
Ask HN: Stay in west coast tech scene or join hedge fund? - throwaway91243
I&#x27;m a fairly senior data scientist&#x2F;machine learning engineer at a major tech company.  I recently got invited to apply at a major hedge fund, and decided to give it a shot.  It looks like I might get an offer, which surprises me, given how selective I perceive them to be.<p>Setting aside my impostor syndrome, what would I be getting myself into by taking the offer?  I can expect all of the typical perks of working at a hedge fund, but it would involve a move.  I have a family, but the move actually puts me much closer to my extended family.  I can assume that there will be more work, on a wildly uneven tech stack.<p>Has anyone been in a similar situation?  How did it play out, and were there any regrets?
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PaulHoule
Hedge funds are much more heterogenous than investment banks. Some of them are
very disciplined, other ones are overgrown family offices.

I know someone who worked at a famous hedge fund in Connecticut whose name
starts with B and ends with R. He told me they hire a lot of superstars and
put them to work doing things that leave them feeling underemployed even if
overpaid. He left. Like many places the dominant analysis tool is Excel and
lately they have gotten into desktop virtualization so that employees can't
walk off with laptops full of valuable data.

Other ones are more tech focused, I had a guy from Renassiance jump on me at a
vendor conference circa 2005 because I asked a question about "distributed
main memory databases"

Outside of finance I am a huge fan of the startup scene in NYC.

