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I was working at an investment bank (as a developer) when this scandal hit. My entire department was laid off as a result. Not because we were involved or compl

I was working at an investment bank (as a developer) when this scandal hit. My entire department was laid off as a result. Not because we were involved or complicit in the scandal, but because the scandal indirectly caused a big financial hit to the bank and we were part of the cost cutting measures. It was a traumatic and tragic moment for me at the time. But in hindsight it was the event that lead to my eyes being opened to the world of Silicon Valley tech companies. Until then, I had naively thought that working as a developer in the IT departments of Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds* was the pinnacle of a SWE career. * Not referring to places like Citadel or Jane Street or Two Sigma, etc.

citizenpaul 5y ago
>part of the cost cutting measures. Not sure why you would believe this. It is much harder for regulators to interview employees about their activities when they are no longer centrally located for convenient discussions. Its the same tactic they use in bury investigators with paperwork but for people.
- decafninja 5y ago
  My department was very far removed from the issues in the scandal. I doubt investigators would have had much interest in us or found anything of use from interviewing any of us.
  - citizenpaul 5y ago
    I believe that it was separated and 100% not involved. Do you think your company is above laying off an entire department to keep investigators off the trail of the real problem department?
- skrebbel 5y ago
  Don't assume, you know nothing about the parent's situation.
  - citizenpaul 5y ago
    I'm not assuming anything. Lying is part of business. The reason he was told was almost certainly not the actual reason.
jacquesm 5y ago
Fair chance that they exaggerated the financial impact and just used it as an excuse to push through a lay-off they were planning anyway. 'Never let a good crisis go to waste'.
throwmeaway666 5y ago
>we were part of the cost cutting measures. >the event that lead to my eyes being opened to the world of Silicon Valley tech companies I found that being aware of whether you will be part of the cost center or profit center in a company is very useful when deciding where you should work.
- decafninja 5y ago
  Agree with this 100%. I now make it a point to avoid any companies where tech is an unrespected cost center, which unfortunately does rule out the overwhelming majority of companies out there. That said, even companies where SWEs and tech are the profit center are certainly capable of laying you off, so profit vs cost center isn't really any insurance to avoid that sort of fate. Even at the banks I've worked at the traders (profit center) would face the axe before us lowly peasants in the tech departments. Rather, it's more an issue of respect...and relative compensation.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    I have one primary question that I'm trying to figure out during job interviews. "Will my boss understand what I produce and the difficulty involved in producing it?" if the answer is no, the job is going to suck.
    - decafninja 5y ago
      It's not just one level though. You can ask the same about whether your boss's boss will understand, and so on and so forth up the food chain. The problem with many tech-as-a-cost-center companies is that you will quickly run into a person on that hierarchy who doesn't (often at or near the intersection between tech departments and the profit center business departments).
      - grahamm 5y ago
        And if your company wants to "flatten the structure" running into that person is more likely and you will run in to them. I also have a problem with ex-developers who work their way up the structure with time. Generally they drift away from the tech and what tech takes and end up serving their higher masters. So you end up with someone who thinks they know what it takes but hasn't actually done it for many years. Literally had this again the other day when I gave an estimate for a piece of work one of the devs had done a decent bit of investigation on. Bluntly told that was too much time from someone who had really no much more info than the subject line of the bug report. Of course who had the weight to get their estimate across.....(not me)
madaxe_again 5y ago
I had a similar nudge into going starting my own thing - I’d been at Refco (a now defunct brokerage) in ‘05 when everything went pop, because they’d been hiding half a billion of bad debt - I saw which way the wind was blowing and scurried away like a rat from a sinking ship.
vsuaoqmdn 5y ago
Let me guess. Now you think that the pinnacle of a SWE career is working at Google it Facebook, right?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
colordrops 5y ago
> I had naively thought that working as a developer in the IT departments of Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds* was the pinnacle of a SWE career. What was the reasoning behind this thinking? While finance often does have some pretty advanced tech behind it, you can find more cutting edge and complex work at purely technical companies. Or are you speaking of compensation?
- Jenk 5y ago
  I'm not GP but in the 90s I was taught that bigger = better, and to some degree that was true, if you were into old (ergo, very expensive) tech. In the days before the internet, technology was niche (as was the knowledge to develop and operate it) and super expensive, so only mega corps had decent tech to work with. This reputation persisted for sometime into the new millennium until we started to see more of these scruffy younguns starting to make noise in the business, and techno, spheres.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    GP here. I started my career in the mid-late 2000s. For me some of the reasons that I remember are: 1. Just plain old not knowing better. 2. Being in NYC, my social circle had a lot of Wall Street finance types. In fact, this is still true - I know more finance people amongst my friends than fellow SWEs. 3. Hacker tech culture wasn't as widespread or widely known back then, especially in NYC. Or maybe it was just me. Going back to #1, I thought things couldn't get any better than dressing up in business casual monkey suits every morning and being ordered to dance like a monkey by a hotshot trader in hopes of picking up after his glorious scraps. 4. I thought the money wasn't half bad, making like $80-90k back then. I thought no one could pay better than the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street. I don't know what a company like Google was paying their engineers back then, but I think it's a somewhat recent phenomenon where tech SWE compensation grossly and utterly outpaced tech-in-finance SWE compensation. Again, I'm not referring to ultra-elite finance firms like Jane Street or Citadel where I understand SWEs do get paid on par (or better) than FAANG. I distinctly recall even ignoring a Google recruiter's solicitations back then (2007? 2008?) because I naively thought working at my investment bank was utterly superior to anything Google could offer. Now I know better, and knowing is half the battle.
lostmsu 5y ago
Just wait until Citadel, Jane Street, and Two Sigma all sink. They are already behind some big tech in total comp, so brain drain is inevitable.

