Banker bonuses will be exceptionally large this year

nytimes.com

14 pointsnir2 comments

If anyone's wondering what it's like to work as a programmer for a wall street firm, check out the book 'So You Want to be a Wall Street Programmer' by Andrey Butov. Very informative and insightful book about the field.

Here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Wall-Street-Programmer/dp/184...

I work for a small options-market making firm, and I love what I do and the people I work with. I get the impression I'm very lucky to be in that position - most programmers working in finance work like serfs and make nothing compared to the traders who use the software the programmers make.

I actually bought that book about 3 years ago. While I found the book entertaining and full of interesting anecdotes, the focus was on IT programming and less about quantitative finance (which is what interested me).

I also remember the book mentioning salaries and it was FAR below going rates (the book mentioned a number that was about half the going rate).

Most of the information can be had by scouring the Wilmott forums, (http://www.wilmott.com/index.cfm), and the guys who run that site offer a free PDF book (or at least it used to be free: http://quantjob.blogspot.com/2007/08/faq-1-what-is-guide-our...).

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