WTF Job Listing



  • http://jobs.thedailywtf.com/1001/listing.aspx?Ad=Y&JobId=1000959

    There are so many WTFs in this, I almost think it has to be a joke. Some of my favorites:

    -- "We use hundreds of computers to automatically buy and sell everything from IBM stock to soybean oil futures "

    But you have no customers.  Who is doing this trading?  Ghosts?

    -- "we are very profitable"

    Wow. You have no customers, but somehow, money just magically appears out of nowhere. 

    -- "we don’t worry that some giant software firm will duplicate our features and crush us"

    Nobody in the universe can do it faster, better or cheaper.  Impressive.
     



  • i thought these were "non-WTF jobs" :O


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @El_Heffe said:

    Wow. You have no customers, but somehow, money just magically appears out of nowhere.  

    Sounds like a propietary trading shop, which means that they trade only their own money. What's so WTF about that?



  • @Vechni said:

    i thought these were "non-WTF jobs" :O

    It's irony. Laugh. 



  • @El_Heffe said:

    http://jobs.thedailywtf.com/1001/listing.aspx?Ad=Y&JobId=1000959

    There are so many WTFs in this, I almost think it has to be a joke. Some of my favorites:

    -- "We use hundreds of computers to automatically buy and sell everything from IBM stock to soybean oil futures "

    But you have no customers.  Who is doing this trading?  Ghosts?

    -- "we are very profitable"

    Wow. You have no customers, but somehow, money just magically appears out of nowhere. 

    -- "we don’t worry that some giant software firm will duplicate our features and crush us"

    Nobody in the universe can do it faster, better or cheaper.  Impressive.
     

    They automatically buy stocks, futures, currency, etc based on machines that watch the markets like hawks and use algorithms to determine when to buy and when to sell. They probably have a brokerage firm handle all of the trading, or may be an arm of a brokerage firm themselves. And, it's entirely possible that they've hired most of the economists relevant to this field, so they don't need to worry about IBM getting in on the action.

    The real WTF here isn't that you didn't understand this, it's that you immediately posted a thread calling their business idea a wtf.



  • sounds like a day-trading firm. They buy/sell stocks. They are their own client.

    They have no competition, only the risk of failure. If their software makes it, then they make a profit, otherwise they lose money. They don't have to compete because even if another entity is doing exactly the same thing it does not affect them.

     

    Though I have to say:

    1) Sounds a bit unstable

    2) Sounds shady!
     



  • I've worked in the financial industry on Wall Street for 20+ years and have encountered a few firms like this. They typically try to take advantage of minute market price changes, at computer speeds. Frequently, they'll invest their own capital for trading. It is legit (in the cases I've seen), and with the right folks driving it, can be quite profitable.

     



  • @Volmarias said:

    They automatically buy stocks, futures, currency, etc based on machines that watch the markets like hawks and use algorithms to determine when to buy and when to sell.

    So it is ghosts doing the trading!



  • @snoofle said:

    I've worked in the financial industry on Wall Street for 20+ years and have encountered a few firms like this. They typically try to take advantage of minute market price changes, at computer speeds. Frequently, they'll invest their own capital for trading. It is legit (in the cases I've seen), and with the right folks driving it, can be quite profitable.

    And great fun to watch when a bug, created by somebody who didn't understand that floating point numbers are not like fixed point numbers, wipes out their entire company in a matter of seconds.

    It's not a fundamentally bad idea, it just involves an overly optimistic attitude about the quality of software development in practice. I wouldn't go near it.



  • @asuffield said:

    @snoofle said:

    I've worked in the financial industry on Wall Street for 20+ years and have encountered a few firms like this. They typically try to take advantage of minute market price changes, at computer speeds. Frequently, they'll invest their own capital for trading. It is legit (in the cases I've seen), and with the right folks driving it, can be quite profitable.

    And great fun to watch when a bug, created by somebody who didn't understand that floating point numbers are not like fixed point numbers, wipes out their entire company in a matter of seconds.

    It's not a fundamentally bad idea, it just involves an overly optimistic attitude about the quality of software development in practice. I wouldn't go near it.

