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I run a job board for FPGA people and hoo WEE do the HFT firms compensate amply. Talking two to three times the salary of a comparable position at a defense or

I run a job board for FPGA people and hoo WEE do the HFT firms compensate amply. Talking two to three times the salary of a comparable position at a defense or chip company. That's not to say you won't be earning it. The corporate culture sounds absolutely savage: https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/pj43ar/my_experience_with_fpgas_and_high_frequency/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/pj43ar/my_experience_...

yob28 5y ago
Not to mention the fact that your job would be less than meaningless
- mustyoshi 5y ago
  What kind of meaningful job produces enough value to justify making 7x what the median US worker makes?
  - treeman79 5y ago
    When young, I was asked to take over reporting for a couple weeks while someone went on vacation. It was a full time position that required 7 solid hours a day of work. I had the position fully automated by the time person got back. Thankfully they took it well and they got more interesting assignments. 2 weeks of my time saved several years of salary for company. I did this many times.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Ironically, that is also what the “meaningless” HFT firms do. Automate trading so fewer and fewer traders are needed.
      - UweSchmidt 5y ago
        They are not replacing "needed traders", i.e. people that used to execute trades required by real people or companies, like "buy some Apple stock". These firms are playing their very own game in the markets, ultimately extracing money from the economy, with the supposed public benefit of "creating liquidity" (not needed for real investors who can very well wait a day or two before closing a deal) while actually distorting the markets and obscuring the real value).
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        No one is stopping the buyers who can wait a day or two from placing limit orders. If the HFT firms are earning profits, it is because someone wants to pay them for the liquidity.
        UweSchmidt 5y ago
        Anyone who buys organically is buying after the HFT firms have made their buying decisions on the entirety of the market, it's not possible to "wait a day or two". The deal will be incrementally worse as these firms extract value, your price will be the one that all of these firms deemed "meh". It's like walking into a grocery store and the banana you really want it 1$ and you'll buy. Because that's the price that highly sophisticated middlemen between the store and you have determined to be good. The liquidity argument is abstract and unquantifyable enough to be used as a fig leaf for the industry. Real investors who are in it for fundamental values, dividends or strategy don't need to sell in a nanosecond. Now that you can sell in a nanosecond your deal is bad, as in the moment you hear of the Volkswagen scandal all the trading algorithms are done with their work already.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        > Now that you can sell in a nanosecond your deal is bad, as in the moment you hear of the Volkswagen scandal all the trading algorithms are done with their work already. You can only sell in a nanosecond because someone else is willing to buy in a nanosecond. And if your goal is to earn money trading in time horizons of minutes or hours or even days, you probably are not equipped to do that as a retail investor. Why should you have the right to dump VW after the scandal and not someone else? What about an investor that did not read the news until the next day? > The deal will be incrementally worse as these firms extract value, your price will be the one that all of these firms deemed "meh". No one owes you arbitrage opportunity. If you think the banana is worth $1, then it is worth $1. Maybe a nanosecond ago you could have bought it at $.999999, but as long as you still think it is worth $1, then what is the problem with paying $1?
    - boppo1 5y ago
      How do I reach this level of confidence in programming ability?
      - treeman79 5y ago
        Automate everything. Regardless if it saves time or not. Pickup a good scripting language. Ruby or python. Spend time with business people on “why” they are doing something. Learn Excel. After awhile you will be incredibly good at highly useful business process stuff.
        the_only_law 5y ago
        I wonder if this stuff pays well though. I recall someone showing me a position at Jane Street (since this thread was discussing HFTs) with at was looking for a VBA developer to develop some sort of integrations between their APIs and Excel sheets I guess someone in the company loved. My first though was “there’s no way this is paying what you typically see for Jane Street developer salaries”.
        treeman79 5y ago
        Payed crap. It setup me up for success. Learned more in demand stuff and my pay is top notch.
  - distribot 5y ago
    Do you mean meaningful in the bull** jobs way or the moralistic way? I find the moralistic version confusing. I usually hear it applied to CEO pay, which last year was 350x the average worker. But what will ever feel like a fair or just differential? 7x? 3x? And what would be a fair metric? Are dentists less or more than social workers? What about dangerous jobs, are lumberjacks worth more than coal miners?
  - notfromhere 5y ago
    None, but neither does any job that makes double or triple digit multiples of what the US median worker makes.
- anonuser123456 5y ago
  Liquidity is not meaningless.
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    They don't really create liquidity, but they did narrow the bid-ask spread. The "liquidity" they provide dries up when volatility spikes anyways (although that was always true, so not really a criticism of HFT).
zibzab 5y ago
Wow, that was an interesting read. Not sure I'm up for working in such a toxic environment, but the technical challenges seem very interesting.
- marstall 5y ago
  indeed. > If they don't have an FPGA engineer, or have a very small team, they are not serious about finance, or they are just dumb. are FPGAs that core to Finance writ large?
  - mgaunard 5y ago
    Not really. There are only a few financial instruments worldwide where very low latency matters, and there you'd be competing against people who have invested millions in custom transceivers, so it's unlikely FPGA work on a readymade board is really going to make much of a difference. But like all industries, there are many factors that contribute to success. FPGA work might help improve things a bit even if you're not the best.
  - pgwhalen 5y ago
    No. A large majority of trading strategies don't require the low latency that FPGAs help provide. There is some truth to this statement though, if such a firm is trying to pursue a certain kind of strategy - to compete on latency, some of your business must be in hardware.
- wpietri 5y ago
  I worked in financial trading for a few years in the 1990s. It was the same deal then: pay was great, industry was a boys club run by assholes, work environment was toxic. After a few years I was very much burnt out and had to change careers from sysadmin work to software development as my internal reaction to being asked to do sysadmin had become waves of nausea and hostility. Took me years to get over it. So if you are tempted to do financial industry work, make sure to price in the risk of lost work time, years of therapy, etc. It was a fascinating experience and I learned a ton, but financially it was not a net win for me in the long term.

