
Wall Street's Frantic Push to Hire Coders - applecore
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-28/wall-street-coders-wanted-elite-college-degrees-not-necessary
======
smpetrey
Well, if any Dev Leads or HR Managers are reading these comments, you could
start by getting rid of the Taleo (or even worse iCIMS) Career search engines
from your career microsite. [1][2]

These are awful to use and often require a new profile per company to apply,
so applying to a few companies could take hours depending on the work
experience required to fill out.

For godsake, enable the quick-apply feature of LinkedIn so your applicants
don't have to spend hours labouring over your custom application. [3]

Make recruiting easier for prospective applicants and HR with something like
Greenhouse. [4]

[1]
[https://jpmchase.taleo.net/careersection/2/moresearch.ftl](https://jpmchase.taleo.net/careersection/2/moresearch.ftl)

[2] [https://careers-
fidelitylife.icims.com/jobs/search?hashed=-4...](https://careers-
fidelitylife.icims.com/jobs/search?hashed=-435774178&mobile=false&width=1110&height=500&bga=true&needsRedirect=false&jan1offset=-360&jun1offset=-300)

[3]
[https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=Bank+of+Americ...](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=Bank+of+America&location=New+York%2C+New+York&trk=jobshomev2_2boxsearch&orig=JSHP&locationId=)

[4] [https://www.greenhouse.io](https://www.greenhouse.io)

~~~
mundo
Agreed! Every time I'm hiring, I insist that my job posting has a "email your
CV directly to the hiring manager" link, and it astounds me how much push-back
I get.

It boggles the mind that a company can devote half a dozen designers to
optimizing the experience for potential customers, but for potential employees
it's "Well, HR says you have to fill out this form, and I guess what they say
goes."

~~~
amorphid
Former recruiter here. It is hard to help a hiring manager who insists on
getting emails directly to their inbox, as it cuts the recruiter out of ths
loop. As soon as you aren't on top of your email, it breaks. Think sync vs
async.

Sharing an email account (devjobs@mycompany.com) scales is nicely for a few
jobs with light candidate flow. It can start to break down when trying to
organize things in a meaningful way for all parties, but mildy disciplined use
of a Gmail account is pretty solid when compared to much heavier solutions,
like Taleo.

Due to the large number of administrative tasks (posting ads, scheduling
interviews, etc.), the walled garden platforms that refuse to give you (and
each other) decent API access, and the number of relationships to stay on top
of, there's really no substitute for good someone who stays on top of it all.

As a hiring manager, if you insist on managing the process end to end, you're
the recruiter, too :)

~~~
altano
An email can actually go directly to you AND the hiring manager. We have the
technology.

~~~
amorphid
In one email account, you can see replies. With two accounts, you get zero,
one, or two replies, and no one knows who said what to who. And mailing lists
get kind of spammy, but are certainly a manageable option.

------
chollida1
I can probably give some color to this.

Wall Street banks used to be a very good spot for programmers due to:

\- big pay, this was often enough to not need more benefits

\- what you often got to work on was very interesting

\- hours worked tended to be no where near what they were in the hedge fund or
startup scene.

They also leaned heavily on credentialism for hiring signals, mostly through
where you went to school and secondarily by where you worked before.

Banks have found over the past 10 years that they are no longer a top choice
for the best STEM students any more due to a number of factors and hence they
have to move down the food chain.

Specifically:

\- shrinking size of most of these banks due to decreased profits for the sell
side firms

\- shrinking pay due above.

\- The tech scene and buy side, hedge funds, offer better pay, more
interesting work, and much better career upside(moving up in the sell side
anymore is cut throat due to shrinking head counts and bonuses).

I know next to nothing of hackerrank but anything that helps opens up the
hiring pipeline is a good idea.

As to pay being partially based on bonuses. I mean this isn't going away, and
if you don't like it, then you probably won't work in finance at all. Its
analogous to startups. You may still get a great base salary, but options will
always be a decent portion of your salary.

