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I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me
- coolThingsFirst 3y agoOnly an idiot works 80 hours and especially for someone else’s s company and especially if it’s a startup.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoNobody is born with all of life's wisdom in place.
- bigiain 3y agoI suspect a very large percentage of HN readers are probably idiots, by that measure. (Me included, for at least 4 or 5 different "someone else's companies" over the last 30 odd years.)
- coolThingsFirst 3y agoThe exceptions prove the rule. It’s like skipping life because all one does is work. Thats basically 12 hour workdays with sat and sunday 10 hour each. Lets pray you were exaggerating a bit. :)
- tomrod 3y agoWhen the system has a bug and they call this person back -- I hope they require a basis point of every trade for ongoing maintenance.
- madaxe_again 3y agoThey won’t call them back. They’ll get their lawyers to threaten them into fixing it for free.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- hnthrowaway0328 3y agoLooks like OP did get a lot of fun though. Now it's time to gather everything and apply for the next hedge fund job -- as a contractor. Oh and I hope OP didn't get the time to pick all bugs for the ex company so maybe that's on his contracting list too.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoOh, but that's the problem: because their tenure at this "hedge fund" was so short, and the job market is so lousy, they've effectively been blackballed from finance.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- swader999 3y agoI hope they were paid by the hour or at least learned this lesson.
- madaxe_again 3y agoNah, it will have been fixed costs, and I guarantee the hourly rate came out as less than £4/hr.
- 0xbeefeed 3y ago[dead]
- brrrrrm 3y agoNot to slight the author, but Rust seems like quite a hard language to learn on the job.
- mcapodici 3y agoI thought the same thing. Either he means that he learned the very finer parts of Rust on the job but knew it well to begin with. OR. He was really doing 40 hours of work and 40 hours of Rust learning per week. Which is fine too, as he delivered.
- brink 3y agoHave you tried it? I don't see any rust code in your github profile. Personally, I don't think it's that bad. I did it in 2020, and thought it was (mostly) easy. A few weeks of wrestling with the borrow checker until I finally "got it". I now work in Rust full-time.
- speed_spread 3y agoStarting with knowledge of another statically typed language, Rust really isn't that hard. Borrow checker gymnastics take a few days to get over after which one can get relatively productive. There's plenty of code samples on GitHub and mature crates to get going on the db and web layers.
- fbdab103 3y agoAs a primarily Python programmer, I did not feel over-burdened by learning Rust. Sure, I never learned how to deal with lifetimes, never wrote a macro, and probably used clone a few places where I did not have the need. I was almost certainly leaving performance on the table. Yet the language gives you so many guardrails that I always felt like my code was doing the correct thing.
- cutler 3y agoWhy are you pitching yourself as a junior in the job market after you delivered so much? You should only be considering senior roles or, better, contract/consulting. Just imagine if you'd value-priced what you created. Second thoughts, don't or you'll never get a decent night's sleep again.
- smohare 3y ago[dead]
- qprofyeh 3y agoOP will take that experience with them forever (technical, tactical, emotional perhaps). It’s a huge learning experience, many would suffer for. OTOH, the hedge fund will probably fail to profit from the project soon enough: A. they fired their most productive engineer in a changing competitive business B. they run a v0.9 with many bugs without the author-maintainer C. hate the saying but they seem penny-wise pound-foolish. OTOH, it smells like there was also a quiet conflict between OP and their manager, and OP was unaware of that.
- madaxe_again 3y agoThe hedge fund will make plenty - all they have to do is write up an R&D tax credit claim, and the government will write them a substantial cheque. Nobody actually pays for software development in the U.K. - just the taxpayer.
- djaouen 3y agoWelcome to capitalism! Enjoy your stay!
- brink 3y agoHate to break it to you, but people are going to be greedy and selfish with or without capitalism.
- worik 3y ago> ...people are going to be greedy and selfish with or without capitalism. True. But in capitalism greed is a fetish
- hackernoteng 3y agoI've worked for software company which sold products to hedge funds. And I've also done consulting work for big private equity firm. Both experiences taught me never to actually be employed by such companies. You will be disrespected.
