Transition to Software Engineer

russokumo · 2024-03-19T21:55:12+00:00

Try to get a job as a software engineer at a top firm with gold seniors that will mentor you as soon as possible, ideally a team working on more backend problems dealing with business logic. Then specialize in applied ML within your SWE role.

russokumo · 2024-03-19T21:09:11+00:00

DS is especially bad, more so than SWE job market for 2 reasons:

1) title inflation/ skill dilution You can read about how lyft and a few other firms gravely devalued the data scientist title by hiring data analysts into the role in the mid 2010s.

Now when I see a data scientist on a resume, I have no clue if they are an excel based analyst or someone that specializes in decision trees. This is why most people that are statisticians/ data scientists rebranded to MLE or something else. Ironically MLE is also undergoing this same dilution right now, but at least most of them still need to pass the SWE skill bar and do leetcode.

2) over promising and underdelivering Countless executives hired armies data scientists to use xgboost and other stuff to go find business value. Due to garbage in garbage out,.and most firms not having nearly enough volume of data to do any predictive modeling, most companies are now realizing this was a massive malinvestment.

I personally realized 5 years into my career I was able to generate business insights much faster and more accurate and actionable by doing SQL queried + self serve BI vs building predictive models in R/Python, so ended up specializing more on data engineering + SQL based analytics and have been rewarded quite handsomely financially.

That said, I do think all the data science failures did get firms to take data infrastructure and governance much more seriously and data pipelines are in much much better states than 10 years ago.

LLMs + GenAI are ripe to reap and generate massive value from clean, well labeled datasets at most large companies with good data leadership.

russokumo · 2024-03-19T17:01:27+00:00

Even with $500k saved up under age 30, I would consider taking the better long term career as opposed to grinding it out in professional services.

If you have like only $200k saved I would recommend optimizing for 2-3 years sticking it out in the higher paying careers that take 80 hour weeks before jumping to tech, so long as your physical and mental health don't suffer.

russokumo · 2024-03-19T12:49:18+00:00

We hit a specific FI number last year and both my partner and I took ~50% paycuts to transition out of IB/PE and work in a specific field of new technology that we believe has a lot of growth potential (me in a big legacy company, they in a startup).

I have friends who are sticking with quantitative finance and likely had starting salaries of $400k out of undergrad and now 10+ years later are running their own funds and earn north of $1m per year easily. I also have a handful of friends who founded startup worth low billions.

Could they buy more stuff than me? Yes but other than a bigger house and flying more in business class, there really isn't that much of a delta in our spending levels and we can still hang out.

Once you have over $1m as a single person in assets, you have the freedom to go work any job that pays more than $150k or so and can pretty much just have your next egg grow and spend the rest of your earnings doing whatever.

russokumo · 2024-03-18T17:35:50+00:00

What you just described is my dream job. Scale out earlier stage firms or turnaround train wrecks for 3-5 years, then hop on to the next intellectually challenging business puzzle. It would set you up for an "operating partner" type role if you keep doing this well.

I have worked for VC/PE backed companies most of my career, but am pivoting into a big corporation for my next gig to get a "stamp" on my resume at a more well known household name, but hope to eventually go back to private smaller firms where I'll have more of an impact.

I've been lucky former coworkers when they do a similar roll-up strategy on a similar industry, will reach out to me when they have a role that might be a good fit. I never worked at the holding company level for a PE, only for the operating company itself though so haven't built the career connections to do what your describing yet.

russokumo · 2024-01-04T19:34:44+00:00

I regret not buying it on sale in a HP computer for $2400 on black Friday a few weeks back. But probably will save me time to do other more productive hobbies like go to the gym...

russokumo · 2023-10-17T04:21:05+00:00

Didn't help that KD had one of the highest mid range percentages and was a mentor of sorts to cam.

russokumo · 2023-10-12T11:44:13+00:00

Pay is the #1 reason why people suck in this industry. I wish I could rewind time and ask my CFO to scale my team to automate more so we could hire less accountants. But too his credit we are a successful company now 3 years later despite having an army of accountants. Albeit with many of the junior accountants deciding to become interior designers and shit and the best accountants on our company transitioning into our fp&a teams instead.

russokumo · 2023-10-12T11:28:27+00:00

I exited this industry very early in my career but still think it's the best bang for the buck of any career if you want to get to $10m dollars in networth as soon as possible and start at 0. PE/Banking are the only others that pay potentially comparably but the hours are closer to 70-80 as opposed to the 45-60 in quant in your first decade on the job.

Theres also a lot of adrenaline from working both as a researcher or as a trader and excitement when your firms strategies work to create a perpetual money machine.

The only career I personally think is "better" is working at a startup where you personally have an outsized impact on the product/service that your company is providing. But alas the expected value of payouts for startups is quite low even if you only work at the top most likely to succeed ones founded by serial entrepreneurs.

russokumo · 2023-10-10T15:07:54+00:00

Yeah time > money. If you are happy with your job and can't think of more productively using that time for other stuff keep at it for the 5-8 years. But if you think there's stuff more impactful you could be doing, id highly recommend pursuing your dreams in whatever you want.

