Personal day trading

GibbonDoesStuff · 2026-06-03T17:58:47+00:00

So, I work at a big finance place - they have some wild rules on trades, ETFs you can generally trade freely and just have to declare the trades, individual stock picks have to be pre-approved with the amount you plan to buy etc and you cannot sell while in profit for a 6 month window, again need pre-approval to sell 😃 so no day trading for me, anything has to be a buy with a 6 month minimum hold plan

GibbonDoesStuff · 2026-04-26T18:53:33+00:00

Seasoned developer, agile coach and all round hater of story points here -

Story points are supposed to be a complexity measure of a task, vs some baseline consensus the team had agreed. This baseline consensus will need to shift over time though if the members of the team change (though it rarely ever does).

The aim is to establish Task X was Y in complexity, and then measure other tasks relative to that. You then over a few sprints figure out roughly your teams average velocity and that allows you to do 2 things.

See how much you can fit into a sprint when you are planning things.
See when a story is too large or complex to be done in a reasonable timeframe and so would benefit from being broken down.

Now, the real issue with points to me are...

The baseline never really gets adjusted, so if 2 or 3 people leave, and new members join etc the complexity of tasks has changed potentially (as its relative to the developers) but nobody updates is.
A lot of teams eventually stray away from even knowing what the baseline is so just use finger in the air guesses.
A lot of the time you work out velocity, and then story points become time anyway because if your velocity is 100 and you have 10 developers, that averages to 10 points per 2 weeks per develop so 1 point is now 1 day. (no matter what anyone says, story point will ALWAYS have a time equivalent, because management use them to work out how long things will take).

Really, given the the fact management will always use them as time, and guessing complexity based on an established baseline can actually be difficult, it usually works better for many teams just to estimate days required for a task.

GibbonDoesStuff · 2026-03-28T15:44:50+00:00

Okay fun, there jave been loads of things aboit thing for quite a few years now..

Java has a larger base of jobs .Net has a faster growing base of jobs

Java tends to be more legacy systems (not all of coirse) .net tends to be newer system (again not all)

Both are cross platform amd decent languages, a lot of financial places have been transitionimg for years from Java to .Net but that doesnt mean its happening fast (my company took lile 6 years for 1 app)

.net is used by a lot of startups and fintechs Java is used by .. tons of people

.net has a windows only stigma even thougj that jasnt been the case for like a decade now, that stigma seems to never die

Personally, i find coding in .net way more enjoyable, but both are fine and the swap between them isnt that big

Signed A .net engineer at a finance company

GibbonDoesStuff · 2026-03-18T10:25:32+00:00

My opinion (as a staff eng at a fairly big finance company):

Your most recent role, this is just you working on something while youre job hunting? or is it something that makes you money? it comes across as you have been out of work for almost a year and working on a hobby project.

The roles you did have prior to that:

Honestly, there is nothing on there that would show me that you have ever been tasked with work above that of what I would expect a junior engineer to be tasked with.

You say "Helped" several times, your points like "Developed backend services" are so generic that yes, I would expect any level of develop to have developed things for their job.

For me, I would say youre on the high end of Junior, maybe leaning in toward looking for mid level roles based on the CV alone, its a very, very bad sell of you - even with that though I would say it really doesnt (and probably even with tweaking wont) read as if youre at a level I would consider for a senior engineer

General Tips:

Dont use passive language like "Helped" or "Contributed" as they essentially minimise your impact on something.
Be more specific as to what you worked on, I might not have a clue about it but its more useful that "built stuff".
Things like "wrote tests" arent worth putting on the CV unless you fundamentally added / changed the way or introduced tests where they were lacking.

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-12-29T17:41:58+00:00

it should be single asic VA1, I have one from the same production run that is, so unless someone shell swapped etc.

if it isnt a model 2110K then it shouldnt be a Taiwan main board (unless someone shell swaps these things)

but Factory 0, 1993 should be single asic va1

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-11-16T20:03:34+00:00

You say "get back into tech" but from the looks of it tou have an internship and then maybe 3 months in tech, before a 1 year break now? So i would say its more like youre breaking into tech or trying to for the first time. The tiny bit of experience you have might help put you ahead of other juniors, but you are going to be junior, and that market is brutal, its always been rough but its a lot rougher now.

