Engineers at Hedge Funds and PE
Any engineers or data people on here work or have worked for hedge funds or private equity? I've heard that it's generally better than working at ibanks...Is it true? 1. Do/Did you like the work? 2. What stack do you use? 3. Are you easily disposable? 4. Culture?
1. Yes 2. Mostly JVM language for backend and React for frontend. But we have lots of different things in use 3. No one ever gets fired unless you are really bad. No layoffs ever 4 Googley (which has pros and cons)
I was in hedge funds in NYC for over a decade, as an independent contractor (usually a fixed daily rate). It is important to divide hedge funds into a few major groups: the bigger ones with larger teams and formalized recruiting (Two Sigma, Citadel, Jane Street, Bridgewater, and on the fringe: AQR, Point72, Millennium), and then everyone else. I was in the latter. For the latter you must learn .NET/C# and SQL Server, otherwise you are severely limiting your options. These smaller companies will likely hire as a contractor, maybe with the intent to convert to FTE (maybe not, I stayed independent for 11 years with 2 companies). You can make good money, especially if you incorporate and go corp-to-corp rather than W2. You could last for many years, and you’re only going to get canned for typical reasons (not the nebulous BS in tech companies). Investment banks are another story. Tech people are janitors there and treated as such. They have billions of dollars but most IT people live cheaply and they look it (no offense).
How much was your TC these years as an independent contractor?
In NYC if you’re lucky and experienced in the tech stack you’ll get 1000-1100 per day. It’s hard to break past it. I was at 1200/day after a decade of it and got up to 1400/day, but an unusual circumstance got me up that far. That number is impossible now. Note that these are corp-to-corp numbers, not W-2. If you want W-2 then you’ll be under 1000/day. Many places will try to extract a full 9-10 hours per day for that fixed rate, but I haven’t seen that be exploited. Typically the contractor culture is a 9-6 day with a quick lunch (but not always, especially on Fridays).
What's the TC like in a good year? At least 0.5M I hope.
If somebody did support on Hedge Funds I'd also love to hear some stories! I know that the people on the business side will have a hard time but not much is said about IT.
Again, it depends on the project and the leadership... I am working in a green field project and pretty much use scala, akka, Kafka, react, Python, etc in our project... Recently, I interviewed at Exodus Point and they were at Python/SQL server. Biggies like 2 sigma, citadel, jane street is altogether a different ball game.... It's difficult to get an interview unless someone refers one...
Funny you mention ExodusPoint. I was contacted about them and kinda know someone there. I didn’t get an interview though. At least not yet.
One thing I forgot to add... HFs pay better than IBs
IBs are literally at the bottom of my list. I’d take any startup over GS MS JPMC CS any day (I might consider UBS).
Why UBS... Not every startup pays better... UBS doesn't pay good
“Almost anything” is better than working at IBanks. Hedge funds pay much more , the actual work environment depends on the specific fund