Finance Careers for Developers

Are there hedge funds or investment banks who treat quants/software engineers equally to the traders?

Programmers (top programmers) are also drawn to the enormous compensation packages and bonuses that financial firms were offering in the 2000s - top talent in statistics, mathematics, engineering and programming went straight into the financial industry - and a lot of those guys ended up as the VPs of their perspective departments. So I agree with what you're saying if you're thinking about traditional banking (the Big Five) but Hedge Funds are generally made up of highly analytical, highly qual

No idea about parent's background but in my experience those jobs are almost impossible to get if you are not already "inside". HFT is probably the most competitive part of finance for software engineers and the market is not expanding anymore. Same goes for other kinds of quantitative trading, but they generally pay less and are less competitive nowadays.

Perhaps you should look into the investment banking divisions who are more algo focussed or those companies who provide services to those firms. That way you will have the best of both worlds

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 Sim

You can go work for Jane street.

Learn Java or C++, get good at leetcode, and work in finance. You don't need to be a good engineer – these places are messes of legacy code created in fiefdoms run by people who care more about money than the engineering. You'll make a ton of money and feel poor because the quants will make far more than you ever will.In my opinion this is a truly terrible path to choose, but you will earn more than anyone in tech who doesn't win the startup lottery.

As someone who was a trader on a derivatives prop desk I would suggest those interested in finance with solid coding skills skip being a 20-year old's peon and:(1) Join a quant fund, e.g. Renaissance, Two Sigma, Citadel, etc., or,(2) Join a finance tech start-up, e.g. Palantir, Addepar, SecondMarket, Wealthfront, etc. who are liable to turn the industry over in the near futureBoth options require you be more than a "developer" (in the Wall St sense). Coding is a means by which to expres

This comment is tangentially related to the topic.Thomas and Patrick:First I want to thank you for trying to address one of the most frustrating part of a developer's career.As you know very well, after Silicon Valley, it's the finance companies in NYC area who pay top notch developer salaries. Even though I am a competent developer, it was quite a struggle for me to break in to the finance industry (They only wanted to hire people with finance experience). It took me a little

It's a crowded market, but not necessarily a lucrative one.I worked for a large investment bank, was paid well, but was also rather unhappy. I'm not a fan of office politics and also hated the fact that what we were doing was actually quite unsophisticated, yet we dressed it up like the most complicated thing ever to clients.We were using wavelets for analysing market micro-structure and using any generated signals to influence our trades. Wavelets were the topic of my thesis, so