My Manhattan Project: How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street.
<i>...confessed to him that I had never studied finance, and I had only taken one course in computers</i><p>This lack of formal qualifications seems common on wall street, perhaps this isn't surprising.<p>I know I didn't want to work as a programmer for a finance company because I'd prefer to be a first class citizen in a software company even for much less money.<p>Perhaps wall street only gets second tier engineers, scientists and mathematicians?<p>I know of one specific case, where yet another person without formal training made it high up as a programmer at a well known large institution who's name I'll withhold.<p>This person was very well compensated for doing the kind of horrific wheel reinventing that only smart people without formal training can do.<p>Needless to say all kinds of wacky hi jinks ensued over that person's years at wall street.<p>In one instance he like all other programmers was forbidden to use malloc. And everything was on the stack and of size 512 - EVERYTHING. Who made that decision? Why the financial managers obviously!<p>And I'm thinking that a big part of wall street's downfall is all that under qualified personnel, there primarily for the money.<p>I think very few quants and people in their positions ever had the confidence and power to stand up to the finance guys.<p>I think if finance firms went to the trouble of hiring people who have better options they might not be in so much trouble.<p>Then again if you're gambling with other people's money and your compensation only has upside, no downside with risk - nothing would have prevented the crash.