citizenpaul 5y ago

>part of the cost cutting measures. Not sure why you would believe this. It is much harder for regulators to interview employees about their activities when they are no longer centrally located for convenient discussions. Its the same tactic they use in bury investigators with paperwork but for people.

decafninja 5y ago
My department was very far removed from the issues in the scandal. I doubt investigators would have had much interest in us or found anything of use from interviewing any of us.
- citizenpaul 5y ago
  I believe that it was separated and 100% not involved. Do you think your company is above laying off an entire department to keep investigators off the trail of the real problem department?
skrebbel 5y ago
Don't assume, you know nothing about the parent's situation.
- citizenpaul 5y ago
  I'm not assuming anything. Lying is part of business. The reason he was told was almost certainly not the actual reason.

jacquesm 5y ago

Fair chance that they exaggerated the financial impact and just used it as an excuse to push through a lay-off they were planning anyway. 'Never let a good crisis go to waste'.

throwmeaway666 5y ago

>we were part of the cost cutting measures. >the event that lead to my eyes being opened to the world of Silicon Valley tech companies I found that being aware of whether you will be part of the cost center or profit center in a company is very useful when deciding where you should work.

decafninja 5y ago
Agree with this 100%. I now make it a point to avoid any companies where tech is an unrespected cost center, which unfortunately does rule out the overwhelming majority of companies out there. That said, even companies where SWEs and tech are the profit center are certainly capable of laying you off, so profit vs cost center isn't really any insurance to avoid that sort of fate. Even at the banks I've worked at the traders (profit center) would face the axe before us lowly peasants in the tech departments. Rather, it's more an issue of respect...and relative compensation.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  I have one primary question that I'm trying to figure out during job interviews. "Will my boss understand what I produce and the difficulty involved in producing it?" if the answer is no, the job is going to suck.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    It's not just one level though. You can ask the same about whether your boss's boss will understand, and so on and so forth up the food chain. The problem with many tech-as-a-cost-center companies is that you will quickly run into a person on that hierarchy who doesn't (often at or near the intersection between tech departments and the profit center business departments).
    - grahamm 5y ago
      And if your company wants to "flatten the structure" running into that person is more likely and you will run in to them. I also have a problem with ex-developers who work their way up the structure with time. Generally they drift away from the tech and what tech takes and end up serving their higher masters. So you end up with someone who thinks they know what it takes but hasn't actually done it for many years. Literally had this again the other day when I gave an estimate for a piece of work one of the devs had done a decent bit of investigation on. Bluntly told that was too much time from someone who had really no much more info than the subject line of the bug report. Of course who had the weight to get their estimate across.....(not me)

madaxe_again 5y ago

I had a similar nudge into going starting my own thing - I’d been at Refco (a now defunct brokerage) in ‘05 when everything went pop, because they’d been hiding half a billion of bad debt - I saw which way the wind was blowing and scurried away like a rat from a sinking ship.

vsuaoqmdn 5y ago

Let me guess. Now you think that the pinnacle of a SWE career is working at Google it Facebook, right?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

colordrops 5y ago

> I had naively thought that working as a developer in the IT departments of Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds* was the pinnacle of a SWE career. What was the reasoning behind this thinking? While finance often does have some pretty advanced tech behind it, you can find more cutting edge and complex work at purely technical companies. Or are you speaking of compensation?

Jenk 5y ago
I'm not GP but in the 90s I was taught that bigger = better, and to some degree that was true, if you were into old (ergo, very expensive) tech. In the days before the internet, technology was niche (as was the knowledge to develop and operate it) and super expensive, so only mega corps had decent tech to work with. This reputation persisted for sometime into the new millennium until we started to see more of these scruffy younguns starting to make noise in the business, and techno, spheres.
- decafninja 5y ago
  GP here. I started my career in the mid-late 2000s. For me some of the reasons that I remember are: 1. Just plain old not knowing better. 2. Being in NYC, my social circle had a lot of Wall Street finance types. In fact, this is still true - I know more finance people amongst my friends than fellow SWEs. 3. Hacker tech culture wasn't as widespread or widely known back then, especially in NYC. Or maybe it was just me. Going back to #1, I thought things couldn't get any better than dressing up in business casual monkey suits every morning and being ordered to dance like a monkey by a hotshot trader in hopes of picking up after his glorious scraps. 4. I thought the money wasn't half bad, making like $80-90k back then. I thought no one could pay better than the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street. I don't know what a company like Google was paying their engineers back then, but I think it's a somewhat recent phenomenon where tech SWE compensation grossly and utterly outpaced tech-in-finance SWE compensation. Again, I'm not referring to ultra-elite finance firms like Jane Street or Citadel where I understand SWEs do get paid on par (or better) than FAANG. I distinctly recall even ignoring a Google recruiter's solicitations back then (2007? 2008?) because I naively thought working at my investment bank was utterly superior to anything Google could offer. Now I know better, and knowing is half the battle.

lostmsu 5y ago

Just wait until Citadel, Jane Street, and Two Sigma all sink. They are already behind some big tech in total comp, so brain drain is inevitable.