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May I ask why you left finance for tech? I'm considering going into trading instead of SWE because the environment may be more social. I also spend a lot time a
by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
May I ask why you left finance for tech? I'm considering going into trading instead of SWE because the environment may be more social. I also spend a lot time analyzing current events, so why not get paid for it, too?
- ghufran_syed 6y agoI made a career change into sales and trading for a while, then went back into full-time medicine - finance is a really interesting subject, but the proportion of assholes in sales and trading is much higher than in software, medicine, or most corporate jobs (all of which of course have some proportion of assholes). That's not to say that people in that industry can't be charming - they totally can be, but they will also do whatever it takes to boost up their reputation (and therefore their annual bonus) at your expense. "Liar's poker" is a pretty accurate description of the culture, but it's much worse when you have to deal with it every day. My experience was on the sell-side, things may be different on the buy-side. Feel free to message me if you want to chat.
- giantg2 6y agoI work as a dev at a financial company. I can say that I agree with you. The people (both business side and dev side) in the trading portion of the company were much more likely to be assholes than in the non-trading areas, such as client facing areas. It seemed like the closer people got to being a trader or portfolio manager, the more likely they were to have a mindset of "I'm better than you. I know more than you, so do what I say.", even when they don't know what they're doing.
- swyx 6y agoi should prob write my "why i left finance" up in a more permanent place but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21847266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21847266