

On the Move, in a Thriving Tech Sector - darrellsilver
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/nyregion/on-the-move-in-new-yorks-thriving-tech-sector.html?pagewanted=all

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droithomme
I am glad to hear that talented engineers are reconsidering careers in high
finance and leaving Wall Street firms for startups that actually produce
products that the public benefits from. It's good for them, and it has the
side effect of starving the beast of an important source of talent.

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marquis
Won't wall street then just start outsourcing development to start-ups (and
consequently, start-ups who focus on this lucrative market)? I don't see how
shifting the talent around will stop the finance sector from developing new
tech.

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DilipJ
It will be interesting to see if an aggregator like Yipit can succeed. I have
used their services and they do help reduce the clutter that subscribing to
multiple daily-deal sites tends to produce.

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darrellsilver
Perfectly-timed way to help people move out of Finance. A choice quote:

“If you ever read an article about an investment banker named Jim Moran
cutting mega-deals for some finance firm somewhere, please come find me,” he
told the man, “and shoot me.”

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igorlev
I think there's still a start-up stigma attached to programmers from financial
firms. Unless you have high-frequency trading, algo trading or some other high
end signal attached to your name, the assumption is that you are a cookie
cutter, untalented programmer.

That's really sad, as the reality of financial programming is that there are
lots of very smart, talented programmers working in back office positions.
These roles are actually the majority of financial firm development and often
require just as much technical knowledge and understanding as the flashy ones.

The flood of recently laid off developers who, unfortunately, are usually in
the bottom quartile is further reinforcing this stereotype. Not to mention the
push towards outsourcing actual development and pushing good employee
developers into management or supervisory roles that was the practice at a
majority of financial firms.

So while there are certain reasons that are behind this stigma, as is often
the case in these situations, it paints lots of good developers with the same
broad brush and actually hurts the start ups themselves as it restricts their
pool of candidates.

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marquis
>the assumption is that you are a cookie cutter, untalented programmer

What is it exactly that a finance programmer does? I've honestly no idea and
would love to know out of curiosity.

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igorlev
It would consist mostly of line of business applications. Everything from the
aforementioned high frequency trading applications to record keeping (stock
positions, cash balances, margin), regulatory reporting (tax forms, various
bank reporting requirements), interfacing with other banks and exchanges, and
lots of systems to handle the various steps of processing the various
financial transactions like clearing.

Since finance these days is pretty much just bits on a wire and in some
database there are a lot of requirements for redundancy, performance,
reconciliations etc. lots of things to make sure your money doesn't just
disappear. There's a lot of risk aversion for understandable reasons so most
development is in battle tested/supported technologies like Java, relational
dbs and C# more recently.

That is not to say that there is no cutting edge development as some banks
have developed their own programming languages, databases, and large amounts
of internal frameworks. From personal experience there's also a much larger
push for developer efficiency with adoption of dynamic languages, nosql dbs
and even practices like continuous deployment.

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marquis
So from a technical perspective it can be interesting, but perhaps ultimately
knowing all you are doing is keeping a massive finance system from falling
over, and processing data as quickly as possible, day in, day out.. may become
a little repetitive?

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darrellsilver
Personally, what grinds is not the repetition, but the realization that

1) What's the point, really? Most all finance is really just ... not useful to
anything. As an aside, Margin Call gets this point exactly right.

2) In most parts of finance, technology is a cost-center. Unlike other
professions, there are truly sectors where technology is king, and developers
impact the world around them.

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AznHisoka
Article aside, I still am skeptical about Yipit as a business. More and more
daily deal businesses will shut down as the industry consolidates, making
their research business less as time goes along. Which means they need to rely
on their lead generation business. But come'n.. 1% of revenue from a Groupon
multiplied by how many people? You will need millions of users... Plus more
consolidation = less need for aggregation. In addition, they'll suffer the
same problem as Groupon, which is deal fatigue. The open rate for their emails
will decrease as time goes along.

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darrellsilver
Don't necessarily agree -- How many airlines are there in Kayak?

I've never asked them, but I suspect the Yipit team, in a few years, won't
want their revenue dominated by this research business. But it's a hell of a
business right now!

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AznHisoka
the need to compare prices for airline tickets is a real problem, no matter if
there's 4-5 airlines. the need to find the best deal among 4-5 deal sites? Not
so much... deal fatigue is a real issue but traveling is something a ton of
people do daily. Aggregation is something anyone can do as well and I find it
hard to believe a sustainable long term business can be built upon this
model.. I mean seriously, take a moment to think about this without any bias?
A business? A legit business? Aggregation of deals?.. really? really?

