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Excellent question. Simply put: We follow where growing companies are looking for talent. That's our indicator. Banks, hedge funds and other parts of the fina
by darrellsilver 14y ago
Excellent question.
Simply put: We follow where growing companies are looking for talent. That's our indicator.
Banks, hedge funds and other parts of the financial sector use a hell of a lot of fancy tech (they're the first "big data" after all), and there's a lot of expertise that's been locked up there for too long.
When I left finance (4.5 years, 4 years ago... hells yeah) I had all sorts of engineering skills, but knew nothing of the companies, how to evaluate employers, or what exact tools were most in demand or growing.
Helping people answer those questions more quickly than I could is our mission.
- michaelochurch 14y agoOne thing I like about finance is that they are better than most corporations at respecting and evaluating intelligence. They don't reject the 140+ IQ set outright in the way that most corporate environments (even some startups) do. Financial companies may restrain and underemploy such people with bureaucratic nonsense, but they also pay for the pain. The problem with the developer economy is that paid work has very low career efficiency. There's just a lot of glop work to go around, and most engineers don't have the political pull to get past it and on to the interesting stuff, which they're perceived as underqualified for because of their track record of crappy work (even if done well). Most engineers have about a 75% slack ratio in their careers, which prevents them from ever getting really good. But give a decently smart and motivated engineer 5 years of full autonomy and you'll have the guys and gals that people make Chuck Norris jokes about.