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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

In finance you would be ahead if you could tweak your models, in accounting you would be better off if you could write tools to automate your daily trivial accounting tasks, in marketing you would be able to impress your clients with a website that automatically shows live updates and spending from their campaigns. The list is endless if you have a little imagination.

And better off would either be more free time, more money or more status (however you define that). Pick one.

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Working in a multinational finance company in an asset servicing role I can tell you this works up until the point when you are expected to do all of your day to day work in addition to helping out with any trivial task someone would like to automate.

Saying that, if I could install anything more pleasant than VBA I'd probably be happy.

Maybe it's more a question of managing your competencies and making sure you're paid accordingly. If you are expected to do something over and above normal duty it should be reflected in your paycheck.

Depends. Where I work, a lot of quants write prototypes in Excel, but then expect the "real programmers" to turn their prototype into something that consistently produces sane results.

I guess, in other words, our "day to day work" is "helping out with any trivial task someone would like to automate", though I personally wouldn't phrase it that way :)

Just to clarify slightly, I'm a tech guy doing a finance job (while I get round to looking for something else). My day to day work is processing millions of dollars worth of Corporate Actions for pension and investment funds worldwide. If my job description involved implementing solutions to business problems I'd be happy, but just now I do what I can while also having the same workload as other people in the same role.

Why can't you use MATLAB or R?

The problem typically comes when you are working in a role supporting someone else, i.e., traders.

Deploying software written in Matlab that other people can use is a nightmare.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

Have you looked into VSTO? You still have to deal with bloat but at least you can write addins/automations for excel in C# and use Visual Studio...

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