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Wall Street's Frantic Push to Hire Coders

170 points by applecore 10y ago

etf-to-mark 10y ago
Isn't this just a puff piece for hacker-rank? The banks have been hiring 'coders' for decades now. Most of the technical front office folks have at least the ability to code, if not the time to do it. Last time I was in an IB, working on synthetic equity desks, everyone there used to code, often tossing it over the fence to IT to get it "productionized" (read: wrapped in red tape, slow down the change rate, etc.).
- johan_larson 10y ago
  Sort of. But to my mind, anything that takes an axe to credentialism deserves some cheers. My own preferred approaches are internships for junior developers, code review for intermediates, and evaluation of the strength of record for truly senior hires. http://short-sharp.blogspot.ca/2013/04/stop-white-board-coding.html http://short-sharp.blogspot.ca/2013/04/stop-white-board-codi...
- mzd348 10y ago
  >Isn't this just a puff piece for hacker-rank? Bloomberg (the tech side of the company, not the journalism side that produced this article) uses HackerRank for developer hiring too.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Yeah I had recruiter reach out to me via email, they said that had come across my CV and was I interested in a specific role there. I responded I would interested in hearing about the role and seeing if it was a fit. The recruiter's response was that I would need to take a Hacker Rank coding test before proceeding. Before proceeding to hearing about the role that is.
- confluence 10y ago
  Pretty much. Ever notice that anytime anyone wants to "fix" hiring they end up developing systems that are just cancer. If you can't figure out if you want to hire someone in < 1 hr talking to them, you suck at hiring.
  - lloyd-christmas 10y ago
    It's less about whether you want to hire that person. It's which of 100 people you want to hire. You need to have SOME filter prior to wasting 99 hours.
    - 67726e 10y ago
      If you've got 100 engineers applying, please forward me the other 99. I've got some positions to fill.
  - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
    I really disagree with that. You might not have time to have code written and completed in that interview. You might have someone who just knows that question but has limited knowledge, you might have someone who can code but has an uncommon failure on your problem. I have interviewed tons of people who can talk about technology but can't do it themselves. If you are hiring people for a coding job, they have to code. People who say they are architects or first level manager will have a really hard time doing a good job if they don't understand the technology themselves (I guess its not impossible, but its harder).
    - confluence 10y ago
      Like I said, you just suck at hiring.
      - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
        We all do.
      - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
- lucozade 10y ago
  > Isn't this just a puff piece for hacker-rank? As far as I can see it is. This seems to be suggesting that they are replacing the traditional route of hiring from tier 1 universities. This is how they filled graduate jobs. They still do this, to more or less the same extent, but that's only a smallish proportion of overall hires. For experienced hires, most of the devs come from other financial institutions. Their stat of 10% new hires is misleading. That's 10% churn per bank not 10% added to the industry as a whole. All the banks are looking for more avenues for finding developers. Although they usually prefer people with relevant experience, they are relatively hard to come by and are expensive. Bringing people in from other fields has been going on for a while. What JPM are doing in Delaware doesn't look a million miles away from what they did in Glasgow 15 or so years ago but on a much larger scale. There they largely recruited from utilities companies if I recall correctly. So yes, the banks are looking outside finance more than they did in the past but it's really not a novel thing at all.
southphillyman 10y ago
Interesting. About a year ago JPM sent me a link to a HackerRank (or something like it) session with a couple of dynamic programming problems in it. It was late at night and I didn't know what to expect. To my surprise the webcam turned on and started recording me (I was shirtless). I panicked and shut down the session expecting JPMorgan to bypass me for quitting the assignment. Lo and behold they still wanted to move forward and I eventually was offered after an onsite. I declined because I had a better offer from another bank and the environment at JPMorgan seemed very worker bee'ish. I would be working in that massive new building right now, 2000 developers at 1 site in Delaware sounds exceptional to me. Wall Street/banks get a bad rep for a lot of reasons but you can still do "modern" development at some of them and the pay is not bad for the east coast. The project JPMorgan was hiring me for was "modern java" fwiw. I'm currently at a bank doing full stack "modern java" of the JHipster variety essentially (Spring boot, java 8 , angular 2).
- arcanus 10y ago
  > the pay is not bad for the east coast Do they still insist on a mediocre base salary with completely not guaranteed annual bonus lump sum? If you are a trader this makes perfect sense, but I've never quite understood it for programmers.
  - vthallam 10y ago
    They still do unfortunately. New grad salaries at tech divisions in the banks are low relative to the tech companies. The bonus is again significant if you have more exp.
  - southphillyman 10y ago
    Not sure about new grads, but experienced compensation can vary. Not unusual for sr. devs to get $200k+ in places like Wilmington DE. So I imagine the packages in Manhattan are on par with SF tech giants if they want you bad enough. My bonus last year was significant given the fact I was only employed there for 1 or 2 eligible months, so I have high expectations this year. I worked at a mutual fund company as a contractor and the employees claimed to get bonuses of $30k+ and this was for testers and normal rank and file...not even developers.
