Return to blogging

Over the last year I've gotten away from writing, focusing more on networking / phone work. But for several reasons I'm going to return to more writing.

Here's my current frustration -- how do you identify doers vs. dabblers? When you are recruiting for the HF, prop groups, etc. it is imperative that you find doers -- people who dig into problems, try to understand what's going on under the covers, will roll their own ORM to solve a problem, whatever. But how do you find such people?

Especially in the realm of software development, many times the best coders are not the guys going to networking events or writing long LinkedIn profiles (sometimes they do).

Hmm, need some ideas ... I'm tired of talking to the mediocrity that surrounds us ...

Company loyalty

Guess he really like his company

Super PHP search

I needed a little break from finance recruiting, so I've taken on a PHP search for a very well known firm which is super ... energizing. I like dealing with smart people and this search is putting me into contact with all the best PHP people on the planet. What's so cool about this search is that it has taken me years to build a genealogy of Wall Street developers whereas I've been able to assemble a pretty solid taxonomy of PHP in just a couple of weeks. Obviously, PHP people tend to blog and contribute to open source code more frequently than finance folks, so that helps. But it's also fun to follow a thread and then BAM you run into someone else who you knew from another thread.

Why headhunting isn't evil

Well, this is my _apologia pro vita sua_ moment. I dislike many things about recruiters, recruiting practices, etc. but yet I am a headhunter and I don't think it's an evil job. Here's why:

We live in a talent driven economy -- there are not enough people with the skills we need to fill the jobs we have. Even during this economic downturn, layoffs, etc. we have never been as busy as we are right now. Why? Because good people are hard to find.

Now, in the old days, good people were hard to find, but it was hard for them to know how much they were worth. Enter the middleman, he's talking to candidates all day, gathering compensation information, evaluating where people are in the market, etc. He's an information disseminator, telling candidates how much they are worth and telling clients how much they should pay, given the market. Without recruiters distributing this information, you have big disparities in compensation! And I think when there are disparities, the losers are most employees (though some people win by being grossly overpaid, but this generally gets fixed fairly quickly).

So, that's reason number one, information dissemination, which leads to better compensation for everyone.

Training a new recruiter

Sorry, been busy lately. We're working on bringing another recruiter on our team -- not EASY! It's good b/c it reminds me of why people dislike recruiters -- and reminds me to be empathetic when talking to candidates -- for all they know, I'm just another guy with a phone looking to make buck who doesn't know the difference between Java and C++.

Busy first quarter

Lax on my posting, I've been super busy.

1) We're looking to expand - we're interviewing recruiters to join our team, which is a very odd experience (I'll go into detail in a bit).

2) We're closing deals at an outstanding clip -- I've done some really interesting placements in the last three months, from a couple of developers at start ups, a number of placements at the big three I-banks, and two major quant deals. I like the fact that I'm finding interesting people and jobs that really fit what they are looking for. This is the busiest/most productive I've ever been as a recruiter.

3) Finally feeling better (somewhat).

How many people is it possible to know?

This is the great question I've been wondering -- how many people can a person know. I figure it's possible to know every active pro baseball player, all the hall of famers, and many of the minor leaguers.
Let's suppose you know all the players on the 40 man roster -- that 1200 people (30 teams by 40 players). That seems like a reasonable number of people to know. Let's add a couple of thousand who are are former players -- let's say another 1ooo. And let's say you keep up with the draft and college, so you know another 1000 that way. So all told you know about 3000 players.

How many more beyond that can you know? Where does the limit of memory come into play?

The number of technologists and quants in NYC is finite, but is it knowable? What would be the most efficient way to learn about all these people?

Some good news

From our friends at GS

Anyone want to work there? send me your res ... jkeenan AT cpi DASH search DOT com

The return of functional languages

This is an interesting microtrend in Wall Street tech -- the use of functional languages. Very interesting, there's a Haskell group that is working in the Quant space at a major bank in NYC; a hedge fund is using a lot of OCaml; and now I hear a midtown bank is talking about using F#...

