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I used to work at a real time brokerage + national bank based out of the Midwest. The entire engineering+ operations team was 128 people, exactly. Including the

I used to work at a real time brokerage + national bank based out of the Midwest. The entire engineering+ operations team was 128 people, exactly. Including the CIO and his assistant who ruled the 39th floor with an iron fist, a hold over from the dot com era. They're publicly traded. I think they're down to 90 people but still running a functional company with tens of thousands of broker dealers. I have no idea how you need more than 500 tech people to run an online trading platform.

InCityDreams 4y ago
>Including the CIO and his assistant who ruled the 39th floor with an iron fist, a hold over from the dot com era. Please explain? Is ruling the 39th floor a particularly [financial] in-joke?
- hadlock 4y ago
  No that's just the particular floor we happened to be on. I think the bank was on 38 and the trading floor was... 32?, executive suite was 41 or something. We had like five or six floors in the upper third of the 42 story building and a bank branch down in the lobby. They probably would have liked to have contiguous floors but it would have been a lot of work to move the data center and trading floor just to say you had X floors in a row.
- samizdis 4y ago
  AFAIK, it's just representative of status/power, but I don't know its origins. A listing in The Urban Dictionary defines/describes it as: When an idea, movement or act has become very successful. To be propelled to great heights. [1] FWIW, there's a band called The 39th Floor [2] that I like for its grungy/retro-ish rock. The band's name evokes, for me, the image of "high-powered execs", but I'm not sure how that association got into my head. (Possibly the track Koka Kola on The Clash's album London Calling [3], but that refers to a "51st floor", rather than 39th, to symbolise corporate success/power [4].) [1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=39th%20floor https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=39th%20floor [2] https://the39thfloor.bandcamp.com/ https://the39thfloor.bandcamp.com/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Calling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Calling [4] https://genius.com/The-clash-koka-kola-lyrics https://genius.com/The-clash-koka-kola-lyrics

InCityDreams 4y ago

>Including the CIO and his assistant who ruled the 39th floor with an iron fist, a hold over from the dot com era. Please explain? Is ruling the 39th floor a particularly [financial] in-joke?

hadlock 4y ago
No that's just the particular floor we happened to be on. I think the bank was on 38 and the trading floor was... 32?, executive suite was 41 or something. We had like five or six floors in the upper third of the 42 story building and a bank branch down in the lobby. They probably would have liked to have contiguous floors but it would have been a lot of work to move the data center and trading floor just to say you had X floors in a row.
samizdis 4y ago
AFAIK, it's just representative of status/power, but I don't know its origins. A listing in The Urban Dictionary defines/describes it as: When an idea, movement or act has become very successful. To be propelled to great heights. [1] FWIW, there's a band called The 39th Floor [2] that I like for its grungy/retro-ish rock. The band's name evokes, for me, the image of "high-powered execs", but I'm not sure how that association got into my head. (Possibly the track Koka Kola on The Clash's album London Calling [3], but that refers to a "51st floor", rather than 39th, to symbolise corporate success/power [4].) [1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=39th%20floor https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=39th%20floor [2] https://the39thfloor.bandcamp.com/ https://the39thfloor.bandcamp.com/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Calling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Calling [4] https://genius.com/The-clash-koka-kola-lyrics https://genius.com/The-clash-koka-kola-lyrics