80k base, 130k last bonus. I'm 2 years into doing mostly Java, Python and C++ in a hedge fund. I left a small non-finance software firm where after a few years I was on 25k.
That's quite impressive! I work in an investment bank (my team is the only one that sits on the trading floor) developing low latency systems in Java. I get around 65K pre-tax in salary and bonus is not even 10K (I have about 4.5 years of Java experience and started working on this job about 2 years ago).
I have been interested in moving to a hedge fund for a while and even had a telephone interview with one of them. I thought I did really well and it did seem like they agreed with me in their feedback to my recruiter but they also declared that "while I was an outstanding candidate, I was not what they are looking for and will come back to me once they have a more suitable role". I just don't understand what that means. From chatter with recruiters and friends, your best change of getting into a hedge fund is through personal contacts. Can you confirm this theory?
> From chatter with recruiters and friends, your best change of getting into a hedge fund is through personal contacts. Can you confirm this theory?
During the period I worked for a hedge fund, no one we employed came from a personal connection. They did have stellar CVs with very good academic or industrial track records though.
I'm thinking of moving across from a financial IT consultancy to a hedge fund. What are the hours like? I'm not that interested in working in a large IB (e.g RBS,CS pr ,MS) I've done that before and the work in that space is a lot less interesting now and has stagnated somewhat. I know this is a bit long winded but your skill-set matches exactly what I have but I don't have much opportunity to use it on a daily basis. Any comments or pointers will be really helpful.
My hours are pretty heavy: 55ish hours is an easy week, bad weeks can get a lot worse. It really varies team to team and I think a lot of people in my firm do 9-6 consistently, so if it's a dealbreaker then just ask about it explicitly during the interview. I'd definitely give it a shot (or a few shots, since the recuitment process is indeed a lottery)
I have been interested in moving to a hedge fund for a while and even had a telephone interview with one of them. I thought I did really well and it did seem like they agreed with me in their feedback to my recruiter but they also declared that "while I was an outstanding candidate, I was not what they are looking for and will come back to me once they have a more suitable role". I just don't understand what that means. From chatter with recruiters and friends, your best change of getting into a hedge fund is through personal contacts. Can you confirm this theory?