Moving from Investment Banking IT to Operations?

[Mi Amigo]

'The EEAMEASA team will segue with the UMEALA Investment Banking synergy-units for maximum 24/7 efficiency'....


Blah blah blah...


Blah blah blah blah blah.... heheh....

Hahaha! Thanks for the LOL. Has anyone actually used the word segue in a JD? I'm sure it's happened, but it just sounds so funny (visions of some guy or gal doing a DJ impression at their desk). I really hate those worthy, PC, marketing speak buzzword-fests that seem to permeate most business activity these days. Why can't people just write (and say) what they want in plain English instead of hiding behind all that BS?

Anyway, Rev, how about you get a job with SIA to fix their !#@&*% up website? I just had to do battle with it again this morning and it drove me to distraction.

[Wd40]

I am making 8.3k a month. There is no way to get this salary outside of banking for an individual contributor role, no matter what technologies I learn.

I can completely and unequivocally tell you you are wrong. The company I work for may have more cash on hand than most banks, but is not in banking. That would be slightly higher than middle of the range for any IC grade that someone with 4-6 yrs experience would be in. And that is for any of our IT roles.

You probably work for an electronics/semiconductor giant and the IT roles that you are talking about are not the generic database, datawarehousing or application development. They are most probably chip design, VLSI design, embedded techonology or something of that sort?

[Sergei82]

Wd40, you've already decided what are you going to do anyway. I see the only reason for asking us is if you screw everything up, then at least you will have an excuse "they advised me". So better not to advise anything.

[Wd40]

Wd40, you've already decided what are you going to do anyway. I see the only reason for asking us is if you screw everything up, then at least you will have an excuse "they advised me". So better not to advise anything.

Haha, actually just wanted to know what people's perception is about back office operations relative to IT and how does it feel to work there, thats all, I am not going to blame anyone. I have always held myself and only myself responsible for all decisions I have taken and will do so in future as well

[Sergei82]

So 1st of all they should agree to take you. And if it happens, you will have no choice but to find everything out yourself at place. Then you can kindly come back to us and share your experience. I bet it will be totally different from what other people are telling you here.

[zzm9980]

I am making 8.3k a month. There is no way to get this salary outside of banking for an individual contributor role, no matter what technologies I learn.

I can completely and unequivocally tell you you are wrong. The company I work for may have more cash on hand than most banks, but is not in banking. That would be slightly higher than middle of the range for any IC grade that someone with 4-6 yrs experience would be in. And that is for any of our IT roles.

You probably work for an electronics/semiconductor giant and the IT roles that you are talking about are not the generic database, datawarehousing or application development. They are most probably chip design, VLSI design, embedded techonology or something of that sort?

Our generic mid-level network engineers (~5yr experience) will make what you report.

I want to add too that I'm not discouraging you from this. I'm quite curious myself, and I know a lot of people who have been in your position that have wanted a career change. I'm just saying your outside salary expectations are wrong.

[ututu123]

I am making 8.3k a month. There is no way to get this salary outside of banking for an individual contributor role, no matter what technologies I learn. Within banking too its only extremely niche like C++ low latency programming etc which is paid that high. Also its easy to say learn technologies, but its hard to do that unless on the job and then there is risk that what you learn may not be much help.

I'd disagree with your perception. I'm in IT myself, pure techie and I think you are wrong if you think 100k per year is the ceiling for techie.

[freeman.vu]

As the title says, I have applied for an internal mobility position for Operations Analyst.

I am currently working in a pure technical role in database/datawarehousing in the investment bank, with over 9 years of total IT experience(33 yrs old) and although there is some interaction with business users, I havent had much opportunity to learn the business.

Today I got an initial screening call for the new position that I applied and although I have absolutely no experience in Operations(as its evident in my resume) the fact that I got a screening call means, I am assuming, they are willing to let me learn.

The Operations Analyst role I believe is related to equities trade settlement, reconciliation etc. Looks like a middle office kind of role.

Its still very preliminary and there will be few rounds of interviews, if they do consider me.