isuckatcoding 10y ago
Pretty much hate hackerrank
- applecore 10y ago
  Apparently, you're not the only one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12667174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12667174
- komali2 10y ago
  Care to expand?
  - pmiller2 10y ago
    Did you click the link? I despise these platforms as well, because they're all just timed, algorithmic heavy, dynamic programming tests: almost completely irrelevant to real-world programming, and devilishly difficult to get exactly right. And that's if you studied CS in school and got exposure to this stuff there.
    - zby 10y ago
      You don't need to test how well people do the easy stuff - even if the easy stuff makes up most of their work - you want to test if they are able to do the difficult parts.
      - sidlls 10y ago
        Most of the "difficult parts" have almost nothing to do with the kinds of textbook algorithms and dynamic programming trivia these sites test.
      - user5994461 10y ago
        Do not bother testing the hard stuff. Test for the easy to average stuff. e.g. Ask people to print numbers from 1 to 10. Then kick the 20% of applicants who couldn't do that :D Source: I had to correct a batch of HackerRank tests for one company.
madengr 10y ago
My only take on the article (I'm an EE not CS), is that unless you go to Stanford, you might as well just go boot camp. I guess degrees from all those tier 1 research universities across the country are worthless.
- NotSammyHagar 10y ago
  and of course that's not true. And anyone experienced has seen people from mit that are just terrible. That degree might help get a cooler first job. That could lead to a better second job, vs say someone from blah state university in a small town, who has a harder time starting. But eventually that person can make it to the big time. I know cause i'm one of those.
- ar15saveslives 10y ago
  I would say degrees work 2-3 years after graduation. After 3-5 years experience becomes more relevant for employers. Numbers can vary, but based on what I see, after 5-6 years of relevant experience, there's no difference between graduate of Top_20 and of noname college.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  Actually, the article specifically said "and other big name schools": Financial institutions traditionally coveted graduates from Stanford and other big-name schools and people already working in Silicon Valley.
- clifanatic 10y ago
  I think a lot of people are going to disagree with you because they _want_ you to be wrong, but my observation (as somebody who got a solid education and a good GPA from a tier 100 university) is that in a lot of places, this is absolutely the case.
losteverything 10y ago
Any examples (anyone out there?) of old dudes coming back into tech after a decade or so being hired by banks in this effort? Wonder if salary and time off is worth a redive in.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  Fellow old dude here - I'd measure ten times and cut once before I jumped off on a thing like that. When it comes down to it, Vastly more people have training in inventory management at some point than they do in tech, and if you look past yer sell-by date...
smpetrey 10y ago
Well, if any Dev Leads or HR Managers are reading these comments, you could start by getting rid of the Taleo (or even worse iCIMS) Career search engines from your career microsite. [1][2] These are awful to use and often require a new profile per company to apply, so applying to a few companies could take hours depending on the work experience required to fill out. For godsake, enable the quick-apply feature of LinkedIn so your applicants don't have to spend hours labouring over your custom application. [3] Make recruiting easier for prospective applicants and HR with something like Greenhouse. [4] [1] https://jpmchase.taleo.net/careersection/2/moresearch.ftl https://jpmchase.taleo.net/careersection/2/moresearch.ftl [2] https://careers-fidelitylife.icims.com/jobs/search?hashed=-435774178&mobile=false&width=1110&height=500&bga=true&needsRedirect=false&jan1offset=-360&jun1offset=-300 https://careers-fidelitylife.icims.com/jobs/search?hashed=-4... [3] https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=Bank+of+America&location=New+York%2C+New+York&trk=jobshomev2_2boxsearch&orig=JSHP&locationId= https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=Bank+of+Americ... [4] https://www.greenhouse.io https://www.greenhouse.io
- mundo 10y ago
  Agreed! Every time I'm hiring, I insist that my job posting has a "email your CV directly to the hiring manager" link, and it astounds me how much push-back I get. It boggles the mind that a company can devote half a dozen designers to optimizing the experience for potential customers, but for potential employees it's "Well, HR says you have to fill out this form, and I guess what they say goes."
  - mrfusion 10y ago
    I agree. Email is so much better. You could always request applicants include a word in the subject to filter out spam and people that can't follow instructions. I generally don't apply when I see a complex form. Instead I try emailing the company.
    - mundo 10y ago
      I don't bother (with filter questions). If weeding through some bad resumes is the price I pay to make sure the best candidates will apply, I'll pay that happily. Part of the job. Related: It's amazing how many HR depts are not equipped to handle a submission of the form "My CV and projects are on janedoe.com/cv.html, let me know if you'd like to talk." In a sane world, that would be the default by now.
kelvin0 10y ago
