

Ask HN: Working at Google or working for a famous hedge fund - durianrider

Dear HN community,<p>I&#x27;m currently about to finish my PhD in CS, focusing on machine learning applied to natural language processing. I started my job search &quot;just for fun&quot; when interning at Google last year. This eventually lead to an onsite-interview (while interning) and now to an offer to work for Google.<p>At Google I would have the chance to join a rather small team that is starting to build a new product---so I see some exciting opportunities there.<p>Then---just to see what happens---I sent an application to a very famous hedge fund (they claim to have 50% PhDs working for them, and they have a pretty famous fund...) and I just received an email that they want to talk to me about opportunities at their company.<p>So before going into any details with these guys, I would want to ask you guys: All salary differences aside (maybe you still have a comment on that?)---how is the lifestyle working for a renowed hedge fund? I know that the company is small, compared to Google, so does that make a difference?<p>Do you think I could learn a lot from these people, or will I end up trapped in this &quot;secret hedge fund society&quot; and end up being pretty sad, cocaine snorting, with some amount of money in the bank?<p>Any comments are very welcome!
Thanks!
======
mswen
Everyone will be different ... but my experience was that when I went to apply
my statistical skills to securities trading it ended up boring me. I keep
thinking that it is a good idea because where else can being "correct" lead so
directly to measurable spendable success. However, when I actually spent some
time doing it with my own capital I just didn't find my mind really energized
by the challenge. And, I found that active trading really requires time and
energy commitment that a buy and hold approach doesn't. This was many years
ago and the automated trading tools were too expensive for the amount of
capital that I had available. Maybe today would be different. Maybe a hedge
fund environment rather than solo trader would be better.

------
tmaly
I work at an automated trading place. A friend of mine that I worked with left
to work for Google. I had chatted with him a few months later. He said he did
not get to code as much new stuff as he did when he was my place. That being
said, he does not have a PHD in machine learning. I think if you went to work
in the robotics division of Google, that would be way more rewarding than
staring at securities prices all day long.

~~~
durianrider
cool, that exactly fits my case ;-)

does looking at stock prices all day make you feel dull in the end, or is this
really not that important to you?

Is there a lot of pressure build upon you in this field? I guess that would be
one of my biggest concerns...

