I'm pretty sure this complaint has existed as long as there have been programmer...

gte910h · on March 4, 2010

Last I checked, BOA in ATL couldn't find enough super good math/finance/C++ programmers, for instance.

btilly · on March 4, 2010

Of course to do that you have to live in ATL. And work for BOA.

Those were two excellent reasons that I had no interest when their recruiter came calling to ask if I was interested in applying to work there.

pw0ncakes · on March 4, 2010

And write C++.

jrockway · on March 4, 2010

It's because the people that are good with math, finance, and programming don't want to use C++ (or live in Atlanta). Remove the C++, and it becomes much easier to find people. Look at how successful companies like Jane Street Capital are in recruiting, for example, even though the pool of people that know OCaml is much smaller than the pool of people that know C++.

(My experience with people that know math and finance is that they do all their work in Excel. That's because simple programs become 100-file boilerplate monsters in C++ and Java, and someone told them that Perl and Python are not real programming languages. Sigh.

OTOH, turning spreadsheets into production software is profitable and enjoyable. Let the programmers program and let the finance people do finance.)

gte910h · on March 6, 2010

>My experience with people that know math and finance is that they do all their work in Excel

We are not talking the same sort of people. We're talking the type of people who require huge super computers to run their algorithms.

Maro · on March 4, 2010

I'm good at math and programming and all the stuff required to work as a quant and I'd much rather write C++ than anything else.

gte910h · on March 6, 2010

Well then enjoy: http://careers.bankofamerica.com/JobDetails.aspx?SearchPage=...

pw0ncakes · on March 4, 2010

I know a bit about JSC. They are brilliant at recruiting and have some amazingly smart people.

samratjp · on March 4, 2010

So where would it be in 2010?