[crdb]

Thanks to you both... that means a lot!

Funny thing is I started a few blogs anonymously, and they never really took up, and I stopped all of them within weeks of starting. But I keep coming back here because, well, a man is weak, and those upvotes mean something, that somebody read it and enjoyed it.

Somehow that "pays" more than the dollars I could have gotten consulting for the same amount of time it took to write it...

[M8]

Are you a developer or a trader? What do you think about desk development positions?

[crdb]

Neither - my co-founder and I consult over the whole data chain from tracking to recommendation engines and automation, and I write around 10% of the code, usually SQL and scripting; this finances our startup R&D better than taking funding in Singapore, which is only generous towards Singaporeans.

I think finance is a broad industry with a wide mix of experiences and competence and it entirely depends on which firm you are working for. I'd work in any position for someone like Jim Simons, Paul Singer or Seth Klarman, I'd probably try fairly hard (and tried fairly hard back then) to get in somewhere like Glencore, places like IMC or Tibra sound quite fun, but I'd hesitate to take up any kind of job at some of the smaller banks, startup funds or other dubious entities. Even some of the non-bulge bracket but global banks are seriously bureaucratic and technologically still in the 1980s (without the culture of proper engineering allegedly more common back then). Then there's the special cases: at Standard Chartered, you get to work with people like @donsbot which is fantastic for your technical development independently of whether you enjoy the industry or the company.

The money is good, but not that good. By specializing in something there is a lot of demand for outside of finance (say, "big, proper" dev ops) you can pull a lot more money than by being an average quant or the "guy who makes the tools for the traders", even if the best quants will pull large amounts of money. We interviewed dev ops people making north of USD 300k a year for managing less than 100 servers.

Lastly, a lot of business people in finance look down on IT; they see it as a commoditized industry with less intelligent people than those brilliant people who have "survived" markets and bring in revenue (one might make the same argument about them - the most often said thing on a trading floor is "would he make the same money without the bank's name on his business card" and "personality" and free lunches was never a factor in choosing the bank I'd trade with). If you can forgive them for that, wear your suit, swallow your pride and do what you're told, you can make an easy living in those places.