- uoaei 3y agoThere are people out there who see the entire world as "fuck you, I'll get mine". They are socialized into such circumstances and so tolerate or even seek them out as some kind of validation of their social-Darwinist ideology.
- charred_patina 3y agoIt sounds like they were never given written confirmation for the bonuses. How likely are you to face penalties if you put a "time bomb" in a codebase like this? Something with plausible deniability like let's say like an authentication script that you have to run every 30 days or the program stops working for "security reasons". Also you're the only one who knows where the script is and how to run it.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoAre you serious? Answer your own question: if it were legal, then you certainly wouldn't need "plausible deniability."
- charred_patina 3y agoSorry, replace "is it legal?" with "how likely are you to get caught and face penalties?".
- metabagel 3y agoIt’s not worth the risk nor the guilt.
- ParetoOptimal 3y agoWhy do companies need plausible deniability to fire someone fulfilling their role? Its the same idea from the opposite direction.
- mrkstu 3y agoNo.
- JamesBarney 3y agoThis won't get you the bonus, it'll just get you possibly sued and/or prison time. I think a better fix is to just not give to a company what you would regret giving. Don't put in 80 hours a week for months unless you have good reason to think it's going to be worth it and do it with the full knowledge that you might be gambling on the company's generosity.
- nhumrich 3y agoTo play devils advocate, what we don't know from the story is how effective the playform was. 48 hours after release he was fired, possibly because it was terrible.
- cyclotron3k 3y agoWe also don't know how big the dev team is. It's heavily implied that it was one, but not actually stated.
- freeopinion 3y agoCount yourself lucky that you got out with your liberty. It's not unheard of for quants that try to leave to be criminally prosecuted and placed in isolated incarceration. Getting fired sounds pretty good, no?
- kaliqt 3y agoGot some stories for that?
- throwaway167 3y agoThe Goldman guy? UBS had similar? Perhaps. Try searching for these.
- dimgl 3y agoSources?
- chad_strategic 3y agoFlash boys by Micheal Lewis. I think the coder was arrested but it didn’t go much further than that… I don’t think it has happened again since the early 2010.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 666666666 3y agoi keep saying it to people at work who work extra hard or spit some positive corporate propagada --- as an employee you are just a fucking number,,,and nobody gives two fucks about u
- testval124 3y agoAs someone near to this space, why in the world would you develop a custom order management system (OMS) as opposed to buying something off the shelf?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lacrimacida 3y agoBecause they paid less than they would’ve paid for an off the shelf solution? They ripped off a bloke instead
- dfadsadsf 3y agoI just do not believe this story. Nobody in the right mind will fire key software engineer 48 hours after system goes live. This is where all the bugs/problems show up and you need all hands on deck to fix them. Six months after launch when all problems are solved - absolutely, you can fire engineer. 48 hours after launch? absolutely not.
- dirtybirdnj 3y agoI think you significantly underestimate the lack of empathy and (lack of) concern for workers that this kind of management has
- j16sdiz 3y agoThat's not the empathy issue. It's the system maintenance issues. You need one or two more release to iron out the bugs, right? ...and this is a trading platform. The market changes, you need program changes for unforseen market changes.
- dirtybirdnj 3y agoLack of empathy is what causes the hubris (stupidity?) that would lead one to believe the person who built the system is expendable. I have also been in a job where once the project reached a certian point I was fired. They gave me a song and dance about building a tech culture and sustainable development. It was all lies. They knew when they were going to fire me the day they hired me. Once their demo worked, everything went off the rails. There was no real business plan just hype and bullshit. No wonder they had no idea what to do next. Sometimes it's a blessing in disguise when you get shit canned at these jobs but you can't pay the bills with moral victories
- rixed 3y agoAnd lack of concern for the end product. In large enough company, outside of engineering department end product quality or even business long term sustainability is often no one's concern.
- 3y ago
- desireco42 3y agoDefinitely sounds like bogus story, news and sites are full of imaginary stories... you will not believe what happened... On the other hand. I had places that people didn't like me because I did things too well and they looked bad because of that.
- rekttrader 3y agoThis really sucks for this human, capital markets do what they do... ruthlessly find alpha.