yob28 5y ago

Not to mention the fact that your job would be less than meaningless

mustyoshi 5y ago
What kind of meaningful job produces enough value to justify making 7x what the median US worker makes?
- treeman79 5y ago
  When young, I was asked to take over reporting for a couple weeks while someone went on vacation. It was a full time position that required 7 solid hours a day of work. I had the position fully automated by the time person got back. Thankfully they took it well and they got more interesting assignments. 2 weeks of my time saved several years of salary for company. I did this many times.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Ironically, that is also what the “meaningless” HFT firms do. Automate trading so fewer and fewer traders are needed.
    - UweSchmidt 5y ago
      They are not replacing "needed traders", i.e. people that used to execute trades required by real people or companies, like "buy some Apple stock". These firms are playing their very own game in the markets, ultimately extracing money from the economy, with the supposed public benefit of "creating liquidity" (not needed for real investors who can very well wait a day or two before closing a deal) while actually distorting the markets and obscuring the real value).
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        No one is stopping the buyers who can wait a day or two from placing limit orders. If the HFT firms are earning profits, it is because someone wants to pay them for the liquidity.
        UweSchmidt 5y ago
        Anyone who buys organically is buying after the HFT firms have made their buying decisions on the entirety of the market, it's not possible to "wait a day or two". The deal will be incrementally worse as these firms extract value, your price will be the one that all of these firms deemed "meh". It's like walking into a grocery store and the banana you really want it 1$ and you'll buy. Because that's the price that highly sophisticated middlemen between the store and you have determined to be good. The liquidity argument is abstract and unquantifyable enough to be used as a fig leaf for the industry. Real investors who are in it for fundamental values, dividends or strategy don't need to sell in a nanosecond. Now that you can sell in a nanosecond your deal is bad, as in the moment you hear of the Volkswagen scandal all the trading algorithms are done with their work already.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        > Now that you can sell in a nanosecond your deal is bad, as in the moment you hear of the Volkswagen scandal all the trading algorithms are done with their work already. You can only sell in a nanosecond because someone else is willing to buy in a nanosecond. And if your goal is to earn money trading in time horizons of minutes or hours or even days, you probably are not equipped to do that as a retail investor. Why should you have the right to dump VW after the scandal and not someone else? What about an investor that did not read the news until the next day? > The deal will be incrementally worse as these firms extract value, your price will be the one that all of these firms deemed "meh". No one owes you arbitrage opportunity. If you think the banana is worth $1, then it is worth $1. Maybe a nanosecond ago you could have bought it at $.999999, but as long as you still think it is worth $1, then what is the problem with paying $1?
  - boppo1 5y ago
    How do I reach this level of confidence in programming ability?
    - treeman79 5y ago
      Automate everything. Regardless if it saves time or not. Pickup a good scripting language. Ruby or python. Spend time with business people on “why” they are doing something. Learn Excel. After awhile you will be incredibly good at highly useful business process stuff.
      - the_only_law 5y ago
        I wonder if this stuff pays well though. I recall someone showing me a position at Jane Street (since this thread was discussing HFTs) with at was looking for a VBA developer to develop some sort of integrations between their APIs and Excel sheets I guess someone in the company loved. My first though was “there’s no way this is paying what you typically see for Jane Street developer salaries”.
        treeman79 5y ago
        Payed crap. It setup me up for success. Learned more in demand stuff and my pay is top notch.
- distribot 5y ago
  Do you mean meaningful in the bull** jobs way or the moralistic way? I find the moralistic version confusing. I usually hear it applied to CEO pay, which last year was 350x the average worker. But what will ever feel like a fair or just differential? 7x? 3x? And what would be a fair metric? Are dentists less or more than social workers? What about dangerous jobs, are lumberjacks worth more than coal miners?
- notfromhere 5y ago
  None, but neither does any job that makes double or triple digit multiples of what the US median worker makes.
anonuser123456 5y ago
Liquidity is not meaningless.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  They don't really create liquidity, but they did narrow the bid-ask spread. The "liquidity" they provide dries up when volatility spikes anyways (although that was always true, so not really a criticism of HFT).

zibzab 5y ago

Wow, that was an interesting read. Not sure I'm up for working in such a toxic environment, but the technical challenges seem very interesting.

marstall 5y ago
indeed. > If they don't have an FPGA engineer, or have a very small team, they are not serious about finance, or they are just dumb. are FPGAs that core to Finance writ large?
- mgaunard 5y ago
  Not really. There are only a few financial instruments worldwide where very low latency matters, and there you'd be competing against people who have invested millions in custom transceivers, so it's unlikely FPGA work on a readymade board is really going to make much of a difference. But like all industries, there are many factors that contribute to success. FPGA work might help improve things a bit even if you're not the best.
- pgwhalen 5y ago
  No. A large majority of trading strategies don't require the low latency that FPGAs help provide. There is some truth to this statement though, if such a firm is trying to pursue a certain kind of strategy - to compete on latency, some of your business must be in hardware.
wpietri 5y ago
I worked in financial trading for a few years in the 1990s. It was the same deal then: pay was great, industry was a boys club run by assholes, work environment was toxic. After a few years I was very much burnt out and had to change careers from sysadmin work to software development as my internal reaction to being asked to do sysadmin had become waves of nausea and hostility. Took me years to get over it. So if you are tempted to do financial industry work, make sure to price in the risk of lost work time, years of therapy, etc. It was a fascinating experience and I learned a ton, but financially it was not a net win for me in the long term.