

Ask HN: Has anyone made the jump from tech to finance? - gargarplex

I am interested in going from tech into finance.  The issue here is strictly related to compensation: I want to make more money, in cash, every year.  Has anyone made the jump?  I&#x27;m extremely strong with math and with web development, but I don&#x27;t have any C++ or R experience.
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NickPollard
When you say finance, do you mean you want to do tech in finance, or you
actually want to trade? Those are two different (though related) questions.

2 years ago I moved from the games industry into the finance industry. My role
now is varied and would probably come under either quant-dev, e-trading or
algo-trading, depending on how you look at it. I was hired with zero financial
knowledge, on the basis of my maths and computer science skills, and it has so
far gone very well.

I was lucky in that I had contacts in the industry; without that it is
probably harder, but it is definitely doable. If you've got strong maths +
computing skills then there are a lot of possible roles for you.

Web skills aren't terribly useful (although not worthless); a lot of things
are different in the financial world where for example correctness, latency,
etc. are much more important. Financial software tends to be written in either
low-level languages (e.g. C++ for execution stuff), or high-level functional
languages (Scala, Haskell, OCaml - see e.g. GSA, Standard Chartered, or Jane
Street). Some places use Python for analysis stuff, though R/Matlab are very
common too.

If you want to into an actual finance role (Trader, or to a certain extent
Quant (as opposed to Quant-dev)), that's possible but you'd probably have to
go via a technology role. That's your way in.

~~~
gadders
There are plenty of Line of Business apps written in Java and C# as well,
including risk management systems. The core quant libraries will probably be
C++.

I've seen a tiny bit of Scala, but not mainstream adoption. Python is pretty
popular in a few banks especially (EG BofA).

A lot of banking jobs ask for "Banking Experience", but not all. Also, I would
think doing a few finance/quant courses on Coursera wouldn't hurt.

~~~
NickPollard
Only one datapoint, but my current job is 90%+ Scala (Fixed Income, a multi-
national bank). GSA definitely use it and I believe Goldman are moving to it
as well.

It's not mainstream, but it's also not niche either.

------
bt3
Have you considered exploring opportunities that unite the two? For example,
in recent years, high frequency trading (HFT's) have been big business, as
well as the meteoric rise of automated investment services (AIS).

Betterment, Wealthfront, SigFig, even RobinHood... all are companies that
bring tech into the financial industry.

