Ask Slashdot: Jobs For Geeks In the Business/Financial World?

First time accepted submitter menphix writes "Hi there! I'm a software engineer in the bay area. I will be moving to Hong Kong where my wife works shortly. I understand that there will be a lot less opportunities to work for software companies there than in the bay area, but they do have a lot of business/financial companies in HK: investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, you name it! So I'm thinking maybe it'll be easier if I transition to work for those companies. Since I got my B.S. and M.S. both in computer science, I have no idea what those 'Wall Street jobs' are like, so I'm just wondering what you guys know about jobs in the business/financial world for geeks? Has anybody made the jump before?"

Comments

Re:We don't want to work there.

[catmistake]

From an IT-persons....

Why is it that IT specialists think that they are computer scientists?

Information Technology (IT) is the branch of engineering that deals with the use of computers to store, retrieve and transmit information.

Computer Science is the scientific and mathematical approach to computation, and specifically to the design of computing machines and processes. A computer scientist is a scientist who specialises in the theory of computation and the design of computers.

These are entirely different disciplines.

Re:Sadly...

[gutnor]

What are you talking about ? The very vast majority of IT in the Finance world is just your vanilla application. CRUD stuff, Integration, and all sorts of data mangling back and forth between systems. As in any industry you will need some business knowledge to complement you tech knowledge. You do not need a PhD in "Math with Applied Bullshit" to enter finance.

There is literally an army of development jobs in the financial sector. Lots of interesting stuff lost in a sea of boring assignments in team stuck in management and technical paralysis. i.e. like working for any large company.

The vast minority of people that work in finance are psychopathic moron that make millions in bonus each year. There are quite a lot of 20 something that are psychopathic moron but make nothing at all, but the majority of people that fill those huge skyscrappers are just normal Joe doing normal office job.

Alcohol

[Kagetsuki]

Learn to drink. Don't turn down a drink. Take people you want to deal with out to drink. Read the air, act appropriately.

Other than that I don't think you need any particular business knowledge. From what I've gathered is that CN/HK/TW business revolves completely about being an awesome drunk.

Re:I have made the jump...

[catmistake]

Sorry, I thought he's a software ENGINEER.

In the sense that an engineer is actually someone that designs, builds or maintains engines, machines, or public works, i.e. works with physical things, software engineering is, I believe, a dubious term invented to inflate the already important job of and boost the esteem of programmers, the way the term desktop engineer boosts the importance of the job of and the esteem of IT support technicians, or the way the term sales engineer boosts importance of the job done by and the esteem of salesmen or salespersons. While computer science certainly includes the discipline of programming, a programmer isn't necessarily ever doing any computer science, and I have never understood exactly what they allegedly are engineering (magnetic fluctuations on spinning disks? electron gauntlets?). Should we also refer to our barbers as hair engineers? Are journalists really news engineers? What I think happened is at some point in the mid-1990's computer science enrollment was down, and engineering was as popular as ever, and the computer science departments used a bit of clever marketing to increase enrollment for their programming tracts.