Disclosure: I may earn affiliate revenue or commissions if you purchase products from links on my website.
Promotion: I wrote Framed: A Villain's Perspective on Social Media. It's an outgrowth of everything visitors have liked about this blog since 2016. It's now on sale for $3.99!
When I was 14, I told my parents that I wanted to be a programmer who worked on Wall Street.
June 30, 2026 marks ten years of working full time, mostly in dream jobs that have tracked closely with what I imagined back then. Along the way, I turned down offers from three firms (PDT Partners, Palantir, and Citadel Securities) who don’t often interview people who grew up in Scranton or attended non-target schools.
It’s rare to see candid writing about working in quantitative finance or its periphery–unless the author is trying to sell something or burn a former employer on reddit. There’s a code of silence, layers of non-disparagement agreements, and a small sweet spot for posting long form content that won’t be branded as irrelevant, incorrect, insolent, or irresponsible.
I believe I’m in that sweet spot. I’ve performed so many different job functions, I have nothing disparaging or confidential to write, and, above all, an approximation of my career path is generally attainable. I’ve decided to write about my career in trading, in part to help those 14-year-olds who are starting to think about what they want from life.
School Prestige is Paramount
Any freshman who arrives on campus not knowing the term “target school” is at a huge disadvantage. This has been a common theme in my blog posts and reddit rants. I went to a school where getting interviews at PwC and Deloitte was a cinch. I got an offer from JPMorgan’s back office team after demonstrating that I could fizzbuzz. I chose Lehigh over schools where only the very, very best students get Big 4 or back office finance jobs.
However, no quantitative trading firms attended Lehigh’s career fair in 2014. Nobody from my graduating cohort got a FAANG job or internship. Companies like Google and Microsoft were increasing their on-campus presence, though, and were reserving 3-5 interview slots for internship interviews (one person did make it to Microsoft).
Undergraduate outcomes are shaped by which companies recruit on campus, and, more broadly, which companies consider the school a “target.” Students at target schools get preferential treatment in the application process, with larger companies having school-specific estimates for inbound applications and yield.
This isn’t strictly elitist, but there is a self-fulfilling nature that means students from lesser-known schools get shut out while those in-the-know pile into the schools recruiters actually visit. I believe this uniquely punishes kids whose parents don’t have the resources to prepare them for the high-prestige recruiting pipelines. If I approached the end of my freshman year and told my parents that I wanted to transfer to NYU, UMich, or WashU and not, simply, Penn State, it would have been really hard to explain where I was coming from.
The other side of this is that I’ve worked closely with tons of people who went to schools that I’d consider on-par with Lehigh in terms of median accepted student (for the class of 2016). The caliber of these individuals from other schools (particularly UMich and WashU) was much higher than those I graduated with. I remember heading to the UMich career fair in 2017 and laughing to myself as the pile of “five star” resumes that I annotated numbered more than the headcount of my graduating cohort at Lehigh in 2016. I’d also come to find out that alumni performed really well in their jobs. It’s clear that they benefitted from an undergraduate pursuit where it was possible for the top students to get six-figure jobs at trading firms in Chicago. Again–is it self-fulfilling? If my buddies and I all knew that high achievement would nearly guarantee six-figure jobs at trading firms in Chicago, would we have partied less and spent more time coding?
Unfortunately, even as I stamped “target” employers on my resume, not having gone to a target school stung me over and over. Forget the question of, “Lehigh, what’s that?” Comp always tracked lower in the band compared to my Ivy+ friends. I had one top-tier trading firm offer to interview me for a role that said “no prior coding experience required” after I had been coding for six years. I had another top-tier trading firm put me through four additional rounds of interviews because…well, they never tell you why. Like some other things in life, you just have to figure it out.
Lack of Titles Hurts
I’m competitive. I’m wired to chase the next level-up, the next stage, the Xbox Achievements. Most trading firms list lack of titles and flat organizations as a benefit. My experience was that it was disproportionately terrible.
Some trading firms are good at facilitating structured feedback. Some are good with ad hoc feedback. Most fail to properly incentivize improvements with a clear career progression (or, in many cases, KPIs detached from revenue generation). I acknowledge that there are negatives behind career ladders at big tech companies. But, the more time I spent in trading, the more I realized how beneficial it would have been to have the premise of being up for a promotion and having it hinge upon review cycles that were more frequent than yearly.
I’m competitive, yes. But after a while, it’s hard to motivate oneself to grind for a full year chasing a bonus, especially when the role isn’t attached to revenue generation. There were actually times where I told my manager(s) that I valued affirmation of role as more valuable than money. I meant it.
