[mr_00ff00]

I am a junior that does C++ currently for HFT. Lots of legacy code, although I don’t think the code is that terrible (although I am a junior so maybe I can’t tell).

Any reason why it’s a terrible path to choose? Am I stunting my growth? I was hoping HFT would help leverage me into a big tech company for systems level stuff since (at least I was told this as a selling point to get me to join) its tougher here so FAANG likes to see HFT experience. Is that not the case?

[mmmm2]

It depends on the FAANG, though most of them have some amount of C++ code. Google has a ton; they'll appreciate people who know the language well.

I think people may be concerned because these days it's more niche, though it's still a very common language. Take a look at the job postings from the companies you want to join and see what skills they want. Get familiar with some of them, even if you don't do them professionally.

Get good at the Leetcode style questions.

Are you doing distributed systems work? Can you answer design questions like: design bit.ly, Twitter, or Facebook? There's a lot of info out there on how to solve these problems.

There may be questions about your ability to work with "big data". But that's also something you can pick up on your own, even if you aren't doing it at work.

Look for technically challenging projects at your job and solve them. Learn from them. Think about ways you could have solved them better with what you know now.

[danpalmer]

> Any reason why it’s a terrible path to choose?

These reasons are not universally applicable, so see what fits your experience, but... code quality is often poor, internal practices often seem to leave a lot to be desired, company culture does not seem to be a focus, assholes seem to get rewarded.

You can probably get into big tech from it, but perhaps not at the seniority you might expect, or if you do you may find it a struggle to get onboard with industry norms around engineering process and company culture that are missing from a lot of finance companies.

[t14n]

Another junior eng here chiming in.

Base on what I can gather from my friends who work in the space (DRW, Citadel) it's just more stressful and has more politics than my current role (ML Engineer @ a retail company). Trading income for work-life balance and stress, and maybe OP is hinting that as you progress down that track the WL balance and stress only increase.

Just my 2 cents and why I didn't choose to pursue that path.