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pdovyon Ask HN: Should I leave finance to become a developer?

I think the question you need to ask yourself is what do you actually want to do?

As someone who works as a developer in the HFT space, I can back up what others are saying - you could be making more than you are now either as a quant or a developer (without switching industries, if finance really interests you).

Do what you think will make you happy in the long run, and then spend the time to invest in those skills.

pdovyon Ask HN: Code tests from potential employers

I think 10 hours is a lot, but I would consider it if the position was really intriguing.

Calibrating tests like this is pretty difficult though, anecdotally. We give out a work sample test that we think should take 2-3 hours maximum and try to frame it that way in the problem description. Nonetheless, we have gotten a few in the past where it was clear that way more time was spent, and I feel bad when they don't make the cut.

Tip - if you are giving out tests like this, ask for feedback from hires on how long they spent and then adjust accordingly. Anything you give out is probably way easier for you than the candidate.

pdovyon Rust Guide

The last I heard OpenDNS was using it for some data processing and Skylight was using it - see "Is Rust Ready Yet?" in http://cmr.github.io/blog/2014/01/12/the-state-of-rust-0-dot.... This is 9 months old now, so maybe there are more projects now.

That said I think the language is still too much in flux to really use for production systems. It seems to still be undergoing syntax changes, standard library changes, etc that might make code that works today not compile tomorrow.

pdovyon Ask HN: What do you use to buy and sell stocks?

Same here, although I primarily use it because trading Vanguard ETFs is free, which is mostly what's in my portfolio. Other brokers probably provide better tools, Vanguard's views are adequate but nothing special really. They do have pretty great customer service though, the few times I have had to call the person on the other end was always very knowledgeable.

pdovyon CLion, the new C/C++ IDE from JetBrains

Awesome! I certainly get wanting to keep the feature set more limited while you gather feedback. I look forward to trying this out at some point in the future.

pdovyon CLion, the new C/C++ IDE from JetBrains

This looks really interesting, glad to see some new development in the area of C++ IDEs.

That said, it's disappointing that they have explicitly tied this into CMake. This limits it's usefulness / ease of adoption for anybody working on a larger project with some other build process. Hopefully more generic support gets added as this matures out of EAP.

pdovyon Ask HN: Do you program in multiple languages in a day?

Most of the core stuff I work on is in C++, but I regularly transition over to Python for automation tasks, data processing, testing, etc. As much as I like C++, Python is much better for manipulating data IMO - the cost of the mental context switch is way outweighed by how well the language lends itself to certain tasks.

pdovyon LendingClub Files for $500M IPO

Besides what others have mentioned, it's worth noting that at this point is almost impossible to hand pick most of your loans. They get dumped onto the market at set times, and most of the "good" looking low grade loans are snapped up almost immediately, so it can be difficult to build a portfolio with exposure to those grades.

What I ultimately ended up doing, and maybe this was their goal, is just to sign-up with their auto-invest system. They lowered the minimum down to something small like $5000, and you can twiddle a few pretty coarse knobs to say what kind of risk exposure you want. At that point it's completely hands-off for me, and I just track the progress - every time I accrue $25 worth of cash from the existing investments, they buy another note on my behalf.

I'd definitely be careful how much cash you throw at this, I thought it'd be an interesting experiment and my portfolio has done fine, but it's hard to quantify the risks. If the economy tanks, how much will the default rate increase? Also as others have mentioned, the secondary market for these notes is really poor - you'd take a huge loss to liquidate your position.

pdovyon Why Working at Google Is Not My Dream Job Anymore

I think the thing in the OP's article that many folks can identify with is the "chain yanking" that goes on in many interview processes.

I don't think we'd be having this much discussion if the original article went along the lines of:

"I interviewed at Google recently. I had a phone screen and then several technical interviews on-site. Everybody was nice and I thought I did well, but they communicated to me a few days after I returned home that I did not get the job".

I totally agree, that is the norm. Getting a clear signal about someone in an interview setting is difficult, and most of the time if interviewers are on the fence they may just pass.

What gets me is places where there is a lack of communication, lots of foot dragging, and/or lots of time wasted by the candidate. I've not interviewed at Google, but I've gotten this treatment elsewhere coming out of college. Being on the other side of the fence now doing interviews for a few years I just don't see the reasoning for letting this happen, it's unprofessional.

pdovyon The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics

Different communication mediums are better / worse for different tasks. Lisp might be great for formally writing something down, where you want to have zero ambiguity. That's not the way human conversation works though, we are always eliding details based on the context in order to communicate quickly.

