[JOB] Perl / Database Developer - Financial Sector

[Paul Johnson]

On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 12:07:04PM +0100, Dave Cross wrote:
> Ash Berlin wrote:
> >ben at bpfh.net wrote:
> >>People frequently ask "How do I get into perl in the financial industry"?
> >
> >[snip]
> >
> >>Skills Required:     - Sybase (5+ years)
> >>    - Perl (3+ years)
> >>    - Application design (5+ years)
> >>    - Working knowledge of financial industry (3+ years)
> >>
> >
> >How does 'get into perl in the financial industry' and '3+ years' 
> >experience add up?
> 
> Because it's
> 
>   get into (perl in the financial industry)
> 
> not
> 
>   (get into perl) in the financial industry

So the three years of perl experience and the three years of financial
experience need not have been gained concurrently?

I suppose I now have seven years of financial experience, for all the
good that would do me in some areas of finance.  My finance experience
doesn't really help me tidying the code and wrapping the libraries that
the bods with PhDs in theoretical physics are cranking out in order to
predict the realtime movements in foreign exchange rates.

Nor does it help me in designing the architecture and infrastructure for
a new cash management application.  Nor in automating the testing of
that application.  Nor in implementing the logging subsystem.  Nor in
pretty much anything that I do on a daily basis.

What I'm saying, I suppose, is that I've never really understood the
common requirement for financial experience before you can get a job in
finance.  From what I have seen it is pretty much like every other
industry, where domain knowledge helps, but a competent developer will
generally pick up what they need to know fairly easily.  Of course,
other industries also seem to prefer experience in that industry.

By the way, if it is accepted, I am planing on giving a talk at YAPC on
how Perl is being used in the project I'm currently working on at UBS.
Banks seem to have been historically rather cagey about such things, but
I have permission to discuss the technical aspects of this project,
which I'm hoping might be interesting to some people.

-- 
Paul Johnson - paul at pjcj.net
http://www.pjcj.net