- WheelsAtLarge 3y agoJust keep in mind that a business's role in society is to deliver something and bring in a profit. So if you don't bring revenue directly to the bottom line you are in line for layoffs. Don't fall in love with your job. The business is not in love with you. I suspect the fund's trading strategy was less than great so they had to cut expenses ASAP. I can't imagine why they would get rid of the person who would have to maintain the code, if they didn't need to do it. There is no such thing as a no need for maintenance code. If I was the CEO, I would have been terrified if the code was running without someone to make sure it was running correctly.
- dopylitty 3y agoYou overstate their role when you say it includes 'delivering something'. The people who run most businesses would be perfectly happy delivering nothing at all and bringing in a profit. That's why businesses in the western economic system all end up turning purely into investment funds if left unchecked. All profit, no product.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gottorf 3y ago> The people who run most businesses would be perfectly happy delivering nothing at all and bringing in a profit. To be fair, to the degree that your statement is true, then I think most people who are employed by businesses would be perfectly happy delivering nothing at all and bringing home a paycheck.
- moate 3y agoAs someone who worked in pricing for a SAAS company I often explained what I called the “greed-charity” scale with 0 being “full greed, take in money but provide nothing” and 10 being “full charity, provide everything for free” and ask “what does a 5 look like for this product/feature”?
- Xunjin 3y agoToday business are more focused in making profit, delivering something to society is just a side effect.
- notso411 3y ago[dead]
- namuol 3y agoNobody deserves to be treated like this, but unless it’s in a contract in actual cash terms, treat all compensatory promises from your employer as Monopoly money. This goes for bonuses as well as equity payouts.
- WalterBright 3y agoIt's not about what you deserve. It's about your contract with the employer. For example, when you hire a plumber to fix something, do you pay him what he deserves, or do you pay him the amount agreed upon in advance?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chad_strategic 3y agoBeen there done that. It’s better to get out, they will only ruin your algorithm with their lack of understanding. Suits with an algorithm will eventually drive it into the ground in the long run.
- croes 3y ago>A typical week for me included working between 70 and 80 hours a week. I worked almost every weekend, and almost every day for the entire time, without a single day of holiday. >I could have simply worked 40 hours a week. Had I done so, it is likely I would still be employed, still building the platform today. >but have I snookered myself and made myself unemployable for working too effectively during my last role? Was this really effective working. Overtime, working weekends and no vacation isn't effective working just squeezing work time into a tight schedule. That's the road to burn out.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago"the “substantial bonus” which would be paid to me was “thanks” for the critical role I played in starting the company." Based on situations I've seen before, I'm guessing this "bonus" was probably actually attached to some legalese that required signing that exempted the company from any wrongful termination legal action, etc. etc.
- sureglymop 3y ago> I worked 80 hour weeks I don't know how the work culture is there but that seems completely insane. I've said it many times and I'll say it again. The first thing I tell anyone that enters the work force: Do not play the hero. You don't have to save the world. You will only be rewarded with more work. Put that passion and energy into something you created and own and control.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tootie 3y agoA few years ago I clocked like a 110 hour week. I was the director but also hands on so I was doing a ton of work but also responsible for delivery. Work was at a job site away from home. Worked straight through two weekends. I felt like I was doing this because I owned it. It culminated in a big demo for the client executive team that went flawlessly. At the end nobody said a word to me. I thought I did something really valuable for the company with direct visibility to leadership and they still didn't seem to care. I poured so much energy into that job and it just went nowhere. I wasn't fired on the spot but I ended up being laid off less than year later.
- justinclift 3y agoHopefully you learned to better identify when you should/shouldn't do that kind of thing in future? If it's your own startup then sure, otherwise "hell no". ;)
- voakbasda 3y agoIf they ignored heroics like that, I would have been searching for new employment immediately.
- RHSman2 3y agoIt’s fun being the hero, till it isn’t. Balancing one’s natural behavior with burnout is definitely a skill.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hartator 3y ago> which allowed the firm to make its first eve trades Ever?
- mlrtime 3y agoWas also confused by this. I think "eve" is correct here but don't know what it means.
- penjelly 3y ago> So is that it? I know the job market is tough right now, but have I snookered myself and made myself unemployable for working too effectively during my last role? No? maybe youre looking in the wrong places though, and possibly tho unlikely they blackballed you but that would only apply within the finance world > I think I have applied to every hedge fund and investment bank in London I fear the future where i MUST work for a bank/hedge fund to make enough money to satisfy myself and my family.