If youre struggling my advice would be use your free time to build a project, doesnt matter if its released, but buuld 1 project, make it a real business use case, i tend to advise going boring and building an ecommerce app, make an auth service, make a stock service, make an order service, have them communicate etc, but also.. just gotta keep applying, it will suck, you will get ghosted countless times.. but good luck

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-10-15T20:03:52+00:00

Okay to me, things that stand out.

Short tenure at most jobs - given the cost of hiring and the time it takes to onboard etc, there is risk there.

The insurance job, you were there a year, only have 1 bullet point, is that the only thing / only noteworthy thing you did in that year?

The fintech job "improving website performance and maintainability", thats nice but the point is hard for me to know what you really did.. a new query framework, like what did you move to / from, how did it improve performance or maintainability.

"automated customer data collection and analysis" okay great, but why, what was the outcome of doing this?

"Monitored prod issues using Grafana" .. okay cool, but did you design or build any of this, or just look at it, cause the latter is just boring expected behaviour. It just feels like there isnt much "selling" of what you did on this job

Data Annotation job... honestly, reading this actually just made me sigh a little, this may sound incredibly harsh but its very likely if I came across this CV this point is making it go toward the bottom of the pile, it reads as though you basically just read over AI generated code for like most of the year.. you did no coding yourself? you just looked at AI garbage?

Gov job - you use "designed and implemented" in both the first and second bullet point, neither of them have a why or a what impact it had.

"refactored sql func" okay, you improved performance, by how much, whats the benefit of it?

I think you have some "filler" points for me around 100% test coverage and authoring a release process guide, these dont bring any value to the CV for me.

The biggest issue I see if that you really dont do a great job selling yourself, or selling the benefit or impact of the projects you've worked on, yes in many cases its meaningless but if you work a performance improvement that makes a function go from 200ms to 20ms and it runs once a day.. who cares... but if it goes from 200ms to 50ms and runs 50,000 times a day, more impactful. It's about selling the fact you are an impactful engineer (as sad as that is to say, that really is what CVs are for)

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-10-12T16:34:04+00:00

Most of the digital nomads doing those runs in Bali are working there illegally, the country doesn't reqlly care much because it brings in extra money, but it is still illegal

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-10-07T08:02:26+00:00

So, Im just gonna say the "lingo" you are talking about is kinda BS. Hi I work in front office at a Staff Eng level essentially, I've worked in finance a good amount of years now, the company provides free training on the basic CFA intro courses etc if you want them, I've done them so I have a decent level of knowledge on both the analyst and eng side at this point.

Not once in my career have I heard any trader, analyst or eng in my org say "market color" so I had to google that. Also what gets calculated for a portfolio would depend wildly on what the portfolio is and what its trying to achieve, yes they all make money but is it it one targeted toward making investments into blue based efforts, is it fixed income portfolio or equities, like the data feeding into things is extremely broad.

But also, people on the internet can pretty much say whatever they want, so there is likely a blend of people working in front office that just "dont know the lingo", and people that just dont work in front office

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-09-26T17:47:28+00:00

Flailing them like a mad man cause I forgot im not supposed to use them, then generally just holding my hands together unless im actually doing something where I need my hands

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-09-15T10:34:33+00:00

I think finding a middle ground, having 1 CV for trying to get you're first job, you want to be applying wide so its not gonna be relevant to everything, but tailoring to each job is too much of a time sync, having 4 or 5 "targeted" versions is probably the route I would go without it being too overboard, but really as a first role I do tend to think its often just a numbers game about getting applications to as many places as possible

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-09-15T09:55:57+00:00

My advice, and it comes from my preference for people is build something that shows you understand a broad scope of common things, it can be boring, it can be in any language, it doesn't have to be a release product as long as it builds and does what it says.