     

     

    Automated trading is a multi-billion dollar industry.  The big companies do extremely well at it.  I saw one that pays their programmers $250,000/year -- I wish I could remember the name of the company.  It's worth noting that the guys who do really well hire the absolute cream of the crop (see previous reference to $250k salary) -- they certainly don't outsource the work to India at $5/hr.  They know how much they have to lose, so they don't take any chances.  I'm sure they develop like NASA, where changing 3 lines of code takes a day of work, several meetings, and a 3 page change document.

    I believe LTCM relied on automated trading.  They collapsed catastrophically, although it was due to market instability, rather than programmer error.

     

     

    If anything, TRWTF, is that the guys in this ad have their sights set way too low, re: programmer experience and salary.
     



  • @merreborn said:

    If anything, TRWTF, is that the guys in this ad have their sights set way too low, re: programmer experience and salary.

     Its their money let them do as they please. I assume they want EVERYONE and anyone to apply. Can't find the needle in the haystack by looking at the surface only, you got to look at every strand of hay and if you find that needle, then you're in business.
     



  • @merreborn said:

    The big companies do extremely well at it.

    That's kind of natural, since any company who can get it right will inevitably become big overnight. However, almost every company who tries it, bombs. 



  • @dlikhten said:

    Though I have to say:

    1) Sounds a bit unstable

    2) Sounds shady!
     

    Those points describe stock trading itself, so it's really just par for the course.

    Stock trading is really just a form of gambling anyway ( not that there's anything wrong with that, I just think it's more interesting with horses or cards ). 



  • @drinkingbird said:

    @dlikhten said:

    Though I have to say:

    1) Sounds a bit unstable

    2) Sounds shady!
     

    Those points describe stock trading itself, so it's really just par for the course.

    Stock trading is really just a form of gambling anyway ( not that there's anything wrong with that, I just think it's more interesting with horses or cards ). 

     

    Much more calculated though, and there is no "house" to always win. But in the end yes it is gambling. And of course there is no perfect system they can only approximate and use the experience of the people on the teams.

     

    Difference between that and a casino is:

    1) In a casino you KNOW the odds are against you, and unless you cheat they will always be.
    2) In a casino you have only the fugly :) And you will be lucky if the dude next to you remembered to put on his depends.
     



  • @drinkingbird said:

    Stock trading is really just a form of gambling anyway ( not that there's anything wrong with that, I just think it's more interesting with horses or cards ).


    I'm with you on that. I'm much better with cards. The market scares me even when I just fake invest. 



  • @dlikhten said:

    Difference between that and a casino is:


    Who said anything about a casino?

    Those places are rigged. Games without a house dealer are much better in my opinion.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @dlikhten said:
    Difference between that and a casino is:


    Who said anything about a casino?

    Those places are rigged. Games without a house dealer are much better in my opinion.

    The notable exception being poker, which is probably the only winnable game in casinos. You can't beat the house, but you can clean out all the fish at the table.



  • @asuffield said:

    @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @dlikhten said:
    Difference between that and a casino is:


    Who said anything about a casino?

    Those places are rigged. Games without a house dealer are much better in my opinion.

    The notable exception being poker, which is probably the only winnable game in casinos. You can't beat the house, but you can clean out all the fish at the table.

    If you've got a good memory and the house isn't doing continuous shuffle, you can also come out ahead at blackjack.



  • @Carnildo said:

    @asuffield said:

    @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @dlikhten said:
    Difference between that and a casino is:


    Who said anything about a casino?

    Those places are rigged. Games without a house dealer are much better in my opinion.

    The notable exception being poker, which is probably the only winnable game in casinos. You can't beat the house, but you can clean out all the fish at the table.

    If you've got a good memory and the house isn't doing continuous shuffle, you can also come out ahead at blackjack.


    If by "come out ahead" you mean (yeah, it's a worst-case scenario, but still) you win a long drive out into the desert with no return trip. Objectively, card-counting is not cheating, but what matters is that the people who run the casinos think it is.



  • these places don't hire people who don't understand floating point numbers. see d.e. shaw group, renaissance technologies.



  • @sheriffpony said:

    these places don't hire people who don't understand floating point numbers

    Sure they do. You just never hear about the other couple thousand companies who tried it and went bust, each year.


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