If you really want to get angry at bonuses. I've had recruiters tell me that
many hedge funds have a cut off of $500,000/year bonus for looking for
programmers, ie they won't interview programmers who haven't had a bonus of
more than $500,000 in a year as they feel it provides one of the better hiring
signals. You'd think this would stop them from hiring but there are alot of
programmers in the HFT scene who easily pass this bar.

~~~
pavlov
_I 've had recruiters tell me that many hedge funds have a cut off of
$500,000/year bonus for looking for programmers, ie they won't interview
programmers who haven't had a bonus of more than $500,000 in a year as they
feel it provides one of the better hiring signals._

Sounds as ridiculous as Hollywood casting.

Seems like this would create a "Moneyball"-style opportunity for a hedge fund
to actually invest in tech management, hire more objectively, and build a
development team that's composed of talent that works well together rather
than a random cast of prima donnas who won't get out bed for less than $1MM.

~~~
st3v3r
"than a random cast of prima donnas who won't get out bed for less than $1MM."

I mean, if I've already gotten that, why would I want to go to your company
for less?

~~~
vehementi
Because Moneyball would correct the $ that is being offered to you anywhere

Also it's more about using better techniques to identify talent

------
matt_wulfeck
_So last year, Furlong, 30, enrolled in a three-month coding boot camp that
uses HackerRank, a web platform that trains and grades people on writing
computer code. After earning a top ranking for Java developers globally,
Furlong was hired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in December for its two-year
technology training program._

So many questions here. If you're doing a bootcamp and scoring among the "top
java developers globally" then you're either exceptionally talented, your
bootcamp is the most amazing thing in the world, or your sample set of "top
java developers" is absolutely _terrible_.

~~~
rampage101
Yea this article seems like an obvious promotion for Hacker Rank and boot
camps in general.

Nobody is becoming a "top ranked" Java developer in 3 months.

I say this as somebody who spent many years developing in Java, and I was not
even close to being the best on my team.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Agreed - I'm an old hand at C and C++, but it'd take me ... 3 mo. to half a
year or so to really get a good grip on serious Java.

Don't get me wrong - I've used it ( but not extensively ) and it's not scary
or anything, but there would eb a few things what would take some
woodshedding.

Even then, there's many, many more than one way to use Java.

------
southphillyman
Interesting. About a year ago JPM sent me a link to a HackerRank (or something
like it) session with a couple of dynamic programming problems in it. It was
late at night and I didn't know what to expect. To my surprise the webcam
turned on and started recording me (I was shirtless). I panicked and shut down
the session expecting JPMorgan to bypass me for quitting the assignment. Lo
and behold they still wanted to move forward and I eventually was offered
after an onsite. I declined because I had a better offer from another bank and
the environment at JPMorgan seemed very worker bee'ish. I would be working in
that massive new building right now, 2000 developers at 1 site in Delaware
sounds exceptional to me.

Wall Street/banks get a bad rep for a lot of reasons but you can still do
"modern" development at some of them and the pay is not bad for the east
coast. The project JPMorgan was hiring me for was "modern java" fwiw. I'm
currently at a bank doing full stack "modern java" of the JHipster variety
essentially (Spring boot, java 8 , angular 2).

~~~
arcanus
> the pay is not bad for the east coast

Do they still insist on a mediocre base salary with completely not guaranteed
annual bonus lump sum?

If you are a trader this makes perfect sense, but I've never quite understood
it for programmers.

~~~
southphillyman
Not sure about new grads, but experienced compensation can vary. Not unusual
for sr. devs to get $200k+ in places like Wilmington DE. So I imagine the
packages in Manhattan are on par with SF tech giants if they want you bad
enough. My bonus last year was significant given the fact I was only employed
there for 1 or 2 eligible months, so I have high expectations this year. I
worked at a mutual fund company as a contractor and the employees claimed to
get bonuses of $30k+ and this was for testers and normal rank and file...not
even developers.

~~~
soulnothing
I live in Wilmington de, and intervewed with a number of the banks. It was a
chore to get them to talk above 100k. Any more info on those rates?

