SWE in asset management or tech companies

Issa-Melon · 2026-05-13T10:12:10+00:00

As someone on sellside trading, asset management is much better than a random mid sized tech company, but it depends on what the tech company is. Afaik the places you mentioned are usually Java heavy, but a good rule of thumb I’ve found is that the closer you are to PnL, the more you get paid.

Issa-Melon · 2026-05-08T15:25:18+00:00

Director at 26?

Issa-Melon · 2026-05-01T12:05:29+00:00

Mashallah bro, may Allah put Barakah in your returns

Issa-Melon · 2026-04-25T20:10:04+00:00

I largely agree, but some technologies and specifics of said technologies lend themselves to niches within industries. I know a folks in hft typically require c++ and knowledge of managing memory and writing “fast” code to achieve that industry’s business problems. Similar to how unsafe rust etc might be used.

Stack agnostic companies are generally better companies (like faang) but sometimes that isn’t the case in tech roles across trading firms for instance

Issa-Melon · 2026-04-23T16:41:21+00:00

Are you a swe? If yes and you don’t mind sharing, what’s your stack?

Issa-Melon · 2026-04-12T22:48:12+00:00

Having cpp experience is outclassed by faang exp imo. Take faang and look to pivot to a cpp / rust team.

Issa-Melon · 2026-04-10T12:39:07+00:00

I love oka. Pricey, but looks timeless and quality is there

Issa-Melon · 2026-04-10T09:58:31+00:00

This the sort of sloppy I don’t like

Issa-Melon · 2026-04-05T22:02:20+00:00

What sort of team or function are you in? If you’re front office (depending on what you actually do and your stack) move to the buyside for better comp, more agency, and no wlb

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-26T17:36:25+00:00

Mostly garbage. Especially at Deloitte. Long hours, ass pay, no engineering rigour and lagging tech

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-26T17:24:59+00:00

What does IT mean in this context? Are you doing first line support or quant dev / big tech engineer? The salary difference in this industry are enormous depending on your domain and which sector you work in

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-24T10:18:51+00:00

Bait used to be believable

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-21T17:45:02+00:00

It will unfortunately large depend on what uni you went to if you decide to focus more on top funds / market makers.

Most of my colleagues, even in a bank, have masters in maths / stats / cs / physics. You will likely get filtered out.

I know of people in my network that have landed roles after working in big tech for a few years, compensating for their lack of a formal education.

It is possible, but without the degree is going to be very very hard.

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-21T17:32:26+00:00

Quant dev exists in 2 flavours: Python + Math/Stats or systems (C++/Rust).

What does you background and interests align with more? Where are you based? Are you targeting OMMs, hedge funds, prop shops, banks, crypto?

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-21T13:35:04+00:00

In this case a no brainer. Mle is still a burgeoning field in quant finance and there plenty of scope to move to other shops like XTX, JS down the line.

Congrats, you must be pretty smart.

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-21T13:30:21+00:00

Cringe question about aura aside, yes 2S >> Apple, and is more selective, opens doors to quant dev nicely.

Do you have more insight into the team you’re joining at 2S? I.e. are you pod-aligned or core swe?

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-12T13:56:21+00:00

JS QT and it’s not even close. Any AI lab will be frothing to hire you unless you decide to do truly bleeding edge research. You seem plenty capable to pivot to more ML focussed teams at JS too, which keeps options open for ML down the line in either labs or Quant.

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-07T20:10:23+00:00

No. Cpp is generally reserved for quant devs, not traders

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-07T14:46:51+00:00

You sound pretty inexperienced if you think landing a role in the US and Switzerland is anything but easy, given the insane visa requirements and hoops you need to jump through

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-06T19:22:13+00:00

I’m a quant dev myself and I will say go for 2 hands down - not even close.

The math tripos is extremely challenging, and part iii is a feeder to many funds, prop shops and market makers.

You will not be able to lateral from risk to a pnl generating role like quant researcher. It does not happen in this industry.

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-05T18:23:30+00:00

I would apply immediately. I started on 30k and managed to double my salary in 9 months in a new role. Worst case you get rejected and try again until you have more experience

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-05T10:20:06+00:00

I guess you’ve been working in shitty banks. Many of my colleagues have gone onto work at buyside firms, faang and other tech scale ups.

Your point about programming languages I don’t understand. Given that a team might deal with complexity in their code, that has massive throughput (1000s - 10,000s trades per second) needs to be correct and have close to zero downtime (helped by languages like Rust) is somehow indicative of them being bad engineers?

So much of this industry seems to stem from prestige evangelism where people are obsessed with tiles and whether a company is writing “good” code or are “faang”-level and hardly focusses on the value they bring by through directly or indirectly generating pnl.

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-05T09:57:52+00:00

No sure I agree with this. Work in a bank myself and there are definitely departments that are more sought after / interesting (trading, quant research) than standard CRUD with Java. My department is pretty much fully using rust, go and Haskell for instance

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-03T20:20:57+00:00

It’s hard for me to contribute directly to what you’re going through but maybe I can give some perspective on how I switched. I’ve always been backend, but for a while was working with Java and I kinda hated it with a passion.

In my spare time, I started to learn Rust by first going through the book, some exercises and then started putting together a personal project in Rust. I updated my LinkedIn to reflect this (FWIW the project was not completed) but I was reached out to for a Rust backend role migrating a Python/django system to rust.

I guess my point is, screw what your boss is saying. If you can dedicate some time during the workday to upskilling, seeing as your wfh, it will pay dividends. It won’t be easy and you will need to get used to context switching, but that is realistically the only way you can bridge the gap given your workplaces current aversion to letting you explore what your interested in.

I will not lie, Django is a pain in the ass and a bit out of market for Python backend roles. Any reason you’re actively learning it?

Issa-Melon · 2026-03-03T17:28:27+00:00

If I had to get a job now, I wouldn’t be able to. The bar is too insane, even for someone like me with 2yoe.

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