- innocentoldguy 3y agoI can sympathize with you. The same thing happened to me at https://getskip.com https://getskip.com. That company exists because of me and shortly after I finished all the backend Elixir work, they reneged on most of our agreements and then fired me shortly after that. Then, five years later, they sold the company and stole the equity I had earned during my time there.
- sys_64738 3y agoWhat age is the 80 hour slogger? The younger you are then the likelihood is that you're willing to work to burn out either because you don't know any better or you don't have a life outside work. Older folk who have been there, done that, know that $CORP is there to suck the life out of you before tossing you aside. That's why $CORP love new college grads and hate more experienced folk who call them out.
- JamesBarney 3y agoAlso just energy levels. I could recover from an 80 hour pretty quickly at 22, in my late 30s it takes longer.
- steveBK123 3y agoThe specifics seem off (firing OMS dev right after launch) but I’ve seen my share of crazy fires in this space. People fired day before launch after 2 year build out etc. It’s always more of a clash of personalities than anything else.
- kwar13 3y agoThis story sounds fairly made-up. I have worked in quant hedge funds before, and being let go 2 days after algos start trading just doesn't sound right, unless there was absolute cause that had nothing related to performance.
- DevKoala 3y agoI don’t believe this. Either the traders are too stupid to understand they need someone to maintain the system and iterate on it or they found and alternative in the time the original system was being developed.
- elzbardico 3y agoNever trust any promise not in a signed contract and with said contract reviewed by a lawyer in a high stakes situation like that. Never trust finance people, they are the scum of this planet. They only respect leverage. Anyway, I have no much of sympathy for quants. So, poetic justice maybe.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoPlease stop working more than 40 hours a week. It’s your choice, and you don’t need to choose to. When it goes badly, you also don’t need to use it as a point of honor. It’s not. It just means you let your employer exploit you. Doing it because you want to is a little different. I often do. But you have to understand that the only thing you’ll get out of it is mild intellectual gratification, and sometimes not even that.
- throwaway019254 3y ago> It’s your choice, and you don’t need to choose to. And if I don't choose it, I can just choose to not pay bills/rent when I'm fired. What a simple solution.
- devmor 3y agoAs you can see from the article you're commenting on, it does not protect you from being fired, so I don't see your point.
- throwaway019254 3y agoThe point is that some people just don't have a choice. You are right, as described in the article, it will not protect you from being fired. But choosing not to work overtime may directly cause the firing.
- devmor 3y agoI think the implied solution is to find another position if possible. You can always work for a bad company while attempting to be hired by a better one.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoI think employers exaggerate their willingness to fire you. It’s risky for them. For example, they can’t fire everybody, so after they fire one person, the next one should be proportionally less afraid of working less. You’re also not limited to one job. Even people in economically disadvantaged positions can usually get another one if needed. In other words, it’s precisely this fear that employers are counting on. Speaking from experience, once you face it, it tends to evaporate.
- WalterBright 3y ago> I was told it was “with regret” that my contract would be terminated that day, and that the “substantial bonus” which would be paid to me was “thanks” for the critical role I played in starting the company. Always put what you want in the contract, because that's what you're going to get. Don't feel bad, everybody learns that the hard way.
- xyst 3y agoI'll never understand why people would work for free like this. I learned very early on (like during my minimum wage job years - 16-21). I am not working more or less and I only work when clocked in (or in the case of most corp jobs, 9-5). If I don't get paid a sizable diff for "non-regular working hours", your call/email/text is going to be ignored until next business day. Idc if it's G or some low rent dogshit company. "fuck you, pay me" [1] Only time I would put in those marathons is for myself (from idea to hacking together an mvp over the weekend), or maybe I am learning something new. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48
- pech0rin 3y agoOnly time I work that much is for myself. The employer has no obligation besides whatever your contract says. They can and will screw you over to meet their bottom line. Depending on his non-compete, why not just build a new platform again and sell it to other hedge funds, seems like it would be quite lucrative.
