4 ms·

The reason people do work at banks: - Money (highest you will get outside of FAANG or winning the startop lottery) - quite an interesting industry.

isolli 8y ago
I definitely agree with your first point, but from personal experience the second one is debatable. It certainly depends on the specific activity, and will change with time. For instance, while quantitative research during the explosion of Black-Scholes-based modeling and complex financial products was intellectually interesting, after the 2008 crisis the focus moved to maintaining existing models (mostly trying not to lose money on legacy products) and implementing various regulations (e.g. central clearing requirements).
- gadders 8y ago
  True, in the last ten years nearly all the big projects have been Reg projects. These are normally never as much fun as revenue generating projects. However, I still think banking as a whole is more interesting than a lot of others - FMCG, manufacturing etc.
  - Jorge1o1 8y ago
    Agreed. Would much rather work in finance than at Heinz as a brand manager for ketchup (if you’re lucky) or even in tech there’s some just insanely boring careers: network engineer, database admin, etc.
- TuringNYC 8y ago
  Certain regulatory projects can be a lot of fun and interesting. I lead a stress-testing project for a big asset manager (a SIFI) and this was fun because stress tests force you to do 100x what you'd typically do once or twice. Implementing stress tests drove us to 1. Massively scale infrastructure 2. Create elastic infrastructure to allow spikes 3. Re-do our models away from ad-hoc towards parameter models 4. Invest in more interesting compute models
bradleyjg 8y ago
> Money (highest you will get outside of FAANG or winning the startop lottery) In some cases finance > FAANG. But you're still treated like a very highly paid janitor.
- gadders 8y ago
  Being old (nearly 50), I think the relation between front office and IT has changed. Whereas before IT people were looked down upon, the relationship seems to be getting a lot more collegial. Traders realise that without having the best technology, they won't make as much money and are reliant on their technologists for this. A senior dev in the department I am in now who works on a front end for trading derivatives had the head of trading and other traders come to his leaving drinks. This would be pretty unheard of 50 years ago.
  - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    This is correct. A good IT guy is worth his weight in gold and is revered by the desk. These days if your trading system is down you can do literally nothing. Just sit there and think about the money flowing out of your book...
throwawaymath 8y ago
That might be the case if you're in the front office at trading firms or hedge funds, but it's not generally the case with banks. FAANG pretty much roundly beats any bank these days.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

isolli 8y ago

I definitely agree with your first point, but from personal experience the second one is debatable. It certainly depends on the specific activity, and will change with time. For instance, while quantitative research during the explosion of Black-Scholes-based modeling and complex financial products was intellectually interesting, after the 2008 crisis the focus moved to maintaining existing models (mostly trying not to lose money on legacy products) and implementing various regulations (e.g. central clearing requirements).

gadders 8y ago
True, in the last ten years nearly all the big projects have been Reg projects. These are normally never as much fun as revenue generating projects. However, I still think banking as a whole is more interesting than a lot of others - FMCG, manufacturing etc.
- Jorge1o1 8y ago
  Agreed. Would much rather work in finance than at Heinz as a brand manager for ketchup (if you’re lucky) or even in tech there’s some just insanely boring careers: network engineer, database admin, etc.
TuringNYC 8y ago
Certain regulatory projects can be a lot of fun and interesting. I lead a stress-testing project for a big asset manager (a SIFI) and this was fun because stress tests force you to do 100x what you'd typically do once or twice. Implementing stress tests drove us to 1. Massively scale infrastructure 2. Create elastic infrastructure to allow spikes 3. Re-do our models away from ad-hoc towards parameter models 4. Invest in more interesting compute models

bradleyjg 8y ago

> Money (highest you will get outside of FAANG or winning the startop lottery) In some cases finance > FAANG. But you're still treated like a very highly paid janitor.

gadders 8y ago
Being old (nearly 50), I think the relation between front office and IT has changed. Whereas before IT people were looked down upon, the relationship seems to be getting a lot more collegial. Traders realise that without having the best technology, they won't make as much money and are reliant on their technologists for this. A senior dev in the department I am in now who works on a front end for trading derivatives had the head of trading and other traders come to his leaving drinks. This would be pretty unheard of 50 years ago.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  This is correct. A good IT guy is worth his weight in gold and is revered by the desk. These days if your trading system is down you can do literally nothing. Just sit there and think about the money flowing out of your book...

throwawaymath 8y ago

That might be the case if you're in the front office at trading firms or hedge funds, but it's not generally the case with banks. FAANG pretty much roundly beats any bank these days.

deleted 8y ago
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