Anyone know what happened to Sergey Aleynikov (Goldman Sachs)? That kind of story doesn't help my (already) poor perception of these financial companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov "Aleynikov was employed for two years, from May 2007 to June 2009, at Goldman at an ultimate salary of $400,000.[4][8] He left to join Teza Technologies, a competing high-frequency trading firm which offered to triple his pay"
- atemerev 10y ago
  Yep. He took all his high-frequency trading code (written while working at Goldman Sachs) with him. While this should have probably been handled out of court, I understand why GS guys were pissed. Don't do that.
  - kelvin0 10y ago
    So you have any more details? Is it clear cut he did indeed 'steal' anything? I'd be interested in any facts you have regarding this interesting turn of events.
    - atemerev 10y ago
      He probably didn't consider taking the code that he himself wrote a stealing. However, GS saw it differently. Source: any article about his case.
      - barrkel 10y ago
        The articles I read about the case were about contributions to an open source library.
        atemerev 10y ago
        This was his defense. I don't know exactly what code he took, of course. Here's what known: - GS cites "500 million lines of code". This is most certainly including all dependencies (I deal with HFT systems and usually they are not _that_ complicated), so it is probably correct that 99% of the code was indeed open source. - He uploaded the tarball with the code to his "server in Germany" (Hetzner, I presume). Sounds scary to the judges, but of course, having a server at Hetzner is perfectly normal. - He deleted .bash_history. Quite a red flag for me. And anyway, why repack and upload open source code as a tarball? BTW, here's what Goldman Sachs published on Github: https://github.com/goldmansachs https://github.com/goldmansachs (GS Collections are well-known, but not a lot of code expected from a big company).
josep2 10y ago
I've given some thought to switch from being on the backend for SaaS companies to working at a hedge fund or bank. I'm just not sure it would be a good cultural fit and it might be hard to make the adjustment from the tech standpoint.
chulk90 10y ago
As many people mentioned below, including etf-to-mark, this really feels like a PR piece for HackerRank, which is a cough YC Company. As a former Wall Street tech person, I know that JP's story here is overly exaggerated (they're really rigid and still require 3.0 GPA from schools for the two-year tech program they mentioned). In addition, there are many other companies like HackerRank, and the article fails to mention any of the complaints large corporations and candidates have expressed so far (like you see in the comment section).
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Anything with "Hacker" in its name gets my eyes rolling. It usually means either "do some free work for us"
  - Practicality 10y ago
    "It usually means either 'do some free work for us'" Your comment seems to have an off by one error. What is the other option?
    - raverbashing 10y ago
      Ah true! Or it usually relies on an inflated (and slightly cultish) sense of self importance to have a job candidate do a "dog and pony show" for a job opening. "Company X is hiring hackers". I'll pass.
  - clifanatic 10y ago
    > Anything with "Hacker" in its name gets my eyes rolling Ummmm.... Look up...^^^^
    - raverbashing 10y ago
      That one is excused
chollida1 10y ago
I can probably give some color to this. Wall Street banks used to be a very good spot for programmers due to: - big pay, this was often enough to not need more benefits - what you often got to work on was very interesting - hours worked tended to be no where near what they were in the hedge fund or startup scene. They also leaned heavily on credentialism for hiring signals, mostly through where you went to school and secondarily by where you worked before. Banks have found over the past 10 years that they are no longer a top choice for the best STEM students any more due to a number of factors and hence they have to move down the food chain. Specifically: - shrinking size of most of these banks due to decreased profits for the sell side firms - shrinking pay due above. - The tech scene and buy side, hedge funds, offer better pay, more interesting work, and much better career upside(moving up in the sell side anymore is cut throat due to shrinking head counts and bonuses). I know next to nothing of hackerrank but anything that helps opens up the hiring pipeline is a good idea. As to pay being partially based on bonuses. I mean this isn't going away, and if you don't like it, then you probably won't work in finance at all. Its analogous to startups. You may still get a great base salary, but options will always be a decent portion of your salary. If you really want to get angry at bonuses. I've had recruiters tell me that many hedge funds have a cut off of $500,000/year bonus for looking for programmers, ie they won't interview programmers who haven't had a bonus of more than $500,000 in a year as they feel it provides one of the better hiring signals. You'd think this would stop them from hiring but there are alot of programmers in the HFT scene who easily pass this bar.
- FT_intern 10y ago
  how were banks viewed compared to MSFT/Oracle/Sun back in the late 1990s and early 2000s?
- pavlov 10y ago
  I've had recruiters tell me that many hedge funds have a cut off of $500,000/year bonus for looking for programmers, ie they won't interview programmers who haven't had a bonus of more than $500,000 in a year as they feel it provides one of the better hiring signals. Sounds as ridiculous as Hollywood casting. Seems like this would create a "Moneyball"-style opportunity for a hedge fund to actually invest in tech management, hire more objectively, and build a development team that's composed of talent that works well together rather than a random cast of prima donnas who won't get out bed for less than $1MM.
confluence 10y ago
