[smoothgrammer]

In finance you'll find low accountability for developers. Basically finance is where great developers go to get paid a lot to become horrible developers. Very few companies in finance are pushing the bar on quality code since they culturally cannot accept the cost of that. It doesn't make sense until it is too late and by then their code base is too entrenched.

I've seen this at countless finance companies, and from interviewing people across the entire spectrum of finance. It is a rare corner of the industry where you'll find quality engineering. Usually everyone in a finance company thinks they are amazing engineers, and are just plain wrong.

My advice: work smarter, not harder.

[HockeyPlayer]

At the proprietary trading group where I work, the three core developers own the company. And we care greatly about the code quality, as it is our money on the line.

[mdpopescu]

I can confirm this. I just wish I had known about it before I accepted my current contract...

[smoothgrammer]

Get out while you can.

[tbrownaw]

But is it enough to put a company that doesn't do that at a competitive advantage? Is this really just company culture and assumptions, or are there actual market forces behind it?

[smoothgrammer]

It is a mixed bag.

In finance technology is seen as a cost center, not a profit center. They want the minimum needed to ship. Early on this results in a lot of tech debt. Later on, fixing the system is too hard and thus they need to hire super smart people to figure out the mess they are in for any code change.

Enforcement actions are INCREDIBLY rare. The penalties are shockingly low. Thus the cost of failure to comply is low, and the businesses are not prioritizing compliance.

[mrchicity]

At a company like Tower, technology is their edge and definitely a competitive advantage. Having a system that is fast, reliable and scales is key to running a profitable automated trading operation. I worked for a similar trading company and technology was definitely not a cost center.

If enforcement actions are rare, it's probably because these firms are playing clean for the most part, contrary to popular belief. If you trade 5-10% of the market, regulators are going to audit you every year. They are looking for even the smallest issues to give a fine, even minor things like not having the right Head Trader's name on your supervisory forms after someone quits.