Comment by cheez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cheez | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, I was the beneficiary of such "blind hiring". I ended up working for an incredible trading department for too short a time and I am told that I beat out 70 or so other applicants who actually had degrees, let alone PhDs and Masters degrees. As far as I'm aware, I was not shafted on the salary though it might have been 20 or 30K less than I would have received otherwise. I don't think this was because of my lack of credentials: my salary + bonus beat most of Google/Facebook any day.

But there is another side of it. People like me (kicked out of the house at a young age, a couple of stretches of jail time) who didn't get a degree, didn't get it for a reason. We have life situations that tend to follow us around. Unfortunately, I was not able to shed my background in a good way and that was my biggest failure in the situation. I'm still working on it.

It seems that GS are trying to detect such situations as they should.

All in all, a good move.

Maybe you can tell us something about their coding practices. A friend of mine who work at GS told me they have an absolutely massive ball of spaghetti that takes 7 hours to compile. That's for their trading systems.

Naturally, it's not something that attracts me to working there, and he basically told me not to come.

There must be other divisions where people have different experiences?

My position was not with GS. Where I worked was also a ball of spaghetti but doesn't sound as bad in comparison.

Coding practices wise: the industry is maturing. The cowboys are out, the engineers are in. This was likely my main advantage over the other applications.

> Maybe you can tell us something about their coding practices. A friend of mine who work at GS told me they have an absolutely massive ball of spaghetti that takes 7 hours to compile. That's for their trading systems.

In case no one with actual experience responds to you, you might want to check out Flash Boys[0], which spends a little time talking about GS's code. From what I've read in that book and in other places, what you heard seems to be the correct.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt/dp/0393...

The way they treated Aleynikov is a minus in my account as well.

It depends on what system you're talking about.

If you're talking about the core risk management system, yeah, seven hours sounds about right. But the risk management system is a platform that you can use to build other systems that can be iterated upon very, very quickly: we regularly made changes, reviewed them and made them production visible globally in under two minutes).

Flash Boys' technical discussion is, frankly, crap. The larger point about GS' treatment of Aleynikov (sp?) is, however, correct and relevant.

Source: Worked there for 8 years, still suffering from withdrawal.

Withdrawal meaning you want to go back? Hard to find a similar environment anywhere else?

That's me in a nutshell, if not you.

The amount of irritation GS abstracts away from the programmer is amazing -- and I do miss it very much. I'd like to go back, but circumstances appears to be taking me elsewhere.

It was a good run, and unlike OP's friend, I'd recommend it wholeheartedly.

My experience as well.

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