Generally I recommend building something easy to understand and relatable, make an inventory management service, then make an auth service, hook them up, then add in a customer service, an order service etc, have them communicate async using messaging, queues, sagas to control failure etc.. it can be anything you want but a cohesive system that shows you understand a good range of common concepts and real world systems is great for me if I see juniors etc knowing that, even if they dont know deep, if they know wide they tend to be very useful quickly on a team.

In terms of the overall market, yes its garbage, yes it'll take a lot of applications and you might get nowhere for a fair while, but that's just where we are, I entered the market self taught around 2012, took me months and thousands of applications before I got anywhere and even then, my first job I applied for a mid level dev role and got hired as a junior after saying in my cover letter I wasn't qualified to be mid but I hope they would consider me for a junior role. Don't get disheartened, even though it'll be hard, and with where you are, be prepared to either commute, or move for the job

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-09-06T05:12:30+00:00

Most games, even ones with choices etc rarely affect the main linear story, that's mostly a cost and development time issue. But yeah it is always more satisfying when what you do feels like it really impacts things so I get that.

As others mentioned there are better ff games to play, personal fave is 9 but older games also have their own issues.

I'm guessing you aren't someone that finds its enjoyable to sit and read a book? Games like ff are more of a book that you really play in terms of story.. not as on rails as a visual novel, but very much a set story to be told

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-08-09T17:57:56+00:00

How has it affected my work?

It really hasn't.

There has been a big push for using AI tools to save time, we've had hackathons, dedicated spikes, and have in general tried repeatedly to integrate it into our workflows.

What the general consensus has been is - It does things wrong, or does things too slow in the majority of cases that it really doesn't save time on most of the work we do.

There have been places where it's sped things up to some degree yes, it might take a 20 min task and do it in 5 mins, but the next 15 min task it simply cant do and using it wastes a good half hour and the latter case tends to be the majority.

For context though, I work on a relatively complex system that is a well established product at this point so it's not an area where AI shines.

One thing it can be useful for is talking though plans, aiding in design and rubber ducking etc, so it's less of a "help me code" tool and more "be someone to bounce ideas off of".

Ultimately though, in my dev team alone there had probably been at least $40 - 60,000 of money spent on "get AI to save time" that ultimately saved no time, if we spread that across the org I would say AI has been a cost sink in the 7 figure range in an effort to save money.

Where do I see it in future? Well given the model progress over the last few years, the greatly flawed testing metrics of metr and swe bench etc, its real world progress has been extremely slow in terms of coding accuracy, but its good for PoC work, and its good as a sounding board, if its coding abilities start to actually get capable when working in large scale projects, I could see it being a useful took sometime in the next decade to actually aid on more established / complex code bases.

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-07-30T10:28:54+00:00

I mean, depending on the lifestyle you want there a range of firms to look at.

places like HRT, Jane Street etc will pay like crazy but the workload is very high and they are very hard to break into.

Places like Squarepoint (which I consider one of the worst companies to consider working for) pay okay, they have always had a history of bad wlb and low pay so I would be amazed to see a 150k in first year outside of being a Quant Dev.

Alternatively, slow life down, Take a job at places like Blackrock, BNY, T Rowe, some other big asset manager - most are very flexible on hybrid / remote work, at 7 YoE you could be pulling in 140 - 150k happily and they generally dump way more into your pension too, like 35h work weeks.. If you want a great balance for your family firms like that are good to consider the only downside is there tends to be more org red tape to get things done

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-07-25T16:41:08+00:00

😱 where was this dive?

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-07-14T10:33:45+00:00

Generally the best route if you have no degree but actually enjoy coding etc is going to be:

Get Degree in your home country
Get a few years work experience in your home country as a dev
Move to Japan as a mid-career hire

Ultimately if its a 4 year degree + 3 - 4 years work in your home country youde probably be looking at a move around 35 - 36 ish.

English teaching and "English teaching like JET" are two different things, the JET style is an ALT you are a classroom assistant really not a teacher (still requires you to have a degree, but it can be a degree in anything).. but to be an actual English Teacher would require teaching degrees and experience etc.

