Working for a Hedge Fund?

shawnx715

Hello,

Im curious to see if anyone in the board has experience working as IT support in a Hedge Fund. What have your experiences been? Do you recommend it?

About me: 25, working IT Support for an accounting company in NY area.

hurricane1091

I worked for a good sized financial company and a much smaller one as well. There's a ton of people who make a ton of money, and they do not like when their "stuff" does not work. Plenty of nice folks, plenty of not-so-nice folks. It's a more serious environment in the sense that massive dollars are at stake during a limited window of operation (stock market is only open for 8 hours). So nothing can go wrong during that time, or it's a big deal.

Let's be real, it's a big deal anywhere an outage occurs. From my experience, it was just taken more serious in the financial sector. Easy maintenance windows though. I was not a desktop person, but it'll end up being no different than working around lawyers/doctors/etc. Some full of themselves, some not.

pinkydapimp

Typically you get paid significantly more than most sectors. However, you may end up working a ton of hours as well. Its not for everyone, but if its for you, good money can be made there.

BradleyHU

I work in the HF space as well. It's not for everyone, but it also depends on the firm. I'll say this though, not all HFs are the same. And hurricane1091 is right about the people at the funds. Plenty of nice folks, some not so much. And even the not so much ones aren't bad ppl, its just they have a lot on the line, whether it's an important trade that they need to get their orders out, or a PM or MD who's trying conduct a meeting with some high profile investors. It's not the wild wild west like Boiler Room, Wolf of Wall St, Liar's Poker, or the Big Short make traders/PMs out to be. Normally you'll get along with everyone for the most part.

and you do get paid above market, but how much above market depends on the firm. I've seen some funds be cheap with the compensation in comparison to the rest of the Street.

shawnx715

I'll be having a phone interview with a Hedge Fund with the IT manager, for a Desktop Support role. Any insight on what questions would be like? The HR recruiter mentioned that there may be questions regarding the business and certain terms, and i'm a newb when it comes to that.

EANx

If I was that manager, while I'd want to be sure you were technically capable, I'd ask several questions about your ability to handle stress and customers who might have demanding type-A personalities. How do you react when someone shouts in your face? A computer problem at the wrong time in that environment isn't the same danger to life/property that other industries can experience but hedge funds have more of their share of high-flying, tightly-wound people and if someone loses control at the wrong time, they could be looking at their job so they could lash out at anyone handy. You need to be able to deal with that type of personality/situation but also, recognize it could happen and ask to be compensated accordingly.

ITSec14

Yeah this could be a huge opportunity, but supporting an environment in this space likely has extremely high expectations.

jdancer

It's good money but you learn real quick to sleep with one eye open and that cell phone under your pillow. Did it for several years.

It's great when you have no commitments.