So you see a high developer attrition rate, and go, I know, I'll fill it with 3 month code bootcamp graduates? No wonder their attrition is so high. Apparently they are incapable of observing the fact they are just an awful place to work, and instead of fixing that, they just shovel more developers into their meat grinder.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  You make a cogent point - these behemoths will have inertia problems.
filereaper 10y ago
I always got the feeling coders/programmers/developers were second class citizens in Wall Street compared to the traders, bankers, quants etc... Why join at all if Silicon Valley and core tech jobs have competitive pay? What's the justification given equal hours of work/effort put on both sides.
- jti107 10y ago
  this is true at the traditional banks/wall street firms...but HFT firms treat their coders really well.
  - melling 10y ago
    Are there any good firms in particular?
    - hendzen 10y ago
      In the HFT space, here are some big names: Tower Research Capital Hudson River Trading Jump Trading LLC Note that these firms are typically considerably more difficult to get an offer at than Google, FB, etc.
  - komali2 10y ago
    That was my first question - I live with a banker and he's at work 8-8 every day including Saturday. I'm a developer and can go to work "whenever" and come home "whenever." It's a pure meritocracy - work done? Go home. Some of my coworkers come in at 11 because they surf in the morning. The point is - is it the same story for a developer working for a bank, whose bosses' boss presumably is more old-school and wouldn't be keen on hippie engineers wandering in and out of the office whenever they please?
- itg 10y ago
  Yes, they are derogatorily referred to as 'back office' workers at banks.
  - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
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matt_wulfeck 10y ago
So last year, Furlong, 30, enrolled in a three-month coding boot camp that uses HackerRank, a web platform that trains and grades people on writing computer code. After earning a top ranking for Java developers globally, Furlong was hired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in December for its two-year technology training program. So many questions here. If you're doing a bootcamp and scoring among the "top java developers globally" then you're either exceptionally talented, your bootcamp is the most amazing thing in the world, or your sample set of "top java developers" is absolutely terrible.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  There are lots of exceptionally talented people who aren't software developers and want to be. Three standard deviations above the mean takes you from roughly 100 million working Americans to a hundred thousand. Two standard deviations of being unlucky in having the life-history that gets you to programmer-hood drops you down from 100k to 1000. It's not that surprising, honestly.
  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    It's very surprising actually. Apparently he knows how to ship code yet hasn't even had a real programming job yet. How is it even possible to be among the best in the world without having had your abilities tested in the world? I'm not doubting that this gentlemen could possibly be extremely talented. What I think is clear is the criteria for "best globally" skews towards theoretical knowledge without concern for real-world abilities. Kind of like saying "this guy nailed the whiteboard interview better than everyone else, therefore he must be among the top developers globally".
    - wmil 10y ago
      Well "earning a top ranking for Java developers globally" means from the global pool of HackerRank scores. People who already have tech careers aren't going to see the point in doing a ton of tests on HackerRank. It's not surprising that one of the top scorers was someone who lived in a town where he couldn't get a job using compsci skills. He was looking for a way to prove his skills since he didn't have credentials or work experience.
rb808 10y ago
The article doesn't mention crushing bureaucracy, intense regulation, old huge systems, outsourced everything. Nowadays you're supporting a 10 year old inbred system trying to implement some new regulatory project. No root access, often no access to production, github blocked at the firewall, 4 releases a year, half the staff in India. Plus wages are lower than 10 years ago Yeah Wall St was great. Not so much any more.
- mh_yam 10y ago
  Really depends on your team. I work on a small team in a huge investment bank and we are working on new nice-looking apps. I usually don't have to deal with audit, risk management, compliance, regulators, etc. When I do it's usually minimal. We don't have root access but we have full access to production. We release twice a week. I have to deal somewhat with India but it's bearable
impostervt 10y ago
“This is purely about skill,” said 28-year-old Vivek Ravisankar, a HackerRank co-founder who used to work for Amazon.com Inc. “Most really good programmers learn on their own and just continue to build their skills. Probably the really good programmers are college dropouts.” As a co-founder of the site, I wonder if he has any data to back that up.
azifali 10y ago
What a BS of an article. Expected to read about Wall street trying to compete for talent. Got a promo for hacker-rank instead. Come up with something better than link bait guys.
jorblumesea 10y ago
Lame article, just a plug piece for hackerrank.
dxbydt 10y ago
There's like a dozen comments saying this is a plug for Hackerrank. Yeah, that's obvious. What's not so obvious is that there are 1000+ YC companies, none of whom get this kind of coverage on Bloomberg even if they bend over backwards. Surely Vivek must be doing something right.
angry_octet 10y ago
Thanks HackerRank, now I want to work as an anonymous cog in a behemoth bank! What a silly puff piece for JP Morgan and the 'coding bootcamp' puppy farms.
droithomme 10y ago
Looking to hire low skill "coders" instead of experienced professional developers and engineers? I see your problem right there.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

