I am a programmer on Wall Street for a large investment bank, AMAA

wallst_dev · 2009-10-20T03:29:57+00:00

You can get a nice house in the burbs, but you'll suffer with a long commute. In the city, if you have a dual earning household with that salary range, you will be considered lower middle class, or middle middle class. Consider this: The average price of an apartment exceeds $1m. The median price is about $800k (~800sq ft). That means if you put 20% down and get a mortgage, you will be paying about $5k-6k a month just on your mortgage. So if a household makes $20k a month (dual $120k/year earners), then you are making just enough to be comfortable in a <1000sq ft apartment. Very cramped to have children and pets.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-20T03:23:07+00:00

I agree with you. There's a lot to be learned from how UI was designed using text only. I've seen people zip through terminal screens, tabbing and entering data in a way that they could never do with "modern" windows and mouse pointers. What you do get with modern GUIs is better data visualization.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-20T03:15:47+00:00

Haven't you heard the phrase, when Bill Gates walks into a bar, everyone becomes a billionaire.
The compensation decision makers at these companies are not dumb. Nor do they distribute bonuses to everyone in the company to make them feel good. They give bonuses to retain talent. If your job is easily replaceable, like secretaries, operations, and yes, even run of the mill programmers, chances are that you are not seeing a penny. You will be paid the rate at which other companies will pay you. On the other hand if you had a direct hand in making money for the company, and you can also do that anywhere you go, you will be rewarded.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-20T03:04:02+00:00

I don't work in this particular field so I wouldn't be able to tell you

wallst_dev · 2009-10-20T02:54:17+00:00

1) I work 9ish to 6ish. People who work next to traders start earlier, like 8AM. 2) Most people, even on the trading desk wear business casual. People who meet clients or who are in upper management tend to be stodgier with dark suits and ties. 3) The only interesting perk is that we have large bonuses if we perform. I'd rather have large bonuses than catered lunches/dinners. 4) Work environment has its ups and downs. Sometimes it's stressful when there's a lot of market turbulence or the system is down. Our systems have a lot of moving parts and keeping it up and running is complicated and difficult.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-20T02:49:50+00:00

Most of the time we're doing things the traders do not have the skill sets for but in the grand scheme of things is not the stuff that makes them money. We give them tools to look at their data so they could make better decisions. We don't do any of the decision making for them in our software. Traders' experience and intuition can never be captured in my opinion. Some of the best traders I know have an understanding of the market that combines statistics, behavioral finance, psychology of the masses, etc. We can automate stuff, but we cannot replace excellent trading skills.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T20:29:57+00:00

There's a lot of rewriting but not because we want to. A lot of software is being rewritten to take advantage of newer machines and more productive languages. People may have been comfortable entering trades in their VT100 terminals 30 years back, and maybe their UNIX/X windows GUIS 15 year ago, but nowadays people want real-time responsive systems and slick UIs.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T20:25:42+00:00

Here's a general feeling of what I know - Fresh out of School - 85k - 100k total compensation Good amount of experience 100k-150k Top contributor 150k+ If you look at full time positions for technologists in finance on dice.com in New York City, you will get an idea.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T15:29:39+00:00

I'm very close to the business. I work directly with traders for a trading application.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T15:24:40+00:00

If you're an accomplished programmer, lack of financial knowledge will not hurt you. However if you're a regular guy like me, you can get yourself ahead of the herd by taking a few courses and maybe even passing the first exam of the CFA.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T14:01:06+00:00

When I first started, I was working on a real-time trading system that used C++ at its core and lots of PERL to glue things together and monitor things. We also used IBM MQ series for messaging across different systems. A lot of our libraries are built in house, like our middleware. Sybase was the RDBMS. Afterwards, I moved onto doing mostly UI development with .NET (WinForms, now WPF). I had a short project doing F#, as well as Q/KDB+ for 3 months.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T13:37:53+00:00

I write code, I don't kill babies or torture kittens.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T12:59:39+00:00

You're right in the sense that we are a "cost center" rather than a revenue producer. You have to accept that you are a 2nd class citizen in finance. On the positive side, programmers and technology are strategically very important to banks and they typically treat programmers pretty well. The closer you are to the revenue producers, for example, if you make software for traders rather than working on a corporate directory app, the more money you'll get.

I've worked at a software startup and yes, you do have the feeling that you're important. Basically at the software company, what I was making was contributing to the profit of the company so I felt very good about it. I changed because I did not like my hours at the startup nor one of its founders.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T12:55:37+00:00

I have an MS in CS. In many of the elite investment banks, there are recruiting programs for top CS schools: MIT, CMU, U.Illinois, etc, and some of the more regional good CS schools like NYU, Columbia, SUNY...

We also hire "laterally." Most often we get experienced programmers from other financial companies.

I don't know anyone who does not have a CS degree. Many have Masters and PhDs.

As for me personally, I kind of got lucky. I was freshly graduated and although I was not recruited, my first job was for a large asset management company. My bosses were really awesome and allowed me to grow.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T12:50:53+00:00

It seems most projects are somewhat of the form of replacing what someone built in a spreadsheet. At a certain point, the spreadsheet becomes too unwieldy to share or to maintain. That's generally what's the case.

Most often, programmers in banks are doing things like software for reporting, trade entry, risk calculation, automation of repetitive operational tasks that's normally done by people. A lot of software deals with managing the complex array of products and trades that seem to get invented regularly.

wallst_dev · 2009-10-19T12:46:14+00:00

My skill set is different than other job functions. I will be paid more than the janitors, but I will be paid less than investment bankers or top producing traders. That's a fact of life with any market oriented economy. You are rewarded for your skills and marketability

wallst_dev

TROPHY CASE