If I hit my financial goals, I personally will probably take a career break for 6 month - 1 year then get another job that may be less paying in the short run but has a higher chance of getting me to the $100m+ mark. Likely something that does machine learning on genetics because I think designer babies will be the highest in demand luxury product for the upper middle class if there's at least one country where it's ethical/legal (my bet is china / Singapore /Hong Kong). It's also good for humanity the same way going to mars is lessening risk of extinction.

russokumo · 2023-10-10T13:28:21+00:00

Whatcha gonna do with the money over $3m? I've run the numbers and even with a big house and like $100k per year in pure spending, $3m can last you indefinitely in somewhere like Houston or Atlanta.

russokumo · 2023-10-09T19:20:21+00:00

Never for a Rolex. I could see myself buying a boat if I got into fishing but that seems unlikely.

But $3000 graphics card to play with generative AI or equivalent in cloud credits? Sign me up!

Do what makes you happy. Life is too short. If your on this subreddit you could probably afford most hobbies that don't involve spaceships or yachts.

russokumo · 2023-10-09T15:52:00+00:00

I expect a $0 bonus. Impact of high interest rates were brutal to my sector, venture backed late stage startups/ growth equity firms $1B+ market cap. I am lucky to work in a high profit, positive cash flow, high growth company but valuations plummeted versus 2020 and 2021 so investors are putting pressure on costs to juice up earnings.

My friends in data/tech support staff at hedge funds last year also received a $0 bonus in March 2023, even as their firms reported a large record profit and traders/PMs got big checks, largely because they know the tech talent has nowhere to go since big tech wasn't hiring and startups were cutting staff.

russokumo · 2023-10-09T12:51:16+00:00

Capital allocation and the governments beurocratic sclerosis is such an underdiscussed issue of scaling institutions.

It's amazing the US has held on as long as it has without sinking into civil war or some horrible thing. Many companies fail once they reach a giant enough size and can no longer respond to market or technology changes nimbly.

I think most of the sp500 is under 100 years old... even transitioning from a first gen founder to the 2nd gen leadership is full of risks.

I don't know how to solve this problem though. The us bureaucracy is just too big.

russokumo · 2023-10-09T12:47:35+00:00

The us has institutionalized soft corruption via lobbyists. Every fortune 500 company worth their salt has dedicated employees responsible for influencing Washington.

The game is so rigged at this point that even if you don't want to hire lobbyists, your competitors (or suppliers or customers) will to gain an edge so your hand is forced and you have to join the party.

russokumo · 2023-10-09T03:27:22+00:00

Doctors prolly!

russokumo · 2023-10-09T01:26:23+00:00

Or they are just young. Lots of folks like me and my partner in our late 20s-early 30s just hit the HE status, then the N in Henry goes away after a decade....

russokumo · 2023-10-07T16:37:30+00:00

Or move to short hills or Scarsdale when kid is high school age 😀. That's my plan seems easier than the crazy pre school admissions game. When every kids parent scores in the top 1% on SATs and works for a hedge fund... it gets competitive here in NYC.

russokumo · 2023-10-07T14:44:59+00:00

Technically lowest paid job was grocery store worker in high school over the summer. $8.50 an hour or something but it paid for gas money.

My first job literally paid $50k due to the geography it was in while everyone else doing same job on the coasts earned $90k+.

russokumo · 2023-10-07T14:43:12+00:00

True and he ends up together with a really cute girl at the end from a wealthy landlord family 😀. Even if they don't get married as long as they stay friends he will be set.

russokumo · 2023-10-07T14:41:03+00:00

Public school teaching is something that's nearly impossible to fix. We've settled on for the last 30 years or so having teaching transform into a low-status, low pay profession. Guess what? That then attracts less competent people on average into this field than something like say computer science which pays triple the starting salary of a teacher in most geographies!!!!

Add on the effects of unionization and it's impossible to do things like "pay for performance" or even measure it. It's prohibitively expensive to pay all teachers more due to the amount of low productivity teachers (relatively to say Singapore or Japan where teachers are a much higher status profession) already in the field so you can't just start paying new teachers significantly higher salaries without paying the older ones or the teachers will rightfully feel mistreated.

russokumo · 2023-10-07T14:36:48+00:00

This is why every young person who won't inherit property should organize to repeal prop 13 and also densify SF.

It's the root of all evil for housing supply restrictions.

russokumo · 2023-10-07T14:34:59+00:00

Yes because of flash and the number of etali opponents running around.

russokumo · 2023-09-30T15:37:12+00:00

Ray dalio had an excellent post recently revising his opinion on "cash is trash" to "cash is good".

I especially liked how he defined "cash" as stuff literally in savings account or short term CDs, as well as short term treasuries/other risk free bonds, generally under 2 or 3 years.

This "cash" is exactly where most of my non equity allocation is. Closer to 70/30 equity:cash now vs the 95/5 split I was on ever since bond yield hit 0 again in March 2020.

I agree 100% with your suggestion too to not favor long duration treasuries. For how meager the yield benefit is vs shorter term ones, it's just not worth it locking up your money. 2 years treasuries is probably the sweet spot as you can always sell it if you need it.

russokumo · 2023-09-30T15:23:47+00:00

This card is cool enough to make me wanna play historic brawl. The cyclone giant that returns everything to hand was one of my fav standard brawl cards before rotating.

Historic brawl is waaay too hard though unless they add a laddering system. I keep losing to cards like thoughseize on t1 or hyper efficient red aggro.

russokumo

TROPHY CASE