170 points by applecore 10y ago

Isn't this just a puff piece for hacker-rank? The banks have been hiring 'coders' for decades now. Most of the technical front office folks have at least the ability to code, if not the time to do it. Last time I was in an IB, working on synthetic equity desks, everyone there used to code, often tossing it over the fence to IT to get it "productionized" (read: wrapped in red tape, slow down the change rate, etc.).

johan_larson 10y ago
Sort of. But to my mind, anything that takes an axe to credentialism deserves some cheers. My own preferred approaches are internships for junior developers, code review for intermediates, and evaluation of the strength of record for truly senior hires. http://short-sharp.blogspot.ca/2013/04/stop-white-board-coding.html http://short-sharp.blogspot.ca/2013/04/stop-white-board-codi...
mzd348 10y ago
>Isn't this just a puff piece for hacker-rank? Bloomberg (the tech side of the company, not the journalism side that produced this article) uses HackerRank for developer hiring too.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Yeah I had recruiter reach out to me via email, they said that had come across my CV and was I interested in a specific role there. I responded I would interested in hearing about the role and seeing if it was a fit. The recruiter's response was that I would need to take a Hacker Rank coding test before proceeding. Before proceeding to hearing about the role that is.
confluence 10y ago
Pretty much. Ever notice that anytime anyone wants to "fix" hiring they end up developing systems that are just cancer. If you can't figure out if you want to hire someone in < 1 hr talking to them, you suck at hiring.
- lloyd-christmas 10y ago
  It's less about whether you want to hire that person. It's which of 100 people you want to hire. You need to have SOME filter prior to wasting 99 hours.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    If you've got 100 engineers applying, please forward me the other 99. I've got some positions to fill.
- NotSammyHagar 10y ago
  I really disagree with that. You might not have time to have code written and completed in that interview. You might have someone who just knows that question but has limited knowledge, you might have someone who can code but has an uncommon failure on your problem. I have interviewed tons of people who can talk about technology but can't do it themselves. If you are hiring people for a coding job, they have to code. People who say they are architects or first level manager will have a really hard time doing a good job if they don't understand the technology themselves (I guess its not impossible, but its harder).
  - confluence 10y ago
    Like I said, you just suck at hiring.
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      We all do.
    - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
lucozade 10y ago
> Isn't this just a puff piece for hacker-rank? As far as I can see it is. This seems to be suggesting that they are replacing the traditional route of hiring from tier 1 universities. This is how they filled graduate jobs. They still do this, to more or less the same extent, but that's only a smallish proportion of overall hires. For experienced hires, most of the devs come from other financial institutions. Their stat of 10% new hires is misleading. That's 10% churn per bank not 10% added to the industry as a whole. All the banks are looking for more avenues for finding developers. Although they usually prefer people with relevant experience, they are relatively hard to come by and are expensive. Bringing people in from other fields has been going on for a while. What JPM are doing in Delaware doesn't look a million miles away from what they did in Glasgow 15 or so years ago but on a much larger scale. There they largely recruited from utilities companies if I recall correctly. So yes, the banks are looking outside finance more than they did in the past but it's really not a novel thing at all.

southphillyman 10y ago

Interesting. About a year ago JPM sent me a link to a HackerRank (or something like it) session with a couple of dynamic programming problems in it. It was late at night and I didn't know what to expect. To my surprise the webcam turned on and started recording me (I was shirtless). I panicked and shut down the session expecting JPMorgan to bypass me for quitting the assignment. Lo and behold they still wanted to move forward and I eventually was offered after an onsite. I declined because I had a better offer from another bank and the environment at JPMorgan seemed very worker bee'ish. I would be working in that massive new building right now, 2000 developers at 1 site in Delaware sounds exceptional to me. Wall Street/banks get a bad rep for a lot of reasons but you can still do "modern" development at some of them and the pay is not bad for the east coast. The project JPMorgan was hiring me for was "modern java" fwiw. I'm currently at a bank doing full stack "modern java" of the JHipster variety essentially (Spring boot, java 8 , angular 2).

arcanus 10y ago
> the pay is not bad for the east coast Do they still insist on a mediocre base salary with completely not guaranteed annual bonus lump sum? If you are a trader this makes perfect sense, but I've never quite understood it for programmers.
- vthallam 10y ago
  They still do unfortunately. New grad salaries at tech divisions in the banks are low relative to the tech companies. The bonus is again significant if you have more exp.
- southphillyman 10y ago
  Not sure about new grads, but experienced compensation can vary. Not unusual for sr. devs to get $200k+ in places like Wilmington DE. So I imagine the packages in Manhattan are on par with SF tech giants if they want you bad enough. My bonus last year was significant given the fact I was only employed there for 1 or 2 eligible months, so I have high expectations this year. I worked at a mutual fund company as a contractor and the employees claimed to get bonuses of $30k+ and this was for testers and normal rank and file...not even developers.