Beware of Social Networks

I'm told a certain investment bank (that, coincidentally is not doing well) sent out a mass e-mail to their employees to beware of social networks... Hmm, I wonder what they have to be scared of?

Ivanisms

While doing some research this morning I found a nice article today about recruiting A candidates and the dangers of B candidates. I always am seeking the A candidates, but this really summarizes why I stay away from B Candidates:

B players, on the other hand, are the bad hires. They are good enough that they often get things passably done. They may be sloppy or incomplete, but they always seem to have an external excuse. They are usually likeable enough (you hired them!) but there's something about them. They are the people who won't admit when they don't know something, and won't ask questions for fear of appearing dumb. And they are the people who start politics in the office. Because they can't keep up, because they're not an A player and know it, because they think economics is a "zero sum game", they start breeding discontent and negativity.

He's got another good article on retaining employees as well.

But I don't have any finance experience

Yeah, and so what? There is an interesting rule I've noted in finance recruiting -- the better the group, the less important finance knowledge is. Wait, isn't that backwards? No, the better the group the less important is finance knowledge.
Why? Because the best groups need the best coders and realize the true scarcity of engineers at this level. Some of my biggest deals this year have been placing out of industry, out of state developers into front office groups at Morgan Stanley, Lehman, and Goldman Sachs for just this reason.
So if you are a great developer, let's talk.

Strategist Search

Very exciting news, one of our clients is a building a strategy team in Fixed Income. For those unaware of what a strat is, it's a role created at Goldman many years ago for essentially a developer who gets paid from the business, rather than from IT. The idea is that if a developer is paid on the business, their interests are more inline with making money.

Very exciting search, so if you are a quant with strong coding skills or a coder with strong quant skills, we should be talking ...

C++ Program Trading

You wouldn't think this would be a hard search. I have a well known bank looking for 5 C++ developers to add to their program trading team (just placed someone there). Why? Because they are rewriting the entire system.

So why can't I find anyone!!!

Feeling better

Well, feeling much better now -- I was hit by a case of shingles which is essentially a recurrence of Chicken Pox (so it's a lie your mom tells you when she says it won't come back). For me, it wasn't so bad, but one of the side effects is intense anxiety -- so much so that I actually felt the anxiety in my spinal column and head! Talk about being aware of your moods.

I'm getting better, so we'll get so more postings up on here.

Sorry, I've been sick

I'll spare the gory details (well, there aren't any), but I came down with a case of Shingles which is essentially a recurrence of chicken pox. It's not serious, but it's been a major energy drain.

Your not begging ...

... your dispensing favors -- they're talking about college's asking for money, but I think the thought is applicable to any sales role:

It helps considerably to think of yourself not as a beggar but rather as if you’re “doing that person a favor,” LaMorte says. “People joke with me, ‘Oh no, here comes Debra, look out for your wallet.’ But I have to feel as though I am helping people focus their philanthropy in a way that gives them meaning and that will enhance their lives.

Great linkedin story

on my honeymoon, but I can´t resist this. I was bugging my friend andrew who is a free lance writer to use LinkedIN more because I thought he might get some work ...

Andrew,

Howdy. I was just browsing Linkedin, looking for people who could write feature stories for Wired, and you popped up. Seems like you've got a lot of Wired-esque clips and experience.

If you're game, we should talk on the phone, or you should stop by the next time
you come through New York.

Cheers * Nick

Senior Editor> Wired Magazine> 4 Times Square> NY, NY 10036

Did I tell you I was getting married

Well I am. So there. Wish me luck!

!!!!!!!

How often do you use the ! in e-mail??? I find myself using it all the time, at first I thought it was some kind of iconoclast usage, a rebel against my English teachers who abhorred its use. then I read this:

thee authors, astonishingly, come out in favor of exclamation points (“ ‘Thanks!!!!’ is way friendlier than ‘Thanks’ ”), abbreviations (“Is LOL . . . really inherently more opaque than FYI?”), and emoticons (those smiley faces and the like may “bug many people but they make us smile”).