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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

I second this. Been in the industry for many years now. Typical people you run into:

- People who are constantly looking for a new gig. They have a model, they have experience, but either they can't find the appropriate fund for their style, or they have a bad streak.

- People who can make money, but only in small size. Some guys I know sit and home and trade. Enough to pay themselves, but not enough to even get a fund job.

- People who were on the team or near some star trader. Amazing how many of those there are, and how little it rubs off.

On the whole I'd say don't believe the hype. It's very hard to get a seat, and hedge fund managers are not smarter at recruitment than tech people. So you'll spend a long time in that support style role, wondering whether you'll ever get to be the main guy.

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That's eerily similar to the people you meet in startups:

- most consultants

- "lifestyle businesses"

- "worked at facebook, give me money"

So much hype in both industries, for similar reasons. There are always ways for smart people to make money. Most people with some experience in either industry are doing better than the national average but hardly wealthy and generally spend too much money.

I do get the impression there's better pay in finance though. $250k as an experienced engineer strikes a lot of people as high. $250k for someone w/ a few years at a good hedge fund is... about right, maybe even low.

Sadly the "I worked st google, give me money" angle seems to work pretty well since there's a lot of dumb money in the valley lately? (Small upstart seed funds with partners with very little track record / weak deal flow)

Ugh, yeah, I've recruited a few of these people. They're the worst because:

1) they're used to the benefits that come from a company that is swimming in cash

2) they didn't personally take any of the risk to create that firehose of cash but they want you to treat them like they did.

3) they don't realize it, but they're used to working in very protected environments. Typical career paths look like top-tier college -> Google / FB / Twitter / whatever. None of this prepares them for sitting in a room with some shitty Ikea desks and trying to make hard decisions that will have a direct impact on the companies growth. No, we don't have the time or resources to build a new JS framework.

I'd much rather higher someone from a second-tier US college or from overseas that can show me a time when they took significant risk / projects they built from scratch.

^ All of this is in relationship to < 20 employee companies trying to get from zero to 1.

Are the people in point 2 able to make hedge-fund level money? Or are they just pulling the equivalent of a decent tech salary would get you?

Well one guy I know works 20 mins a day and makes maybe £30K a month. Not enough to turn into a fund, but a comfy living trading from home. If things had worked out differently he could easily sit at a fund and punt larger size.

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