In pretty much every job, I’ve had autonomy that equaled “senior” scope, my proposals were evaluated as if I was a staff or principal engineer. I don’t feel that my work, comprehensively, was evaluated along rigid guidelines. More than anything, I would have benefitted from detailed reviews and scope-setting at 6 months, 18 months, and probably around 4 years. It is not a coincidence that these milestones could have precisely tracked promotion cycles in a more typical corporate environment.
The only time I felt the feedback and change in scope clicked was between years 4 and 5, but a huge part of that was because:
- I threw everything I had into my job on account of Covid.
- The firm had a bang-up year and everybody came out a winner anyway.
Lack of titles makes recruiting harder and harder. What am I? Where do I fit in? It was actually such a foreign concept that it feels like a conspiracy. It hurts mid-to-late career earning potential, compared to big tech. The other side of this is, of course, that it is possible to beguile recruiters at trading firms into overleveling you into some type of leadership role. You can often identify someone who has been given too much power when they remove their college graduation date from their LinkedIn.
It’s not worth spending a career chasing titles. For anyone comparing established tech offers to trading (or flat organizations in general), though, understand that structure is not a universally bad idea.
People do things for money
Was I once a wide-eyed 18-year-old? Did I want to change things and make an impact? You bet!
I also had a view that lack of money caused issues. Not necessarily tied to my atomic family or my upbringing, but I grew up in a poorer area and from a young age the importance of money was inescapable. I was very young when I started telling my parents that I wanted to be rich. Specifically, as rich as Bill Gates, but I gather that that’s not a popular saying anymore.
I echo Ray Dalio’s guidance in that trying to make money from purpose-driven job is the stupidest fucking thing one can do. I care about literacy, I care about animals, I care about protected bike lanes and well-maintained parks. Being able to support myself while directly contributing to any of these causes is a pipe dream. The Hallmark movies and other cultural forces that planted this idea in so many kids’ heads have molded millions of miserable adults.
Earning money is really important. Most methods of earning money don’t make the world a better place (but, also, working for a charitable organization often doesn’t, either). I studied Computer Science because it was a good fit for my personality and proclivities. I ended up working in trading because it intrigued me, and because it was a good fit for my personality and proclivities. If money wasn’t an object, I’d have loved to work in video game development. Unfortunately, those roles are infamously stressful and low paying. So, I understand why people go to work pointless jobs at JPMorgan.
I’ve been reading recently that Americans are perceived as talking too much about money. This is true, from senior year at Lehigh past my ten year Lehigh reunion, my friends and I have talked about money a lot. I guess my issue here is that so many trading firms spin grand narratives about work environments and culture and collaboration and engagement, when the truth is that half the interns would also prefer to be working on video games or niche software if the pay was equivalent.
It’s the money! People work in trading because of the money. If I lived in Norway, I’d be a journalist or some specialized lawyer. I wouldn’t have grown up idolizing entrepreneurs. But, I don’t live in Norway, so what was obvious to me growing up in the early 2000s was that if I wanted to aspire to be in an upper tier of American society and improve on my parents’ position in life, I had to focus on making money. There is no shame in this.
The Stock Market Fuels Exuberance
If you talk to anyone who started working in a higher-tiered software job in the 2010s, they look back at the last 10-15 years fondly.
Even mediocre software engineers made a killing over the last decade. By the late 2010s, everyone caught on, bootcamps abounded, the number of CS students exploded. That’s all over now. What fuels the retrospective exuberance is not compensation packages, it’s the stock market as a whole. The S&P 500 index has more than tripled in value since I graduated in 2016. Yes, this benefitted those with stock options or RSUs offered by their employers, but high earners (including those just starting their careers) were able to max their 401k accounts and stash leftover funds in the market.
Great junior software jobs in 2016 were paying $90k-$110k in base salary. Great banking jobs were $75k-90k base. The best jobs at the Big 4 were maxing out at $75k but I knew people making as little as $50k base. The point is that having the freedom to invest an extra $5k or $10k as a 22-year-old in 2016 turned out to have huge upside. So, no shit, software engineers are happy. They earned a lot of money and are now looking at their investment accounts wondering how life was so good to them.
To extend the point, investing $1750 per month in SPX in a 401k for 10 years ($210k) would have nearly doubled (or actually doubled if the timing was ideal) by June 2026. The midrange outcome would be something like $375k just in a 401k. That’s a lot.
There are a lot of success stories out there (and, fittingly, insane real estate prices in the Bay Area that have redefined what it means to be stable and successful), but I’m surprised how seldom people mention that this isn’t reflective of individual merit. Software engineers who graduated without loans and had the discipline to consistently invest in the S&P 500 got rich. We’re the out-of-touch Boomers of the Millenials.
Networking is kind-of bullshit
Networking has always been an enigma to me. As an undergraduate, it felt annoying and forced. Why would anyone respond to my cold emails and LinkedIn requests?
As I’d later realize, they were bored at work.
