IT contracting in Finance

[nomadd]

For a standard .NET developer that is willing to move to the banking sector, what sort of technology in the .NET world (or outside of it) would be interesting to learn?
Could anyone recommend topics or perhaps books that are useful to the sector?

Around here it's mainly C#, WPF and all the threading related APIs. That's pretty much standard in most IBs.

[oliverson]

Then you are in the wrong job. Life is too short. Move on. ...Seriously.



Interesting. My split is 10% Retail, and 90% IB. I despised Retail Banking. Each to their own, I guess.



Well said. Now go follow your own advice.

If only life was that simple nomadd. The problem is you get used to the trappings of big rates and in some cases you haven't the option to take less - not without losing a house or two! So my advice to those who don't have such constraints is stay well clear.

The retail banking projects are interesting to me - you tend to work more with infrastructure - code to deploy s/w throughout an estate, cheque scanning for ATM's, etc, etc. It's much more interesting than 'display a grid of data' (again).

There's also a definite mindset change, and I'm not sure if that's because most of the retail banking was outside of London, but at about 15:00 people start to leave the office to pursue outside interssts. Contrast that with London where it gets to 18:00 and everybody is still sat there. Nobody seems to have a life other than 'lets go down the pub'. Sad.

[nomadd]

There's also a definite mindset change, and I'm not sure if that's because most of the retail banking was outside of London, but at about 15:00 people start to leave the office to pursue outside interssts. Contrast that with London where it gets to 18:00 and everybody is still sat there. Nobody seems to have a life other than 'lets go down the pub'. Sad.

Agreed. But then I make it perfectly clear to clients that I "have a life" during the interview. I refuse to work beyond 4:30, as I get in at 7:45. Some banking clients don't like that, so I simply refuse to work for them. There is also far too much of the "free overtime" attitude in banks these days; never done it myself, and I never will.

Like you say, there is nothing sadder then seeing someone rot away in an office for 10-15 hours a day (especially as these days the clients don't even want to pay contractors overtime for it...)

[Stan]

I have worked in finance a lot but I wouldn't exclude other industries at all.

Yes it's just data you are churning around usually but this is all that programming ever is. For me the enjoyment comes in the technology and producing pleasing code, not in the domain itself.

IB is about mindset and work ethic rather than actual domain knowledge. You are more likely to end up on a workaholic team than not at an IB.

So, OP - if you know your tulip and enjoy knowing your tulip, go for a IB job and tell them as much and you should be fine.