isuckatcoding 10y ago

Pretty much hate hackerrank

applecore 10y ago
Apparently, you're not the only one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12667174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12667174
komali2 10y ago
Care to expand?
- pmiller2 10y ago
  Did you click the link? I despise these platforms as well, because they're all just timed, algorithmic heavy, dynamic programming tests: almost completely irrelevant to real-world programming, and devilishly difficult to get exactly right. And that's if you studied CS in school and got exposure to this stuff there.
  - zby 10y ago
    You don't need to test how well people do the easy stuff - even if the easy stuff makes up most of their work - you want to test if they are able to do the difficult parts.
    - sidlls 10y ago
      Most of the "difficult parts" have almost nothing to do with the kinds of textbook algorithms and dynamic programming trivia these sites test.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Do not bother testing the hard stuff. Test for the easy to average stuff. e.g. Ask people to print numbers from 1 to 10. Then kick the 20% of applicants who couldn't do that :D Source: I had to correct a batch of HackerRank tests for one company.

madengr 10y ago

My only take on the article (I'm an EE not CS), is that unless you go to Stanford, you might as well just go boot camp. I guess degrees from all those tier 1 research universities across the country are worthless.

NotSammyHagar 10y ago
and of course that's not true. And anyone experienced has seen people from mit that are just terrible. That degree might help get a cooler first job. That could lead to a better second job, vs say someone from blah state university in a small town, who has a harder time starting. But eventually that person can make it to the big time. I know cause i'm one of those.
ar15saveslives 10y ago
I would say degrees work 2-3 years after graduation. After 3-5 years experience becomes more relevant for employers. Numbers can vary, but based on what I see, after 5-6 years of relevant experience, there's no difference between graduate of Top_20 and of noname college.
kafkaesq 10y ago
Actually, the article specifically said "and other big name schools": Financial institutions traditionally coveted graduates from Stanford and other big-name schools and people already working in Silicon Valley.
clifanatic 10y ago
I think a lot of people are going to disagree with you because they _want_ you to be wrong, but my observation (as somebody who got a solid education and a good GPA from a tier 100 university) is that in a lot of places, this is absolutely the case.

losteverything 10y ago

Any examples (anyone out there?) of old dudes coming back into tech after a decade or so being hired by banks in this effort? Wonder if salary and time off is worth a redive in.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
Fellow old dude here - I'd measure ten times and cut once before I jumped off on a thing like that. When it comes down to it, Vastly more people have training in inventory management at some point than they do in tech, and if you look past yer sell-by date...

smpetrey 10y ago

Well, if any Dev Leads or HR Managers are reading these comments, you could start by getting rid of the Taleo (or even worse iCIMS) Career search engines from your career microsite. [1][2] These are awful to use and often require a new profile per company to apply, so applying to a few companies could take hours depending on the work experience required to fill out. For godsake, enable the quick-apply feature of LinkedIn so your applicants don't have to spend hours labouring over your custom application. [3] Make recruiting easier for prospective applicants and HR with something like Greenhouse. [4] [1] https://jpmchase.taleo.net/careersection/2/moresearch.ftl https://jpmchase.taleo.net/careersection/2/moresearch.ftl [2] https://careers-fidelitylife.icims.com/jobs/search?hashed=-435774178&mobile=false&width=1110&height=500&bga=true&needsRedirect=false&jan1offset=-360&jun1offset=-300 https://careers-fidelitylife.icims.com/jobs/search?hashed=-4... [3] https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=Bank+of+America&location=New+York%2C+New+York&trk=jobshomev2_2boxsearch&orig=JSHP&locationId= https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search?keywords=Bank+of+Americ... [4] https://www.greenhouse.io https://www.greenhouse.io

mundo 10y ago
Agreed! Every time I'm hiring, I insist that my job posting has a "email your CV directly to the hiring manager" link, and it astounds me how much push-back I get. It boggles the mind that a company can devote half a dozen designers to optimizing the experience for potential customers, but for potential employees it's "Well, HR says you have to fill out this form, and I guess what they say goes."
- mrfusion 10y ago
  I agree. Email is so much better. You could always request applicants include a word in the subject to filter out spam and people that can't follow instructions. I generally don't apply when I see a complex form. Instead I try emailing the company.
  - mundo 10y ago
    I don't bother (with filter questions). If weeding through some bad resumes is the price I pay to make sure the best candidates will apply, I'll pay that happily. Part of the job. Related: It's amazing how many HR depts are not equipped to handle a submission of the form "My CV and projects are on janedoe.com/cv.html, let me know if you'd like to talk." In a sane world, that would be the default by now.

