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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?"
Hi
I have made the jump to the financial world. The short of it, there are plenty of people of IT people in the business so it is hard to get in now. But if you have talent and have something you can probably make it. Though if you have zero business knowledge of the financial world that is not good. You do need business knowledge. Ask me anything in specific if you wish...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
You could just stay at home, fake an illness and collect welfare.
In that way you'd still be a dishonest leech but at least you'd only be taking a small amount from those who are either productive or in need.
I live in HK, and unfortunately the bottom line is that you're going to find this difficult. Finance companies/banks are your best bet for a job by far, especially if you don't speak Chinese, but they are firing at the moment (much of it under the radar) not hiring. A few friends here want to make a similar transition and have not so far achieved success. This is even for techie areas like high frequency trading.
If you have time on your hands while you're here, consider taking a finance course and do check out our HK hackerspace, Dim Sum Labs (www.dimsumlabs.com). You will meet people in the same situation.
Best of luck.
get a job with more dignity and less shame, rent-boy for example.
You should be looking at a job in the PR industry, seeing you have the knack for it. Getting your job seeking ad published on slashdot is not bad.
Well Played, Sir.
That's what the business/financial folks read. It will give you a feel for the terrain that you will be trekking through. It's good to be able to converse in the language of the natives. Just like IT has its specific issue areas, business/financial has them as well.
And it's fun to read and informative, as well.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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.
I did the same thing around five years ago. Am still in Hong Kong and still employed (for now), but we've been shedding staff for years and like most financial services companies are probably not going on a hiring spree any time soon. Having said that, I still see jobs posted occasionally.
Track down the recruiters here - they shouldn't be too hard to find. Somebody mentioned Robert Walters which is a good start, maybe also Aston Carter and Chandler Macleod. Recruiters seem to find me on LinkedIn pretty regularly but that's probably because I've built up a network of other people in the industry.
Might be tough also as they generally prefer people with industry experience, and there are plenty of them on the market given recent layoffs, so competition will be fierce. Might be better outside of financial services but I kind of doubt it.
For me - I got a job with a consulting company whose client was an investment bank, so got my foot in the door for a job I probably wouldn't normally have been considered for. Once I had the experience (there's a lot to get used to) I switched to working for the client. Probably difficult to emulate but you never know. I initially got offered a job at a blue chip consulting company at a terrible rate, but ended up at an obscure one at a merely not-so-great rate. It eventually improved but you might want to lower your expectations in advance. At least the tax is low (although if you're American I guess you get screwed on paying US tax anyway) although housing is nuts.
Oh, and Hong Kong and mainland China are like two different countries. You can pretty much ignore any advice which relates to the latter. Hong Kong is a very easy place to live in - I love it. People generally struggle more in the mainland. However, if your wife is in Hong Kong you could consider working in Shenzen, over the border, although might be tough to pull off (and the commute to see eachother would be unpleasant).
I saw your irrelevant and pedantic reply on others as well. Are you an insecure CS major? computer science is IT work. Or are you saying " the scientific and mathematical approach to computation, and specifically to the design of computing machines and processes" is unrelated to information or technology?
You are mistaken. The posts I replied to are irrelevant because they were attempting to answer a question that was not asked. OP is not seeking an IT position. The distinction between IT and computer science is not pedantic, but considerable, and there is merit in understanding the difference. Yes, I am saying, as a systems administrator with 25 years of experience in IT, that what I do, and what my peers do, isn't science or mathematics, like, say, working in finance is. When I work for a bank or an investment firm, I don't say I work in finance... I'm still working in IT. OP's credentials vastly overqualify him for any position in IT, yet historically have shown to be applicable in modeling how investors allocate their assets over time under conditions of certainty and uncertainty, generally known as finance.
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