~~~
southphillyman
I can believe that. JPM wasn't really eager to meet my other offer (firm not
in DE). 2010ish I worked in DE on a team where the majority of Sr/architect
guys were getting 200K+ for basic Java/Spring/Hibernate stuff. They were
recruiting nationally and bypassed alot of candidates during interviews fwiw.
It may depend on the particular project.

------
etf-to-mark
Isn't this just a puff piece for hacker-rank? The banks have been hiring
'coders' for decades now. Most of the technical front office folks have at
least the ability to code, if not the time to do it. Last time I was in an IB,
working on synthetic equity desks, everyone there used to code, often tossing
it over the fence to IT to get it "productionized" (read: wrapped in red tape,
slow down the change rate, etc.).

~~~
confluence
Pretty much. Ever notice that anytime anyone wants to "fix" hiring they end up
developing systems that are just cancer.

If you can't figure out if you want to hire someone in < 1 hr talking to them,
you suck at hiring.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
I really disagree with that. You might not have time to have code written and
completed in that interview. You might have someone who just knows that
question but has limited knowledge, you might have someone who can code but
has an uncommon failure on your problem. I have interviewed tons of people who
can talk about technology but can't do it themselves. If you are hiring people
for a coding job, they have to code. People who say they are architects or
first level manager will have a really hard time doing a good job if they
don't understand the technology themselves (I guess its not impossible, but
its harder).

~~~
confluence
Like I said, you just suck at hiring.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
so what do you do to filter people out with such certainty? I worked at a
startup, and the ceo was dead certain he could figure it out in a short
conversation with someone, if they'd be good or not. he was certain we should
hire 2 people, i was certain we should not, i was right both times, he was
wrong. But I've been wrong before. Being certain you can do it in an hour
probably means you are overconfident.

------
chulk90
As many people mentioned below, including etf-to-mark, this really feels like
a PR piece for HackerRank, which is a _cough_ YC Company.

As a former Wall Street tech person, I know that JP's story here is overly
exaggerated (they're really rigid and still require 3.0 GPA from schools for
the two-year tech program they mentioned).

In addition, there are many other companies like HackerRank, and the article
fails to mention any of the complaints large corporations and candidates have
expressed so far (like you see in the comment section).

~~~
raverbashing
Anything with "Hacker" in its name gets my eyes rolling. It usually means
either "do some free work for us"

~~~
Practicality
"It usually means either 'do some free work for us'"

Your comment seems to have an off by one error. What is the other option?

~~~
raverbashing
Ah true!

Or it usually relies on an inflated (and slightly cultish) sense of self
importance to have a job candidate do a "dog and pony show" for a job opening.

"Company X is hiring hackers". I'll pass.

------
kelvin0
Anyone know what happened to Sergey Aleynikov (Goldman Sachs)? That kind of
story doesn't help my (already) poor perception of these financial companies.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov)

"Aleynikov was employed for two years, from May 2007 to June 2009, at Goldman
at an ultimate salary of $400,000.[4][8] He left to join Teza Technologies, a
competing high-frequency trading firm which offered to triple his pay"

~~~
hfsktr
The scary part to me is that he spent time in prison, had to use his savings
to pay for a lawyer because he couldn't work, and even though acquitted to
anybody who doesn't read all the details it looks the same way as not being
acquitted.

I can easily imagine that similar situations happen but for people without
enough savings to keep going and even then they may not have as high a profile
to have their reputation overshadow the headlines.

I feel like I am just shy of tinfoil hat territory but it's not the craziest
thing I have ever though of.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
He really messed up bad, though. You simply don't take code with you when you
leave, especially not at a finance firm. They _will not_ understand the
subtleties.

------
filereaper
I always got the feeling coders/programmers/developers were second class
citizens in Wall Street compared to the traders, bankers, quants etc...

Why join at all if Silicon Valley and core tech jobs have competitive pay?
What's the justification given equal hours of work/effort put on both sides.

~~~
jti107
this is true at the traditional banks/wall street firms...but HFT firms treat
their coders really well.

