healthcare, retirement, etc. I'm sure that's part of the difference

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#172

Post by lifeisstillgood »

cm2187 wrote: post #93
smallnamespace wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This, coupled with the fact that few programmers were trained in fields like stochastic calc, Anecdotally though, I've met plenty of coders who did this to themselves by refusing to learn more about the domain or the business. They basically silo'd themselves, then wondered why their colleagues didn't treat them as an integral part of the team when they couldn't speak the language or understand the concerns. Taught…

Couldn't agree more. I have met so many programmers in banking who seem to actively avoid having to learn anything about a bank, not even complex math. In theory, project managers are supposed to bridge the gap between the business and programmers, however my experience is that they usually understand neither the business nor the IT side, and are only adding more confusion. People with both knowledge of both worlds a…

what then is the best approach to learning how a bank works? where would one such programmer start?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#173

Post by gaius »

colordrops wrote: post #64
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I liked this article because the roll of the programmer on wall street has been going down recently from my perspective. Programmers used to work along side quants and were well respected. This was generally because practicing quants didn't used to be able to program. This was especially true in the 80s and 90's where programmers and quants where almost valued identically as one required the other to make things happ…

I apologize for the off the wall comment. Every time I read about wall street programming, I've got this subliminal voice in the back of my head wondering how anyone could find the motivation to do this work. I'm obviously revealing my biases against the financial industry here. Also, I'm unable to make myself do work if I don't see it contributing to some greater vision or cause. Are there people out there who love…

I just can't understand why anyone would want to put so much effort and skill into making bots for farming money for a bunch of questionable people.

Be aware that a large part of the Internet industry consists of persuading people to click ads, in order to enrich the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/technology/unsavory-sourc...

Does that float your boat?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#174

Post by marvin »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #171
marvin wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the whole explanation, unfortunately (I really want to understand this relationship). A beer costs more in Norway, a good loaf of bread would be $6 (although you could probably get a cheap one for $2-3), a studio apartment in Oslo would be $300k-ish. So the biggest price difference is in the rents, or the housing prices. I would probably increase my savings by a factor of five or more if I had a salary lik…

In Norway you get everything for free, education, healthcare, retirement, etc. I'm sure that's part of the difference

That isn't it; all the things you mentioned are paid through very heavy taxation, and all numbers we've been discussing are gross salary.

You could probably attribute a 14% difference through the "employer tax" which the US doesn't have (which is taken out of your paycheck before the gross salary number is cited), and arguably another 4% due to mandatory retirement savings. But it doesn't make up for it when the difference is 50%-75%.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#175

Post by vasilipupkin »

marvin wrote: post #174
vasilipupkin wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway you get everything for free, education, healthcare, retirement, etc. I'm sure that's part of the difference

That isn't it; all the things you mentioned are paid through very heavy taxation, and all numbers we've been discussing are gross salary. You could probably attribute a 14% difference through the "employer tax" which the US doesn't have (which is taken out of your paycheck before the gross salary number is cited), and arguably another 4% due to mandatory retirement savings. But it doesn't make up for it when the diff…

Yeah, but when you retire in Norway, you will be taken care of. Not so in the US, so you need to save for that from that extra 50%.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#176

Post by rch »

throwaway_hft wrote: post #123
rch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen claims of $1M base salaries in NYC, and seven figure bonuses are certainly possible (in HFT). $300K+ (incl. bonus) is no problem, but ML is less of a factor than FPGA and C++ experience.

I work in prop trading and I've never seen that kind of guaranteed salary offered. Maybe as a one time signing bonus to poach someone from a competitor. Typical base salaries for traders/quants/engineers are in the low six figures. I'm head of a small team running high frequency strategies. I control parameters/portfolio/risk, design/fit predictive models, code C++ for simulation and live trading, and spec out design…

Thanks for the details. Your depiction is in line with what I've seen personally, but the million dollar base promises did filter in after I left; not for me, but to pass along to people like you, probably.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#177

Post by rch »

praulv wrote: post #137
rch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen claims of $1M base salaries in NYC, and seven figure bonuses are certainly possible (in HFT). $300K+ (incl. bonus) is no problem, but ML is less of a factor than FPGA and C++ experience.

Complete nonsense. Plus note the intersection between FPGA dev and ML is likely to be practically zero and equally useless at quant firms unless you're in an AI firm building ML on chip. Far easier to go from FPGA to ML than the other way round.

You're right about the lack of intersection between ML and FPGAs. I should have used stronger language.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#178

Post by praulv »

otakucode wrote: post #54
chollida1 wrote: post #2

I liked this article because the roll of the programmer on wall street has been going down recently from my perspective. Programmers used to work along side quants and were well respected. This was generally because practicing quants didn't used to be able to program. This was especially true in the 80s and 90's where programmers and quants where almost valued identically as one required the other to make things happ…

Has offshoring ever been a significant factor in this arena? Given the profoundly proprietary nature of the systems being built, I would think that unlikely. Offshoring development is a good way to find your custom software reskinned and sold to a competitor without much legal recourse. Also, is 'mainstream' programming that common of a need? I had read (here on a HN comment thread) awhile ago that many organizations…

You are thinking of Q and Kdb which are used to process high throughput tick data.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#179

Post by mac01021 »

colordrops wrote: post #164
mac01021 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this sentiment preclude you from almost every programming job? It's almost always going to be about finding the optimal way to funnel money toward whoever is in control of your employer.

Yes, it took me about 20 years to find an employer I am happy with, and that included myself for a while in the list of those I wasn't happy with.

May I ask what industry you ended up in? I assume it's something that you feel is adding value to the world?

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#180

Post by arenaninja »

cyberpunk wrote: post #170
arenaninja wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not working on a fintech but FWIW I work on trading platforms for a well-known investment bank. Getting in was not particularly difficult but even with some experience you may need to network with someone on the inside to get your resume in front of the right recruiter, simply submitting your resume via the usual channels appears to be a crapshoot (though I had never applied here because I wasn't aware they were in t…

Would I be correct in guessing from your username that you work with FrontArena? It seems in-house coustomisation of those kinds of systems isn’t paid very well (although I know some murex guys who get paid quite a lot as consultants). What does the day to day look like working on these beasts? Are you in Europe? Most of the developers I know working on these platforms seem to be quite silod and not really involved w…

The username I have carried for some time since I used to play this bomberman clone called Teslatron.

I am not in Europe but a large chunk of the team I'm working with is. Divulging the name of the company is frowned upon, but it's one of the large full-service investment banks

Day-to-day is a lot like other jobs but projects are better managed than I have previously experienced resulting in less meetings for developers. Development can be faster-paced as a direct result.

News of $shinynew is discussed daily by developers (e.g.: React's license, React 16, Vue, etc.) but projects themselves tend to be more conservative as a matter of company policy. I can say the average developer on my team is more capable than the average developer at other companies I have worked with previously. People who are unmotivated will be moved to projects nobody wants (my observation)

Regarding editors, environments, tech events, HN, StackOverflow, etc.: participation is likely there but self-identification is a huge no-no

TLDR: It's not all rainbows and there are institutional challenges, but the tech side is not naive

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