alt Hacker NewsMay I know if someone with no trading knowledge can get into this field? Or do new hires that you've seen generally have some background knowledge on related to trading, etc.?
I did consider applying for a role in a very similar field, but figured I'll be fighting an uphill battle with no knowledge in trading/stock market/etc.
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TheJoeMan • last Saturday at 3:37 PM
You know how coders are expected to grind out leetcode interviews? For the finance fields, a common interview topic is what you read in “The Journal” (WSJ). So just stay on top of it for a few weeks, see some trends, etc.
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So I wrote up how I ended there: https://x.com/alexpotato/status/1663668616233885699?s=20
but that story is not the most efficient way (although I do talk about a better approach at the end).
To summarize:
A LOT of hedge funds hire non finance people for specific roles e.g. cloud, Linux tuning, networking etc
The smarter ones have realized that there are great people everywhere e.g. Gaming company SREs have a lot of relevant experience due to high traffic load, short SLAs and lots of financial risk due to outages. Applying for a role in one of those departments is a lot easier than trying to jump directly into a trading desk/operations role.
Finally, knowing someone on the inside also helps a lot which is made MUCH easier by LinkedIn, Twitter etc