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Copying my comment from last time which went unnoticed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11448323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11448323 Thomas and

Copying my comment from last time which went unnoticed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11448323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11448323 Thomas and Patrick: First, I want to thank you for trying to address one of the most frustrating part of a developer's career. As you know very well, after Silicon Valley, it's the finance companies in NYC area who pay top notch developer salaries. Even though I am a competent developer, it was quite a struggle for me to break in to the finance industry (They only wanted to hire people with finance experience). It took me a little while but I was able to break in. Now I am over that hump but I am faced with another problem. I have been working in 'Back office' for hedge funds for several years and would like to transition to 'Front office' and I am faced with the same problem again. I am not able to switch roles because I don't have experience working in the front office. The Stock Fighter CTF is a perfect way to demonstrate the relevant ability to prospective employers. Do you guys have any plan to work with hedge funds/investment banks for your recruiting platform?

patio11 10y ago
Yes. Something like 90% of our client roster is software companies; most of the balance is finance firms. (There are some companies that are a bit of column A and a bit of column B.) Some developers are under the impression that we only work with finance due to the theme of our first game, but we care about finance like Blizzard cares about orcs -- it is a convenient backdrop on which to hang fun gameplay, stories, and a few pedagogical goals. (Mostly engineering-oriented rather than market-microstructure oriented, but if we totally change the tenor of HN HFT threads I will be very happy indeed.) Many of our finance industry clients/prospective clients have, shall we say, more process requirements to adopting new vendors than typical software startups have, and rather less reason to trust that we know what we're doing. This makes the sales cycle longer. Medium-term, I'd love for us to be a good place to get developer jobs in the finance industry. If you were hypothetically in a conversation with me today about opportunities constrained to finance (and not FinTech), I would not have as many options as I want to have, but I'd hypothetically recommend keeping in touch and/or waiting for consequential announcements later in the year.

patio11 10y ago

Yes. Something like 90% of our client roster is software companies; most of the balance is finance firms. (There are some companies that are a bit of column A and a bit of column B.) Some developers are under the impression that we only work with finance due to the theme of our first game, but we care about finance like Blizzard cares about orcs -- it is a convenient backdrop on which to hang fun gameplay, stories, and a few pedagogical goals. (Mostly engineering-oriented rather than market-microstructure oriented, but if we totally change the tenor of HN HFT threads I will be very happy indeed.) Many of our finance industry clients/prospective clients have, shall we say, more process requirements to adopting new vendors than typical software startups have, and rather less reason to trust that we know what we're doing. This makes the sales cycle longer. Medium-term, I'd love for us to be a good place to get developer jobs in the finance industry. If you were hypothetically in a conversation with me today about opportunities constrained to finance (and not FinTech), I would not have as many options as I want to have, but I'd hypothetically recommend keeping in touch and/or waiting for consequential announcements later in the year.