~~~
melling
Are there any good firms in particular?

~~~
hendzen
In the HFT space, here are some big names:

Tower Research Capital

Hudson River Trading

Jump Trading LLC

Note that these firms are typically considerably more difficult to get an
offer at than Google, FB, etc.

------
rb808
The article doesn't mention crushing bureaucracy, intense regulation, old huge
systems, outsourced everything.

Nowadays you're supporting a 10 year old inbred system trying to implement
some new regulatory project. No root access, often no access to production,
github blocked at the firewall, 4 releases a year, half the staff in India.

Plus wages are lower than 10 years ago

Yeah Wall St was great. Not so much any more.

~~~
mh_yam
Really depends on your team. I work on a small team in a huge investment bank
and we are working on new nice-looking apps. I usually don't have to deal with
audit, risk management, compliance, regulators, etc. When I do it's usually
minimal. We don't have root access but we have full access to production. We
release twice a week. I have to deal somewhat with India but it's bearable

------
confluence
So you see a high developer attrition rate, and go, I know, I'll fill it with
3 month code bootcamp graduates?

No wonder their attrition is so high. Apparently they are incapable of
observing the fact they are just an awful place to work, and instead of fixing
that, they just shovel more developers into their meat grinder.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
You make a cogent point - these behemoths will have inertia problems.

------
impostervt
“This is purely about skill,” said 28-year-old Vivek Ravisankar, a HackerRank
co-founder who used to work for Amazon.com Inc. “Most really good programmers
learn on their own and just continue to build their skills. Probably the
really good programmers are college dropouts.”

As a co-founder of the site, I wonder if he has any data to back that up.

------
madengr
My only take on the article (I'm an EE not CS), is that unless you go to
Stanford, you might as well just go boot camp. I guess degrees from all those
tier 1 research universities across the country are worthless.

~~~
clifanatic
I think a lot of people are going to disagree with you because they _want_ you
to be wrong, but my observation (as somebody who got a solid education and a
good GPA from a tier 100 university) is that in a lot of places, this is
absolutely the case.

------
isuckatcoding
Pretty much hate hackerrank

~~~
komali2
Care to expand?

~~~
pmiller2
Did you click the link? I despise these platforms as well, because they're all
just timed, algorithmic heavy, dynamic programming tests: almost completely
irrelevant to real-world programming, and devilishly difficult to get exactly
right. And that's _if_ you studied CS in school and got exposure to this stuff
there.

~~~
zby
You don't need to test how well people do the easy stuff - even if the easy
stuff makes up most of their work - you want to test if they are able to do
the difficult parts.

~~~
sidlls
Most of the "difficult parts" have almost nothing to do with the kinds of
textbook algorithms and dynamic programming trivia these sites test.

------
dxbydt
There's like a dozen comments saying this is a plug for Hackerrank. Yeah,
that's obvious. What's not so obvious is that there are 1000+ YC companies,
none of whom get this kind of coverage on Bloomberg even if they bend over
backwards. Surely Vivek must be doing something right.

------
angry_octet
Thanks HackerRank, now I want to work as an anonymous cog in a behemoth bank!

What a silly puff piece for JP Morgan and the 'coding bootcamp' puppy farms.

------
jorblumesea
Lame article, just a plug piece for hackerrank.

------
josep2
I've given some thought to switch from being on the backend for SaaS companies
to working at a hedge fund or bank. I'm just not sure it would be a good
cultural fit and it might be hard to make the adjustment from the tech
standpoint.

------
losteverything
Any examples (anyone out there?) of old dudes coming back into tech after a
decade or so being hired by banks in this effort?

Wonder if salary and time off is worth a redive in.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Fellow old dude here - I'd measure ten times and cut once before I jumped off
on a thing like that. When it comes down to it, Vastly more people have
training in inventory management at some point than they do in tech, and if
you look past yer sell-by date...

------
droithomme
Looking to hire low skill "coders" instead of experienced professional
developers and engineers?

I see your problem right there.

------
azifali
What a BS of an article. Expected to read about Wall street trying to compete
for talent. Got a promo for hacker-rank instead.

Come up with something better than link bait guys.

