

Banks vs Startups: The Tech Talent War heats up - ig1
http://blog.coderstack.co.uk/banks-vs-startups-the-tech-talent-war-heats-u

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latch
In my experience, banks need a lot more than competitive job postings to be
places where talented developers want to go. Obviously YMMV, but it's red-tape
hell, technologically dated, management heavy, non-creative, and a real daily
grind. If it's the kind of job you want, you are much better off working for
the Government.

This is exactly what working for a bank IS NOT:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>

~~~
ig1
Finance is pretty much like any sector, there's a huge variety between firms
and even between individual teams within firms.

There are lots of areas of finance where technology is what provides the
competitive edge and they tend to be much more agile and use recent
technologies, but there are also lots of areas where the code that was written
20 years ago in Fortran still works perfectly fine and does the job.

~~~
latch
My understanding of technology as a competitive edge in finance is that:

1 - it's a relatively small part of the sector

2 - it happens in intervals

Specifically for #2, you can look at flash trading, where the edge exists for
a while, but then everyone more or less catches up..and it's a couple years
before the next innovation.

Some other complaints: -Bank incentives are almost purely monetary (which does
not work). -They tend to hire within the industry (it's an extreme place to
find technical and managerial inbreeding). -They are extremely arrogant and
prideful (making corrective measures hard to implement, since they aren't
identified)

~~~
ig1
It's actually much broader than just flash trading, essentially you can divide
it by which part of the bank it occurs in. Any front office tech (risk
management, pricing, analytics, trading) app tends to be on the competitive
edge as does anything it relies upon (infrastructure, feeds, tick databases,
etc.)

Back-office technology (settlement, reconciliation, etc.) tends to move much
slower.

It also depends on the asset class, more stagnant areas such a mortgages tend
to have more stagnant codebases than "hot" areas like FX.

Competitive areas aren't the same across all firms either, while one firm
might put a lot of money into it analytics technology another might ignore
that area altogether and just buy in an off-the-shelf solution accepting that
it's not going to compete in that area.

Essentially the only way you'll know about the quality of the tech you'll be
working with is to be smart and ask questions at the interview stage (this is
true for any firm).

~~~
calpaterson
> Essentially the only way you'll know about the quality of the tech you'll be
> working with is to be smart and ask questions at the interview stage (this
> is true for any firm).

Cannot emphasise how important this is. No one discusses how to navigate an
interview from the perspective of a potential employee.

------
stg
> \- A PhD or MEng in Computer Science.

If this isn't for a research-orientated position or a very technical
(mathematical) role - in which case, you probably want that to read PhD or
MEng in Maths or Physics - then why bother with this particular bit of
criteria? Since when does having a PhD or MEng make you a better software
developer?

~~~
jswinghammer
It's probably just a way of saying that they need more math and data mining
skills than your average software engineer with a BS or no degree at all.

~~~
AlexC04
Can you _really_ be a Software Engineer without a degree? Developer, yes, but
the term "engineer" has a certain level of professionalism associated with it
that an autodidact computer programmer wouldn't necessarily have.

For point of reference, check out
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring#The_Ritual_of_the_Cal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring#The_Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_Engineer)

> It is a symbol that reflects the moral, ethical and professional commitment
> made by the engineer who wears the ring.

I'm _not_ an engineer myself and I wouldn't presume to call myself one unless
I'd gone through the engineering training.

Am I being too pedantic?

~~~
jswinghammer
I'm going to go with yes you are being too pedantic. No one really knows what
to call programmers so we make up things to say. I write code for my company
so I'm the guy who makes things happen to some and to others I perform some
sort of dark arts.

I'm pretty good at making things work and bringing a lot of knowledge to any
situation requiring my skills.

Does that make me an engineer? Does my lack of degree disqualify me?

