Is this even possible? I have a minor in economics and am pretty early into my career. Would you recommend making the switch. I like coding but I think that at hedge funds or PE you just have a higher cap. Anyone made this switch or know someone that did?
Definitely doable. Don’t be afraid to take a step backward at first. What steps have you taken thus far?
Very common. Worked at a shop that would constantly poach good people from the tech organization. I know several who have jumped over to the business in PM or trading. Bonus component of comp goes way up. 100% - 200% bonuses with about the same base. (15-50% at the IC level in the front office tech organization.
don't downgrade yourself from first class citizen to second class citizen
If you work in the business as a PM with CS/Math/Stats background you are 1st class. Depends on the role. Difference between working in technology at a finance shop or working in ´business’ (PM,Quant,trading) FO
The roles you are talking about are in the minority - not more than 5-10% of Tech related jobs in Finance
For this transition, where to start?
Smaller financial firms tend to hire people wearing multiple hats (like startups). Larger ones may just want certain expert for a specific position. For example, data engineer positions may want people with spark pipeline experience and infrastructure positions may want people with kubernetes Experience.
The way of interviews really diverse. Some firms still include brain teasers(no kidding). Some firm ask computer internals (how OS works; for high frequency trading). Many of them ask language details about python, java or C++. You may think algo/ds is “a” way to screen candidates in most tech firms as C++ language details is just another way. For example, you probably need to know how jvm GC works, how packets are transmitted from NIC to applications, how vtable is implemented.
Of course, there are still financial firms whose interviews are very like tech. Just algo/ds questions.
One important difference: to get a finance job, it’s okay and common practice to go through hunters. Probably 60% (my feeling, no real counting) of the financial developer jobs are posted by hunters.
The first thing to make the transition is to study the job postings. See if there is ones relevant to what you have done in the past two years. If you can find a match on specific skills, likely you may get that job. Once you entered this domain, then you are considered inside the circle. Much much easier to hop to another position in this domain.
This transition is common.
It's not
The other way from fin to tech is more common