6 ms·

>at that time earning $400,000 annually I really, really need to leave the Midwest. He was basically a dev lead?

gaius 17y ago
A "quant" is a trader who writes his own trading software. It's easier for them to do this than to write a spec for someone else, especially since it's constantly being tweaked and tuned, and the full-time programmers in a bank build tools and infrastructure, they don't trade themselves.
- profquail 17y ago
  Just for a bit more info...most job postings that I've seen for quant positions generally require at least an M.S. in Finance, if not a a Ph.D. in Finance or another technical field (Math/Physics/Comp. Sci./Engineering). This is so you'll either already be trained in the underlying financial math, or will be able to learn it quickly. Also, the field is pretty stressful from what I hear. Not that some dev shops aren't the same way though...
  - gaius 17y ago
    Yes, and you would have picked up your programming skills incidentally through studying your main subject. Quants are not software engineers - the programs they write are simply proxies for themselves as traders, able to react instantly and run 24/7.
- ShabbyDoo 17y ago
  Oh...he was a quant...ok, makes more sense now. So, that implies that the code he stole likely contained trading strategies.
- brown9-2 17y ago
  If he was only a "quant" though, i.e. an analyst and a trader, why in the world would they give him access to the source code? Sounds to me like he was in fact a programmer.
- gelliott 17y ago
  I don't think this guy was a quant at all, just a heavy-hitting programmer: http://www.linkedin.com/in/aleynikov http://www.linkedin.com/in/aleynikov
dangoldin 17y ago
That was probably before bonus too.
wglb 17y ago
There are serious jobs in Chicago in the financial sector.
- jcl 17y ago
  E.g.: The blog post linked in the article specifically mentions that Aleynikov left his $400,000 job in New York for a $1,200,000 job in Chicago.
bwd 17y ago
He doesn't appear to be a quant, based on his linkedin profile. Looks like he had a telecom background, so he was probably working on the architecture of their co-located trading platform. In the automated trading world, co-location means putting your machines at the exchange to reduce the latency of receiving market data and entering orders. For a high frequency strategy (i.e. tens or hundreds of thousands of trades per day), these improvements can really increase profits, and there is a huge arms race under way in industry to get the lowest latency.

gaius 17y ago

A "quant" is a trader who writes his own trading software. It's easier for them to do this than to write a spec for someone else, especially since it's constantly being tweaked and tuned, and the full-time programmers in a bank build tools and infrastructure, they don't trade themselves.

profquail 17y ago
Just for a bit more info...most job postings that I've seen for quant positions generally require at least an M.S. in Finance, if not a a Ph.D. in Finance or another technical field (Math/Physics/Comp. Sci./Engineering). This is so you'll either already be trained in the underlying financial math, or will be able to learn it quickly. Also, the field is pretty stressful from what I hear. Not that some dev shops aren't the same way though...
- gaius 17y ago
  Yes, and you would have picked up your programming skills incidentally through studying your main subject. Quants are not software engineers - the programs they write are simply proxies for themselves as traders, able to react instantly and run 24/7.
ShabbyDoo 17y ago
Oh...he was a quant...ok, makes more sense now. So, that implies that the code he stole likely contained trading strategies.
brown9-2 17y ago
If he was only a "quant" though, i.e. an analyst and a trader, why in the world would they give him access to the source code? Sounds to me like he was in fact a programmer.
gelliott 17y ago
I don't think this guy was a quant at all, just a heavy-hitting programmer: http://www.linkedin.com/in/aleynikov http://www.linkedin.com/in/aleynikov

dangoldin 17y ago

That was probably before bonus too.

wglb 17y ago

There are serious jobs in Chicago in the financial sector.

jcl 17y ago
E.g.: The blog post linked in the article specifically mentions that Aleynikov left his $400,000 job in New York for a $1,200,000 job in Chicago.

bwd 17y ago

He doesn't appear to be a quant, based on his linkedin profile. Looks like he had a telecom background, so he was probably working on the architecture of their co-located trading platform. In the automated trading world, co-location means putting your machines at the exchange to reduce the latency of receiving market data and entering orders. For a high frequency strategy (i.e. tens or hundreds of thousands of trades per day), these improvements can really increase profits, and there is a huge arms race under way in industry to get the lowest latency.