The blackboard is no different - it's not the perfect way to communicate ideas but it let's us communicate ideas quickly.

pdovyon Barclays Not Smart

I'm not sure how you could come to that conclusion, given that after discussing numerous studies the article concludes with the summary:

"The upshot is that futures markets–and the speculation that occurs therein–provide a public service. Regulating, restricting, or eliminating those markets would not bring prices down or make them more predictable."

pdovyon Amazon sues employee for taking Google cloud job, in new test of non-competes

These types of non-competes are pretty common in the US in my industry (finance). Generally upon your leaving the firm has the option to enforce your non-compete for a length of time (often 6 months to 1 year), but you are paid some (usually very high) percentage of your salary. That seems fair enough to me - if you're going to force someone not to work, you ought to pay them.

pdovyon Barclays Not Smart

Speculators get a bad rap, but actually play a pretty important role in futures markets by aiding price discovery and providing a more efficient transfer of risk between hedgers. To make money they need to try and accurately forecast where prices will move, and to do so will incorporate any and all available information - it is literally their job to try and know everything there is to know about what will effect commodity prices.

There has also been quite a bit of academic research on the effect of speculation in futures markets, and by and large the conclusion seems to be that they help, rather than hurt these markets and rises in commodity prices have been driven mostly by external factors [1].

[1] http://www.forbes.com/2011/05/24/oil-speculators-are-your-fr...

pdovyon The Economy

That doesn't really seem to follow, to me. The worst a single creditor could do is not bid, or bid for higher rates in future treasury auctions. The terms of existing debt are fixed. The impact of this wouldn't be large unless other creditors followed suit - there are many parties interested in buying up US debt.

Furthermore, if a holder of US debt declared war on the US, I wonder if that wouldn't be viewed as a credible reason to default on that outstanding debt - certainly doesn't make much sense to be sending interest coupon payments to someone invading your country.

pdovyon Amazon Snags Older HBO Shows For Web Streaming

Is that something you had to call and ask for? Doesn't seem to be an option for me on their website through my existing account.

pdovyon RealCrowd (YC S13) Raises $1.6M to Bring Crowdfunding to Real Estate

This is really great! One comment I would have is that it'd be great if you had more educational materials.

Your site eases entry into this type of investing for folks that might technically fall under the accredited investor umbrella but never have taken advantage of that fact, and don't know the in's and out's of real estate investing. For example, the deal structure for a particular offering has a really brief description in the mouseover text, but I couldn't find it explained anywhere in detail.

pdovyon How to be a faster code reviewer

Does that really work well in practice, though? I find that I might get the base functionality down to a workable state, but then as you add the bells and whistles you're likely to find and fix your own bugs, realize you need to refactor, etc.

You can make all those changes in distinct, clean commits, but if the reviewer works commit by commit, they have to follow the evolution of your code rather than simply review the final state. You might argue that provides a basis for a better review, but it's also much more time consuming for the reviewer.

pdovyon Joint Statement Regarding the Insolvency of Mt. Gox

I think there should be some discussion about setting up a SIPC equivalent for Bitcoin exchanges. Each exchange/operator contributes dues that provide a fund for compensating losses in the event of a member's insolvency. That would also provide a strong incentive to for members cry fowl about bad practices, self-audit, etc.

pdovyon Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer

I think a big part of the problem is that people generally aren't good at judging the value of other's contributions unless they are working directly with them or managing them (and even then, hit or miss).

Having salaries be completely open invites comparison even when there is a lack of information. Bob the Developer in XYZ team makes 20k more than me, is that fair? Maybe, but I don't really know, and I can see that creating friction with the right (wrong?) personalities.

pdovyon Barbarians at the Gateways: High-frequency Trading and Exchange Technology

Full disclosure, I do work for an HFT firm.

To the last part of your argument:

significantly change who is able to benefit from asymmetric information by inducing others to take the wrong end of zero-sum trades, which is what HFT is designed to do

This is simply untrue, nobody is being induced to do anything. Tactics like submitting orders you don't intend to let trade, to make other participants believe there is interest when there is not is illegal and enforcement is more aggressive than you might think.

To the remaining part, if you believe that HFT improves market efficiency to the extent that it exists, but don't think that the increasing competition provides additional value - OK. I'll work with that, but then if we can come around to a view that HFT is at worst neutral, why should it be curtailed? Simply because some think the people who practice it should spend their time elsewhere? I think that is a dangerous standard to enforce anywhere.

pdovyon Barbarians at the Gateways: High-frequency Trading and Exchange Technology

Virtually all trading volume today consists of buying and selling old securities -- essentially, legal claims on existing assets. The sale of new securities issued to finance the creation of new products and services -- for example, a company selling new shares via an IPO -- represents only a minuscule portion of total trading volume.

Leaving aside for a moment the question of the value of HFT, this is a skewed view of the world of finance. The equities markets may be the most visible to the public (quoted on the news, associated most directly with companies and products we all know, etc), but it's just one market.

