
Why I learned to code instead of pursuing a career in finance - PopArtsss
https://medium.freecodecamp.org/why-i-learned-to-code-instead-of-pursuing-a-career-in-finance-d5ef437c6922
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weeksie
For me software dev is the perfect mixture of money and freedom. In fact, I am
hard pressed to think of a profession that offers more personal freedom.

I don't make as much as my finance bro buddies, but they work A LOT. And they
work year round. I work six-nine months at a time (maybe a year if the
contract is right) then I take at least a couple months off.

If I was a career/full time guy, finance would probably be the better choice,
but as someone who spends his life trying to maximize the _life_ part:
software really does it for me. It helps that I love doing it, for sure, but
tbh finance is a complex, challenging field that's quite technical and mathy
so it would likely be fun as well. Except for the people, many of the people
are, uh, tough to be around. Not all, but many--still, tech bros aren't
exactly the easiest either. Glass houses.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> In fact, I am hard pressed to think of a profession that offers more
> personal freedom.

As a translator in Eastern Europe, I feel like I have a lot more freedom than
the software devs here. I can work as little as 2-3 hours a day and pay all my
expenses and save for the future. The job is remote by its very nature, so it
doesn’t matter whether I am in my own country, or I am traveling in Patagonia
or Madagascar. I am able to dictate deadlines to my clients, I don’t have to
work to their schedule. For example, If a job will only take me half an hour
to do, I can tell the client that I can return it in one week, and in the
meantime I can travel or whatever.

I do some coding as a hobby and occasionally visit the programming language
etc. meetups in my hometown. The software devs there make around the same
amount of money I do each month, but they complain of the 9 to 5 routine,
office politics, and how unhealthy it is to spend all day sitting in front of
a computer.

~~~
weeksie
That's a fair point. My feelings on this might be very US-centric since we get
paid a lot more than our counterparts elsewhere.

Translators def have a solid situation, I met a translator last year when I
was traveling and she lives that digital nomad lifestyle, works a charm.

------
flavio81
Here it's the opposite; i have a full degree in software engineering and over
13 years of doing it professionally, yet some Finance graduates, friends of
mine, are earning much more (i.e. as CFOs of companies);

Sometimes i think i should have studied Finance instead!

The reason i do this (all software related activities) is because it's my real
passion. I see many people engaging in "coding" bootcamps but only because of
the market demand, not because they are passionate in any way about doing it,
which is sad.

~~~
emodendroket
This is just about the only professional career I've heard of where people
talk this way. Who goes into accounting because of their passion for
bookkeeping and tax compliance?

~~~
ska

       This is just about the only professional career I've heard of where people talk this way...
    

In my experience: Nearly all doctors will at least claim it as part of the
reason. Many (most?) lawyers. Most teachers. Most academics. All social
workers. The list goes on and on.

In fact my first choice for counterexample would be your example -
accountants. But in my experience they are often passionate about proving a
helpful and necessary service, eve if they aren't passionate about the work
itself.

~~~
sandworm101
Just because we don't feel any great love for spreadsheets doesn't meant
nobody else does. I've only known two professional accountants but both enjoy
what they do, not just the externality of providing the useful service. They
like working with the numbers and rules. People called me weird at law school
because I actually liked tax law. I'm fascinated by the interaction (aka train
wreck) of public policy hitting financial ground truth. I would real tax cases
and laugh out loud at some of the insanity. Just because something isn't
popular or widely understood doesn't mean there aren't people who enjoy it.

~~~
emodendroket
Find it tolerable, maybe even like it? Sure. Show me someone who would do
taxes on their own time for fun. I've sometimes heard it said that the main
reason people decide to go into auditing or tax is they couldn't stand the
other one.

For that matter, let's talk about a closer career to ours. How many people who
are system administrators complain about relatives asking them for free
consultations? Would that be an issue if they just loved configuring and
troubleshooting computers so much? Even if you like computers a lot, what you
get paid to do with them isn't necessarily fun.

------
dogruck
The good news is that now you can use your coding skills to have a career in
finance.

~~~
bwanab
The good news is that now you /need to/ use your coding skills to have a
career in finance.

Almost all the young finance professionals at my place do a non-trivial amount
of coding.

------
lloyd-christmas
I worked in finance for 6 years before switching to software. I worked almost
80 hours a week as a discretionary equities trader. I realized that it was
starting to be eaten by the tech/data-driven styles, So I took up software so
that I could get a more competitive edge. Now I work webdev at 50 hours a
week. Those 30 hours a week is a lot more significant to me than the pay cut I
took by not going back into finance. The great part about it is if I REALLY
want to go back into finance, I have both sets of skills. It never hurts to
gain skills in areas where you don't have a formal education.

~~~
darkhorn
> 80 hours a week

So, you were either in the USA or East Asia, wern't you? I guess you were not
in Europe.

~~~
lloyd-christmas
Yes, I'm in NYC. I was typically at work for the european and US market hours
during earnings season.

> I guess you were not in Europe

EU labor laws don't actually prevent those hours, if that's what you're
implying. Most of my banking buddies in Europe work 70 hours.

------
bitL
Trends are: finance is being eaten by software, software is being eaten by
machine learning. The question should be "do I study machine learning?".

~~~
freyir
Software eats finance because it’s making traditional finance jobs obsolete.

ML does not eat software in the same sense, because ML and software engineers
generally do non-overlapping work. ML involves analysis, software involves
synthesis.

There may be a day when ML automates software development, but it’s nowhere
close yet.

At most, ML is merely dominating current hype among software-adjacent
technologies (along with block chain).

~~~
bitL
> because ML and software engineers generally do non-overlapping work

not in the mainstream right now. Check back in 10 years.

~~~
downrightmike
It'll be either ML or nuclear winter. Heck, maybe both.

------
silassales
It was mentioned in the article about the lack of formal education
(specifically within the field of study) within software development. I would
be curious to see what this would be like for a HN audience? What is
everybody's story of how they got to where they are?