kelvin0 10y ago

Anyone know what happened to Sergey Aleynikov (Goldman Sachs)? That kind of story doesn't help my (already) poor perception of these financial companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov "Aleynikov was employed for two years, from May 2007 to June 2009, at Goldman at an ultimate salary of $400,000.[4][8] He left to join Teza Technologies, a competing high-frequency trading firm which offered to triple his pay"

atemerev 10y ago
Yep. He took all his high-frequency trading code (written while working at Goldman Sachs) with him. While this should have probably been handled out of court, I understand why GS guys were pissed. Don't do that.
- kelvin0 10y ago
  So you have any more details? Is it clear cut he did indeed 'steal' anything? I'd be interested in any facts you have regarding this interesting turn of events.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    He probably didn't consider taking the code that he himself wrote a stealing. However, GS saw it differently. Source: any article about his case.
    - barrkel 10y ago
      The articles I read about the case were about contributions to an open source library.
      - atemerev 10y ago
        This was his defense. I don't know exactly what code he took, of course. Here's what known: - GS cites "500 million lines of code". This is most certainly including all dependencies (I deal with HFT systems and usually they are not _that_ complicated), so it is probably correct that 99% of the code was indeed open source. - He uploaded the tarball with the code to his "server in Germany" (Hetzner, I presume). Sounds scary to the judges, but of course, having a server at Hetzner is perfectly normal. - He deleted .bash_history. Quite a red flag for me. And anyway, why repack and upload open source code as a tarball? BTW, here's what Goldman Sachs published on Github: https://github.com/goldmansachs https://github.com/goldmansachs (GS Collections are well-known, but not a lot of code expected from a big company).

josep2 10y ago

I've given some thought to switch from being on the backend for SaaS companies to working at a hedge fund or bank. I'm just not sure it would be a good cultural fit and it might be hard to make the adjustment from the tech standpoint.

chulk90 10y ago

As many people mentioned below, including etf-to-mark, this really feels like a PR piece for HackerRank, which is a cough YC Company. As a former Wall Street tech person, I know that JP's story here is overly exaggerated (they're really rigid and still require 3.0 GPA from schools for the two-year tech program they mentioned). In addition, there are many other companies like HackerRank, and the article fails to mention any of the complaints large corporations and candidates have expressed so far (like you see in the comment section).

raverbashing 10y ago
Anything with "Hacker" in its name gets my eyes rolling. It usually means either "do some free work for us"
- Practicality 10y ago
  "It usually means either 'do some free work for us'" Your comment seems to have an off by one error. What is the other option?
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Ah true! Or it usually relies on an inflated (and slightly cultish) sense of self importance to have a job candidate do a "dog and pony show" for a job opening. "Company X is hiring hackers". I'll pass.
- clifanatic 10y ago
  > Anything with "Hacker" in its name gets my eyes rolling Ummmm.... Look up...^^^^
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    That one is excused

chollida1 10y ago

I can probably give some color to this. Wall Street banks used to be a very good spot for programmers due to: - big pay, this was often enough to not need more benefits - what you often got to work on was very interesting - hours worked tended to be no where near what they were in the hedge fund or startup scene. They also leaned heavily on credentialism for hiring signals, mostly through where you went to school and secondarily by where you worked before. Banks have found over the past 10 years that they are no longer a top choice for the best STEM students any more due to a number of factors and hence they have to move down the food chain. Specifically: - shrinking size of most of these banks due to decreased profits for the sell side firms - shrinking pay due above. - The tech scene and buy side, hedge funds, offer better pay, more interesting work, and much better career upside(moving up in the sell side anymore is cut throat due to shrinking head counts and bonuses). I know next to nothing of hackerrank but anything that helps opens up the hiring pipeline is a good idea. As to pay being partially based on bonuses. I mean this isn't going away, and if you don't like it, then you probably won't work in finance at all. Its analogous to startups. You may still get a great base salary, but options will always be a decent portion of your salary. If you really want to get angry at bonuses. I've had recruiters tell me that many hedge funds have a cut off of $500,000/year bonus for looking for programmers, ie they won't interview programmers who haven't had a bonus of more than $500,000 in a year as they feel it provides one of the better hiring signals. You'd think this would stop them from hiring but there are alot of programmers in the HFT scene who easily pass this bar.

