Interesting sentence in the article - "Trading systems touch low-level coding, networking (all seven layers of hello OSI Model), APIs, end-user UI, databases, embedded systems, enterprise web frameworks, cutting-edge programming language research, Big Data, state management, etc etc.".
However, whenever the topics of programming in finance come up in HN, I see a general tone of disdain somewhere along the lines of "why do you want to waste your life in finance when you could be starting a start-up in Silicon Valley?". Of course I am generalizing a bit here, but I have always felt that finance provides incredible challenge to technical people - especially those with a background in mathematics or physics and interested in programming.
I have only a years perspective on the sector now, but I think finance has started down a road all sectors must tread over the next decade or two. We will not escape software eating our world, and while most banks have had too much money and so not confronted many of these upcoming realities, they have had twenty years of faster and faster software-isation- and I can reasonably state that finance are mostly software houses that think they are banks.
If you can't code, your future there is bleak. If you can its not that much better. And this is where we are all heading.
Yes there are challenges - but it's not often technical but organisational, project, people and process challenges that are the main issues. Those interesting challenges for good STEM people will be in transport, farming and pharmacy too by 2020.
Oops commented too fast without reading the entire article. It says later -
"I hope people will, in the course of robbing them blind, actually learn what major Wall Street institutions do for a living and come to a more nuanced understanding of their position in society."
When I read the title "stockfighter," I thought it would be a game about joining a tech company 10 years past the IPO and you have to work your ass off for .000001% in options that'll take a year to afford once you factor in rent.
However, whenever the topics of programming in finance come up in HN, I see a general tone of disdain somewhere along the lines of "why do you want to waste your life in finance when you could be starting a start-up in Silicon Valley?". Of course I am generalizing a bit here, but I have always felt that finance provides incredible challenge to technical people - especially those with a background in mathematics or physics and interested in programming.