In fact, the size of global bond markets is almost double that of equities [1] and is a huge source of funding for companies (and governments), and has more frequent new issues for the same entity than in equities. Similarly futures markets are hugely active and important as both a source of price discovery for commodities and as a way for businesses small and large to hedge risk.

I mention all this not to pick on you in particular, but because it seems in the wake of the financial crises of the past few years, this "finance is bad" mentality seems to be pervasive. There are absolutely problems, but I think it's important not to lose sight of the fact that much of what financial markets do is hugely important to modern businesses and governments.

[1] http://finance.zacks.com/bond-market-size-vs-stock-market-si...

pdovyon The Raising of Chicago

Interesting! One of the slightly counter-intuitive solutions the city has implemented in recent years are flow restrictors in catch basins that service street storm drains. The rationale is that the sewer system can't handle the combined volume of rainwater from the street and from peoples homes (mainly runoff from gutters or sump pumps), so they opt to let the streets flood instead of people's basements.

Oddly though flooding in the city proper where there building density is high is generally not a problem. This past year when we had very heavy rains, it was the northern suburbs that had real get out your boat type flooding.

pdovyon How Stripe does engineering interviews

That may be true but a year out when new feature X just needs to "work", the time necessary to make that happen is going to depend in part on the quality of the foundation it's being built on.

pdovyon I will not do a tech interview

You're really twisting my words quite a bit here. We give out a very greatly simplified version of a real (solved) problem so that we're screening for skills relevant to the position, not because we need people to work for free.

I just don't see a couple hours spent on a interview programming assignment as being any different from the 5-6 hours you spend in the office being interviewed, which by the way, you don't get paid for either (excepting reimbursements, etc).

pdovyon I will not do a tech interview

Hm, I guess I didn't think about it that way since we wouldn't actually ever give out "real" work, we give out the same problem (which is an extremely scaled down version of a real application) to most everybody who passes a phone screen.

I think paying them is perfectly reasonable, but I'll also note anecdotally that having done this for many candidates for years, I think very few people have ever declined.

pdovyon I will not do a tech interview

I'm curious, is this a money issue, i.e., you refuse because it feels like working for free? Or is it just a principal thing?

I doesn't seem unreasonable to me to ask even a senior developer to do a small coding assignment as part of the interview process unless they can show a good, relevant coding sample.

If we're going to agree that whiteboard coding isn't a great way to evaluate someone, and we can't ask you to do an assignment on your own, what else is left? Talking about past experience is great and an important part of an interview, but I think most people want to (rightly so) see some code at some point before extending an offer.

pdovyon The anatomy of the perfect technical interview from a former Amazon VP

There seems to be a lot of criticism of the suggestions here, but I think they are good ones. It seems to pretty much boil down to:

(1) Spend a lot of time discussing accomplishments at their current / previous employers. If you drill down on particular projects they should be able to explain, in great detail, exactly what their contribution was and how they worked with the rest of the team to get that done.

(2) Pick a technical question that has a lot of depth so that you avoid false positives because people have just looked up the answer on the internet. I would also add that in my view the best questions have no tricks and require no "aha!" moments. It should be something the candidate can be reasoned through step by step so you can see their thought process. When they come up with an initial solution, then you can dive deeper by expanding the problem or adding additional constraints.

pdovyon Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?

I would think this would be common sense at any job - unless otherwise specified in your contract the work that you do for your employer belongs to your employer, full stop. According to the article he freely admits that what he took included proprietary code - that is theft.

Now, was Goldman reasonable here? No, we can probably all agree that Goldman and the government overstepped a lot of bounds chasing this guy down. That said, I don't think some form of prosecution was unreasonable.

pdovyon Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order

I'm curious, what can they really appeal here? It seems like the biggest impact of the ruling is the circulation of the ruling to other jurisdictions and the referral of the matter to local / federal authorities. Is that something that is immediate and an appeal can only reduce the monetary finding, or is the whole order in stasis if they appeal?

pdovyon Why Redfin, Zillow, and Trulia Haven't Killed Off Real Estate Brokers

When I was looking to buy my first house a year ago, I was pretty interested in the deal Redfin is offering, which is basically that they take a smaller percentage in exchange for more of the burden being on you during the buying process.

It took quite a while for me to find what I was looking for, so I ended up using both Redfin agents as well as talking frequently with a normal agent. I have to say even though it cost me slightly more, in the end the house I bought I found on the Redfin site but bought through the normal agent. As others have pointed out, good properties can go fast and having someone who you can call and have on the case immediately is a real asset. In my case my agent did the legwork to find out who else had seen the home and pushed the sellers to negotiate in time to edge out a competing bid - well worth a few thousand extra on the sale price.

I get the point about misaligned incentives, but I view that more as a reason to ask around and get recommendations on good realtors, rather than a reason to avoid them.