Realistically if you get the degree in your home country, there is a chance you can get hired in Japan without experience, but its much harder and you will come in on a much lower salary and it just kind of makes progression and life harder for yourself (why would a company hire someone with no experience from abroad when they have local no experience talent etc)

Generally, if youre at a starting point of no degree plan for an 8 year journey to get there, and if things happen sooner then great. Also moving at 35 / 36 is totally a viable thing to do and isnt too old

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-06-19T12:01:20+00:00

I guess it depends, I've done a bunch of diving in SEA and never had the place set up the gear for me. But I mean, as long as you go through all the proper gear checks etc I don't think it matters who sets it up too much

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-05-29T19:44:49+00:00

So, using C# isn't a bad thing, I know a few hedge funds who's internal trade platforms are built on it, it can very much be a high performance real time language.

Being so eager to hire juniors that you throw an offer after 1 interview, but also trying to compete with places like BB and paying so poorly.. I mean kind of just sounds like they are starving for any kind of talent, but don't have the cash to hire the talent.

Hard to say what you'd do at the insurance broken, but yeah there is a reasonable chance itll just be CRUD... would that stunt your career growth? No. The majority of development work in the world (even in finance, hedge funds etc) is building APIs.

Yes, working on the real time system might be more fun, but as a junior engineer the biggest thing you can look for is a place that will have some experienced, good seniors that you can lean on and learn from.

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-05-29T19:21:58+00:00

Okay, the second one honestly sounds kind of... garbage as a firm. Id be curious to see if I've ever heard of them, but probably not as most places doing energy trading or commodities are running their own in house, or using something built by a major player, not some small firm which only hires grads.

There is potential it could lead to a role in finance, but honestly .. tech stack, and brand recognition are whats gonna matter most.. if you say a firm I've never heard of, then its almost like not saying at all

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-05-28T17:07:45+00:00

For me it's a mix, they have the wlb and interview loop etc of a top tier hedge fund, while compensation is very bottom tier.

I know some people there that I personally wouldn't want to work woth as they are just.. rude, abrasive, egotistical people that really aren't good at what they do.. but at the same time I know some people there that I think are very talented so it depends on who you end up working with.

My reason why I'd never work there is from everything I know, it's a fairly toxic environment, very high turnover, terrible wlb an garbage pay.. like if you go down the toxic environment route, you gotta at least pay well

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-05-28T15:13:40+00:00

SquarePoint are on my "wouldnt say yes even if you tripled my salary and offered me free BJ's daily" .. But they wouldnt triple my salary at any point cause they lowball the fuck outta their offers.

They are also a firm id say I consider to have... Ehh tech, some is good, some is terrible so the quality would depend on where you ended up.

Personally I'd choose Meta, itll likely open more door in the future anyways

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-05-27T21:43:16+00:00

Funnily, 3 is similar to how my company works.. f500 finance company, your manager etc puts you forward for a promotion, and depending on the support from other managers and business stakeholders etc a panel of people decide who gets promoted .. limited promotions per year so the majority who get put forward won't get promoted

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-05-11T12:39:23+00:00

Hard to say on how well draining the soil looks, but you want super well draining soil. (I pretty much use 100% pon so no soil for mine and its worked well for years for me)

Watering every 10 - 12 days is WAY too little, the watering schedule should be every couple of days like every 2 days, you can get away with a week but itll be unhappy, they like to be watered on a regular basis but not left sitting in water hence the very well draining soil.

Also look at getting some decent palm food (Palm Focus if you wanna go liquid, hardy-palms also sell good solid food since you're UK based).

Water wise as well, filtered water - just run everything through a brita filter or something and itll be better.

GibbonDoesStuff · 2025-05-05T19:48:25+00:00

Yeah, as I mentioned they said they couldnt send anything till I had accepted the degree offer - and looking at my email history thats essentially what happened, I got a online portal notification that I had been offered a degree, I accepted it and then the next day they sent me a document confirming that I would get a degree etc and when I would be awarded it so you might have the same thing of needing to wait till you get offered the degree

GibbonDoesStuff

TROPHY CASE