When I worked for IMC between 2018 and 2021, a lot of people wanted to work at IMC. I fielded so many requests from friends of friends to have a conversation or whatever. I don’t know if I ever turned anyone down. The reason was that I appreciated where I was, I wanted to help people, and I thought that, one day, maybe they’d return the favor.
Of all the people I talked to, 75% never even gave me an update on where the interview went. This was despite me asking them, hey, please let me know how it turns out, and hit me up if there’s anything you encountered in your other processes that you think would be interesting to me.
Most of the early career networking felt transactional, except I got nothing in return (aside from my employer dangling a referral bonus if the candidate accepted an offer). Years later, at a houseparty, I encountered some people I had referred to IMC, they didn’t remember me or really even thank me after I explained how I knew them. I did, however, once receive a shoutout in a blog post for helping someone. Ironically, that person then received the offer, accepted it, and reneged, making me wish I hadn’t referred them in the first place.
Mid-career networking might have been even worse. Looking back at early career networking, I’m willing to accept that it was stupid regardless of what side I was on. However, after my friends and trusted colleagues fanned out to other firms in the 2020s and getting interviews for some more-senior roles was greatly aided by someone putting in a good word, I had a lot of weird experiences. Strong recommendations from just a few people helped fuel my consulting business for years, yet close friends and former colleagues who I had great relationships with were unpredictable when it came to me exploring roles at their firms.
Please don’t get me started on networking with podcasters and other independent authors when I was trying to promote my book.
Now, I receive more networking requests than I can respond to. Not only from people who want to work at Kalshi, but also those hoping to sell Kalshi a product. With all the “thoughtful” AI responses, nobody, not one single person, has tried to talk to me about a cool idea from my book, which underscores how little everyone actually cares and how little effort goes into modern day cold networking.
It feels good to be wanted. Back in my first job in early 2018 when my buddies and I were talking to recruiters and branching out, it was a point of pride for us that we were getting outreach from recruiters and others. Now, I ignore 90% of outreach, because I’m too busy, the transactional nature of “networking” (including when it’s a recruiter playing that card) is exhausting, and it’s so hard to see the value in it.
Modern-day pressure to network is even worse for undergraduates. It’s no longer “send a thoughtful email and pray,” it’s more like “do whatever you can to attract attention to yourself!” I don’t feel that this is healthy or equitable.
Side hustles saved me
The golden age of side hustling is behind us. Why? AI has undermined semi-skilled internet jobs such as technical writing, affiliate marketing, and web development. Beyond that, there are so many more people on the internet now compared to in 2015. It’s too easy to start a business; every niche is crowded. Semi-skilled work has exploded in countries with much cheaper costs of living. For contractors, wages are extremely low! A few years ago, I applied to join one of those remote part-time work sites, offering my services as a software engineer. My application was rejected within hours.
A core part of my career, and the part that separates me from, I think, most people who have also worked second-tier jobs in quant finance, is that I had a hell of a good run with finding work outside of my day job
This has been recounted in “overemployed” communities, even though I was never actually on two W2s. I had four sources of income at one point. Having multiple sources of income changes one’s perspective on everything. It’s freeing. Although it sapped most free time at the stage that many of my friends were finding their life partners, it provided me with creativity, happiness, and more future stability.
I hustled between 2017 and 2023. The main attraction was the Instagram growth business that I wrote my book about. I also had a number of consulting arrangements and surprisingly-well-paid writing gigs. I had at least one year where my side hustle income was into the six figures.
The money was nice, especially because when you’re moonlighting while working a fairly demanding day job, you don’t have much opportunity to spend money. The main takeaway all these years later is how empowering it felt. I remember feeling that I wasn’t being taken seriously at my day job. I’d go home after work and almost everyone I was working with took me seriously. My contributions were valued and, often, I could scale my earnings linearly with hours spent.
I don’t have much of a desire to do this again, but it worked much better than I expected. It imparted wisdom beyond my years and, conservatively, accelerated my retirement by at least 3 years.
The fork into SRE or DevOps isn’t glamorous
Nobody goes to school to study DevOps. I ended up doing this by complete chance. The first real job I accepted was to be a C++ platform developer. I showed up for my first day and they said, hey, we made a lot of senior hires since your internship, help us create tests and work on build scripts. I wrote some C++ in 2016 and 2017, but not much.
I gained a wider appreciation for systems and how to bridge requirements between different technology teams, and I was able to take that to two other trading firms that offered me a wide range of opportunities. Having the “real” programming background helped a lot, but I was never again seen as a blue chip software engineer. Despite what recruiters wanted me to believe, the paths of remaining a C++ platform developer or moving into trade logic development were much more lucrative than DevOps or SRE work.
