bromion Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What is front office IT? > > Also, why do so many people want to switch out of > IT? Why do you? Why did you go into IT to begin > with? I am not picking on you, but I am curious > since it seems like half the people on this board > are trying to get out of IT and into finance. > > To answer your question, CFA probably won’t do it. > All of the tech to finance people I know got MBAs > first. IT is almost always a cost center except when you are a software professional in a product based company. IT services are always those peripheral activities which almost never have a direct impact on the revenue. You can never really trace back a company profits to a software professional’s contribution, which is why the I think levels of satisfaction are pretty low. For most of the people here back office is a last resort, and we IT people some times write code for applications which people in the back office use to get their work done. !..
Question on the cost center / revenue center thing… The developers at my company built a prop trading system that is basically printing money. The trade support guys were able to reduce the deal execution and communication time with exchanges to milliseconds. So orders are filled at the better price. Would either of these groups be considered a cost center or revenue center?
Yes it will be. It is does not matter what you think - what matters is what does the CEO thinks. For the CEO the IT is like a tool for traders. It is like giving a more powerful tool to gold diggers. That tool is still expense… Even with good ROI.
> What is front office IT? Front Office IT is IT for front office, like fixed income, equity research etc. > Also, why do so many people want to switch out of > IT? Why do you? Why did you go into IT to begin > with? I am not picking on you, but I am curious > since it seems like half the people on this board > are trying to get out of IT and into finance. > Also, why do so many people want to switch out of IT? Why do you? I never said I am switching out of IT. But having investment business knowledge/skills will add to my value in the marketplace or even in current job. And I have observed that even in IT as people move to higher levels in management, they are values more for their business insight and how they can help business achieve their goals, rather than programming knowledge. And if an opportunity comes to by to switch to business side and earn many times more money, it doesn’t hurt at all 
bromion Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What is front office IT? > > Also, why do so many people want to switch out of > IT? Why do you? Why did you go into IT to begin > with? I am not picking on you, but I am curious > since it seems like half the people on this board > are trying to get out of IT and into finance. > > To answer your question, CFA probably won’t do it. > All of the tech to finance people I know got MBAs > first.
What is front office IT? Also, why do so many people want to switch out of IT? Why do you? Why did you go into IT to begin with? I am not picking on you, but I am curious since it seems like half the people on this board are trying to get out of IT and into finance. -------------------------- I worked in front office IT for the two years before passing level 1 and switching into a trading role. To answer your questions 1) Front Office IT generally refers to the rapid application development & support needed for a trading desk. This is a very diverse area and can invole anything from writing risk models in spreadhseets to ensuring the real time data flows for applications such as Reuters and Bloomberg to implementing order routing to exchanges. This type of IT is usually differentiated from Desktop / Network / Database admin. 2) Herin lies the problem: In large organisations Front Office IT is managed in much the same way as centralised IT. As a result you are sat on a trading desk or nearby support desk working directly for the Business. Your golas are alligned with theirs but you are managed by an IT manager who can be in a different building with no connection to the trade floor. This means your pay structure and performace review are all linked to the same central IT structure and you are rated by someone who can have no idea about what you contribute (as they dont often dont understand how a trade floor works). Admin wise you are simply a cost centre. This can be very frustrating when the guy sat next to you gets a large bonus for his contribution and you dont, even though your modelling enable his trading. Certain trading desks I used to work with employed their own IT contractors as a result of this…to circumnavigate the internal admin process and actually get something done. They also took permanent IT employees and moved them to a trading contract but kept them codig so they could pay them properley! 3) I got into IT in the first place because it interested me and I was always told to pursue what I was interested in as you are likeley to be good at it. My path has been considerably harder to get into the role I am now in but I am glad I have that skill base. I now work for an algo trading market maker which is essentially a large software company. All the traders can program and vice versa. The difference here is that the code produced generates the cash as guided by the traders. In summary if IT is the profit centre (think Microsoft, automated trading, google etc) IT can be a great place to work. If IT is the cost centre you are no different from the photo copier guy in the eyes of management. In finance due to the ever increasing dependancy on automation and networked systems this can prove difficult when you are acting as a profit generator and being treated as a cost centre. The markets are going through a seizmic change…now nearly one third of all trades are code generated. The next few years are going to be interesting…if senior trading management at bulge brackets cant sort it out and understand that technology is their enabler then they will end up like the music industry. Treating IT people like janitors is not the way to get your systems running 
I’m curious what kind of models do you write in excel? Do you use VBA exclusively? Thanks, --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a very diverse area and can invole anything from writing risk models in spreadhseets to ensuring the real time data flows for applications such as Reuters and Bloomberg to implementing order routing to exchanges. This type of IT is usually differentiated from Desktop / Network / Database admin.
am no longer writing spreadsheets…but yes previously was mainly using VBA…
I’ve seen some quant jobs with VBA using excel with traders. How much do these jobs usually pay? And could you tell me what kind of models did you do? Was it very hard?
best thing to do is look at some job ads on efinancialcareers…as far as the modelling goes google is your friend I wasnt doing quant work, thats a more specific role