FT_intern 10y ago
how were banks viewed compared to MSFT/Oracle/Sun back in the late 1990s and early 2000s?
pavlov 10y ago
I've had recruiters tell me that many hedge funds have a cut off of $500,000/year bonus for looking for programmers, ie they won't interview programmers who haven't had a bonus of more than $500,000 in a year as they feel it provides one of the better hiring signals. Sounds as ridiculous as Hollywood casting. Seems like this would create a "Moneyball"-style opportunity for a hedge fund to actually invest in tech management, hire more objectively, and build a development team that's composed of talent that works well together rather than a random cast of prima donnas who won't get out bed for less than $1MM.

confluence 10y ago

So you see a high developer attrition rate, and go, I know, I'll fill it with 3 month code bootcamp graduates? No wonder their attrition is so high. Apparently they are incapable of observing the fact they are just an awful place to work, and instead of fixing that, they just shovel more developers into their meat grinder.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
You make a cogent point - these behemoths will have inertia problems.

filereaper 10y ago

I always got the feeling coders/programmers/developers were second class citizens in Wall Street compared to the traders, bankers, quants etc... Why join at all if Silicon Valley and core tech jobs have competitive pay? What's the justification given equal hours of work/effort put on both sides.

jti107 10y ago
this is true at the traditional banks/wall street firms...but HFT firms treat their coders really well.
- melling 10y ago
  Are there any good firms in particular?
  - hendzen 10y ago
    In the HFT space, here are some big names: Tower Research Capital Hudson River Trading Jump Trading LLC Note that these firms are typically considerably more difficult to get an offer at than Google, FB, etc.
- komali2 10y ago
  That was my first question - I live with a banker and he's at work 8-8 every day including Saturday. I'm a developer and can go to work "whenever" and come home "whenever." It's a pure meritocracy - work done? Go home. Some of my coworkers come in at 11 because they surf in the morning. The point is - is it the same story for a developer working for a bank, whose bosses' boss presumably is more old-school and wouldn't be keen on hippie engineers wandering in and out of the office whenever they please?
itg 10y ago
Yes, they are derogatorily referred to as 'back office' workers at banks.
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matt_wulfeck 10y ago

So last year, Furlong, 30, enrolled in a three-month coding boot camp that uses HackerRank, a web platform that trains and grades people on writing computer code. After earning a top ranking for Java developers globally, Furlong was hired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in December for its two-year technology training program. So many questions here. If you're doing a bootcamp and scoring among the "top java developers globally" then you're either exceptionally talented, your bootcamp is the most amazing thing in the world, or your sample set of "top java developers" is absolutely terrible.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
There are lots of exceptionally talented people who aren't software developers and want to be. Three standard deviations above the mean takes you from roughly 100 million working Americans to a hundred thousand. Two standard deviations of being unlucky in having the life-history that gets you to programmer-hood drops you down from 100k to 1000. It's not that surprising, honestly.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  It's very surprising actually. Apparently he knows how to ship code yet hasn't even had a real programming job yet. How is it even possible to be among the best in the world without having had your abilities tested in the world? I'm not doubting that this gentlemen could possibly be extremely talented. What I think is clear is the criteria for "best globally" skews towards theoretical knowledge without concern for real-world abilities. Kind of like saying "this guy nailed the whiteboard interview better than everyone else, therefore he must be among the top developers globally".
  - wmil 10y ago
    Well "earning a top ranking for Java developers globally" means from the global pool of HackerRank scores. People who already have tech careers aren't going to see the point in doing a ton of tests on HackerRank. It's not surprising that one of the top scorers was someone who lived in a town where he couldn't get a job using compsci skills. He was looking for a way to prove his skills since he didn't have credentials or work experience.

rb808 10y ago

The article doesn't mention crushing bureaucracy, intense regulation, old huge systems, outsourced everything. Nowadays you're supporting a 10 year old inbred system trying to implement some new regulatory project. No root access, often no access to production, github blocked at the firewall, 4 releases a year, half the staff in India. Plus wages are lower than 10 years ago Yeah Wall St was great. Not so much any more.

mh_yam 10y ago
Really depends on your team. I work on a small team in a huge investment bank and we are working on new nice-looking apps. I usually don't have to deal with audit, risk management, compliance, regulators, etc. When I do it's usually minimal. We don't have root access but we have full access to production. We release twice a week. I have to deal somewhat with India but it's bearable

impostervt 10y ago

“This is purely about skill,” said 28-year-old Vivek Ravisankar, a HackerRank co-founder who used to work for Amazon.com Inc. “Most really good programmers learn on their own and just continue to build their skills. Probably the really good programmers are college dropouts.” As a co-founder of the site, I wonder if he has any data to back that up.

azifali 10y ago

What a BS of an article. Expected to read about Wall street trying to compete for talent. Got a promo for hacker-rank instead. Come up with something better than link bait guys.

jorblumesea 10y ago

Lame article, just a plug piece for hackerrank.

dxbydt 10y ago

There's like a dozen comments saying this is a plug for Hackerrank. Yeah, that's obvious. What's not so obvious is that there are 1000+ YC companies, none of whom get this kind of coverage on Bloomberg even if they bend over backwards. Surely Vivek must be doing something right.

angry_octet 10y ago

Thanks HackerRank, now I want to work as an anonymous cog in a behemoth bank! What a silly puff piece for JP Morgan and the 'coding bootcamp' puppy farms.

droithomme 10y ago

Looking to hire low skill "coders" instead of experienced professional developers and engineers? I see your problem right there.

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