It’s not entirely about compensation, it’s also that some trading firms (especially since 2021) have redefined DevOps or SRE to be, like, sysadmin work or even “no technical background required” work, neither of which makes sense to me. Altogether, it makes trying to find the right job confusing. People seemed surprised when I knocked out Leetcode mediums.
Ultimately, SRE or DevOps engineers aren’t close to revenue generation, and in many cases the roles just aren’t taken seriously by front office folks. I think this is, largely, wrong, because a talented SRE is just as important as a core platform developer, if not more so. The opportunity to move up and down the stack while being a force multiplier is really cool.
Once someone above you has it out for you, cut your losses
Once you’re sure somebody above you doesn’t like you, the top priority should be putting as much distance between yourself and that person as possible. There is no mending, there is no second chance. I’ve never been on a PIP, but the advice that a PIP means GTFO is probably correct. Sometimes, this means engaging less frequently. Other times, maybe asking for a transfer. For me, usually, it has meant leaving the job.
Further, some people will hate you for the next 20 years after you give them direct feedback that hurts their feelings. Every time I’ve become comfortable enough to give direct feedback (or, structured feedback about another person sent to a decision maker), it has gone badly. Every time I thought I was doing everything right, in the professional sense, prejudices more based in the personal realm have hampered my progress. I don’t make much of an effort to be likeable, but I’ve wasted more than a year of my life, collectively, toiling for someone who wouldn’t have helped move my career forward even if I won a Nobel Prize.
I don’t bother giving radically candid feedback unless I’m more than 80% sure something will be done about it.
Runescape Theory
I’ve recently reconnected with some of my friends from middle school and we’ve discussed the premise: what if we never moved out of our childhood homes, never continued our education, and kept obsessively playing Runescape, the game we all loved in the 2000s that brought us together?
Through what I deem “Runescape Theory,” I assess the randomness and vast potential that accompanies a middle class upbringing in America. I had unrestricted access to a personal computer for most of my childhood, which coincided with some of the most exciting developments in web 2.0 and web3. I mined bitcoin in 2011. This is considered a big deal, but it doesn’t mean that I was smart or had crazy foresight. It didn’t mean that I had any specific skillset. It meant that I was chronically online and curious about a new technology. If between mining and purchasing, I had obtained, say, 100 bitcoins, and held them through 2024, I could spend the rest of my life 1. Not needing to work and 2. Being hailed as a super-smart teenage prodigy/early-adopter/whatever.
There were tons of other “found money” opportunities on the internet–including some niche activities within the game Runescape that have earned players substantial real-world money. If I neglected everything else, such as forming relationships, furthering my education, trying new things, and just focused on Runescape and spending 12+ hours per day on the internet, is there a chance that I would have been better off, financially?
Yes, but not a particularly good one. And this is not to say that I would never work, but that any work would almost exclusively be remote work, and any skills would be homegrown.
Would I have been happier today, or more satisfied with my life, if I just kept playing Runescape and disregarded the rat race completely?
Possibly!
I sometimes have these moments where I experience an “outlier” event. Either something very good or very bad, and most of them have no direct relationship to my work ethic or my skills. It’s usually random, or a case where I’m in the right place at the right time or someone who doesn’t really even know me makes a decision that affects me in a major way. In these moments, I think to myself, I might as well have just been playing Runescape.
Even now, is there a chance that I could have gone full web3, taught myself how to program, and latched on to prediction markets at the epoch? Sure, I guess, but I think what Runescape Theory speaks to is a desire to uncomplicate a world that has become overwhelming.
Ten more years?
My tolerance for hardship, inconvenience, mistreatment, and their confluence, the grind of corporate life, is high. I’ve worked hard jobs, I’ve worked easy jobs. I’ve been underestimated, underutilized, and, sure, even underpaid. Yet, I have spent most of my career working at dream companies, playing on the same field as people who would have deemed me an underachiever if they attended high school with me.
I’ve earned millions of dollars doing cool shit. At the stage of my life where most of my peers are slowing down, I’m seeking discomfort. I think I can earn tens of millions of dollars doing cooler shit. Money doesn’t motivate me, it’s the opportunity to train and improve, to compete and win, to reflect and continue challenging myself. I’m aware that, one day, I’ll be on the outside looking in and the opportunity will have passed.
Of course, part of the fleeting opportunity is that ageism is rampant, and people will perceive a 41-year-old journeyman quite differently than a 32-year-old. The other part is that, that’s just how innovation works. You age out. How many people from Bell Labs ended up at Anthropic? They certainly would have had the horsepower to contribute in some way. I’ve seen several of my own skills rendered redundant: web development, technical writing, search engine optimization, hell, even being a Site Reliability Engineer. I do hope that the next ten years will be filled with responsibilities far outside my career, but I can’t take it easy until those things are directly demanding my time.
Regardless of where you are in your career journey, thanks for reading my reflection.