- fxtentacle 3y agoMost likely, the company is just afraid of getting tanked by a bug, so they replaced him with someone with more experience. "Every day, I got to build really cool stuff, all while learning a new language which was unfamiliar to me" Someone who tries to compensate for a lack of skill / experience by working extra hard, like 80 hour weeks, might be a bad fit for a startup and especially for high-risk software like in finance.
- keithalewis 3y agoHalf the story?
- reify 3y agolest we forget. The word "Employ" means "to Use" to expect anything more is just fantasy Fool you once
- technick 3y agoAs someone else struggling to find a job, I understand. I would still have my last job if I was a little less transparent and made infosec a blackbox. I gave this company almost 5 years of my time, only to be told "Your services are no longer needed" and given 6 weeks of severance, then forced to sell my private RSU's for 2 cents a piece. Most companies I've applied at don't respond, the < 5% that do respond with a rejection, they send the rejection email during the weekends which makes me wonder if they have people in other countries reviewing resumes. I'm not a spring chicken either, I've been doing tech since 1999. Started as a linux / unix admin which became devops between then and 2016. I was doing security work but didn't have a security title until 2016. A lot of DevOps includes security, just it's never called out. I've been in dedicated security roles since 2016, making it all the way to lead security engineer and leading a team of 2 other people. Still I can barely get an interview and when I do get an interview, it ends with "We like you but we're going with another candidate or we don't feel your senior enough. Let me briefly highlight some of the gold nuggets I remember from my recent interviews. * I did a 30 minute interview for a security architect position at a media company. It was me and another guy talking over a network diagram and the questions that need to be asked. I got all but one, which was about the hardware (Network DVR) becoming sentient and threatening physical damage. * Did 5 hrs of interviewing for a Senior Security Engineer (detection) only to be put paired with a python developer in the end and asked to write code well beyond what the position called for. I can script and I never claimed to be a developer. But let me show you this thing called Copilot and ChatGPT, or if I need something advanced, I'll ask someone who knows more than me to help out. * Another interview for a security architect at the local water company. They asked why I want to be a security architect, I respond with, "I'm into making sure security is baked into platforms as it's being designed, it's more optimal that way over shoeing in security as an after thought.". Hiring manager replies with "We've been around for over 100 years, we don't design anything new." * I interviewed at a major password management company (the biggest) and was talking about their recent breach. In the aftermath they claimed to be encrypting all fields going forward, interview confirmed they lied and are not doing it now. I complained about vendors lying as they lied to me during a vendor review at my previous job. HR let me know later that they "liked me but decided to go with another candidate", probably one that doesn't care. * I've had two jobs basically ghost me, say they wanted to create a new job position that fits all of my skills then go radio silent. * A place that rhymes with dox had me interview with someone who thought a WAF can stop malware / ransomware from spreading on a internal network. I didn't know if this was a test to see if I corrected him or not, and if I corrected him will that blow my chances. The recruiter brushed me off and didn't respond for over a month after the interview. * A few other interviews have turned into dick measuring contests on who knows the most irrelevant crap. I've applied at jobs that I check every single box on their job posting and they don't even give me the time of day for a conversation before receiving a rejection. I'm getting tired and frustrated with the screwed up practices we've allowed to grow in our industry.
- lostemptations5 3y agoIt would be interesting to publicly hear from the company about this. He (or she) should name them.
- radar1310 3y agoI’ll give a very simple job security lesson. A small resort I worked for had a guy that had been there from the very beginning. He knew where every single water line was on the entire resort. A map was never made of those water lines. When a new general manager was hired years later, he wanted to fire the guy who always showed up late for work, and was considered lazy. The owner of the of the resort said, “you can’t fire him, he’s the only one that knows where all the water lines are”. Job security boys,job security.
- tomrod 3y agoThis is the strategy that failed when the TFA's author was fired 48 hours after the system was rolled out.
- nunez 3y agoThis absolutely blows, but this: > Firstly, I was told repeatedly that the faster the firm was able to start trading, the faster I would start earning bonuses from the firm's PnL, assuming that the strategies indeed were profitable. (It is my understanding that they are highly profitable.) Is why I never plan my finances around bonuses. Way too easy to get screwed this way.
- janeyhughes9 3y ago[flagged]
- Sovann102 3y ago[dead]