I just wanted to check if people here are working in IB operations and/or moved to operations from IT, if they have any suggestions? How is an operations kind of role in terms of career growth? Is it possible to learn all that stuff? How is operations role looked at compared to an IT role? Any tips for attending the interviews will also be helpful

I had over two years working for one small hedge fund, I covered both core development and that operational stuff. I don't see any difference between the two jobs as I wrote a program to automate the whole reconciliation (statement parsing, mismatch finding, NAV calculations, emailing and reporting, etc). So that 'operational stuff' became pure IT jobs as when issues happened, I need to debug that automating system...
But again IB and hedge fund are different

[alittlerisky]

It really depends what you mean by Operations here.

If you’re taking basic back-office processing, then you don’t really need product knowledge.

If you want to move to middle office/risk or front office support, you will need the IT knowledge as well as pretty good product knowledge. i.e mathematical pricing know, Black Scholes, Monte Carlo, binomial/trinomial pricing models. I basically work in IT, but as a business / functional analyst I need to be able to work with FO /Sales / Risk /MO/ Compliance and BO to make sure all processes and reporting are correct. This means understanding the pricing models and process flows. And I do have a LLB Law , BSc French, BSc Finance, MSc Law, MSc Applied Financial Mathematics (I spent a long time at uni until I ran out of money and had to join the real world).

But basically to work in FO/MO/Risk you need to know how to value stuff. And also, VAR, Stress Testing, Back Testing, PL Var, Greeks etc.

[Sergei82]

I would stay away from back-office in Singapore nowadays. Great chance to end up in India.

[Wd40]

Thanks everyone. This role is mainly reconciliations. I had chat with a person from our company in the operations dept, he in a different team though as Business Analyst for Operations change.

After speaking with him the impression I got is that the role is quite lowly backoffice kind of job and people there are paid not more than 5k and are very junior staff. I am not sure whether internal transfer means salary will remain same or can go lower also. Grade wise its still the same, but now I learnt that IT guys are paid much better than OPs guys.

Anyways, I have the 1st round interview set up today evening. Although I am not interested in it as much as I was earlier, I will still give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

[Sergei82]

Interview is always an exciting, eye-opening and ego-boosting experience that is not wise to miss. I ALWAYS go for an interview, even if I decided not to work in that company already.
In any case, you may still keep good connections after the interview, and in the future it may be quite useful.

[Wd40]

Thanks. Finished the interview. The interviewer was going crazy and trying to find out what is the reason I want to join back office operations and leaving IT job

She explained that the role is totally world apart from what I have been doing and that although its not rocket science and can be learnt, she mentioned how fast pace it is and comparison of trade data and reconciliation etc.

While speaking with her, I had more or less made up my mind not to take up the opportunity even if I am selected, which is unlikely, given that even after the interview she would be nodding her head in disbelief that I really want to get that job

[JR8]

Thanks JR8, Really appreciate your reply. Here's the exact job description:

...

I have to admit, I dont know much about the role. The qualifications required, didnt look too much of a stretch for me and hence I applied.I will talk to some guys in operations to understand more about it so that I have a better chance. Thanks again.

Thanks for that. That job-spec struck me as being a typical 'Operations Clerk'. I don't see much that's 'analyst' about the role. Don't take that as disparaging, it's not, a good Ops Clerk is worth his weight in gold. Perhaps these days it's all PC and they don't want to risk demeaning positions by terming them 'clerks'... I don't know.

Being an Ops Clerk is a good way to learn the nuts and bolts of the industry/markets. You understand the instruments inside out, the markets and their various settlement rules. You work closely with the trading floor; the traders will grow to respect and depend on you. They call it 'back office' but it feels very front-line I can tell you.

Good luck!



* Ironically I trod the reverse route, from being a pit-trader on an open outcry trading exchange, to being an ops clerk. But in the aftermath of Black Monday, we took what ever we could get. Ironically (again ) bringing the '''savagery''' and hunger of pit-trading to the back/middle-office supercharged my subsequent career...

[JR8]

But basically to work in FO/MO/Risk you need to know how to value stuff. And also, VAR, Stress Testing, Back Testing, PL Var, Greeks etc.

He's talking about Operations, where you don't need any of that.

Just so we don't muddy the waters.