Programming on the job (non-quant)
What are typical BB firms' policies on employees writing and executing code on their computers? Where I interned was extremely strict about sending/receiving files and bringing files to/from work (a trader told me he wasn't able to use programs he wrote at another firm and had to rewrite them upon starting for instance) so I was wondering how much control employees typically have of their computers/workflow. For context, I'm asking because I've picked up programming this year and want to know if I will be able to use it on the job when I start.
You should be fine doing programming. You will likely have a set of programs already downloaded on your computer day one. Anything extra such as developing environments such as say Notepad++ will likely require permission from IT. I had to get permissions to download a couple programs necessary for programming and access to certain internal data sets. What the trader described is very typical and is more of an issue regarding IP. I had a contract stating anything developed at the firm stays with the firm; you likely have something similar.
Thanks, and yeah, I got a pretty full taste of the software I'll be using over the summer but I've since become pretty obsessed with automation and there were many repetitive tasks required of analysts that I should be able to script pretty easily so time can be spent on less mundane things (e.g. manually updating multiple pages of 16 x 16 graphs in Excel daily for each country's forward curve for a client deliverable). Additionally, I was wondering whether I'd be able to adapt the derivative trade pricing tool to work through a more comfortable front-end than currently offered and it doesn't sound like that'd be an issue.
Thanks, and yeah, I got a pretty full taste of the software I'll be using over the summer but I've since become pretty obsessed with automation and there were many repetitive tasks required of analysts that I should be able to script pretty easily so time can be spent on less mundane things (e.g. manually updating multiple pages of 16 x 16 graphs in Excel daily for each country's forward curve for a client deliverable). Additionally, I was wondering whether I'd be able to adapt the company's derivative trade pricer to work through a more comfortable front-end such as Excel, which doesn't sound like it should be an issue.
Preaching to the choir on the topic of automating repetitive tasks. Be aware that integrating data into new formats and adapting to use in new software can be harder than at first look. I had a taste of that in my internship, and it did not go well. Tried to make a program to take info from a data warehouse and display the data in a non-native environment, and let's just say that my desk looked like the scrawlings of a crazed serial killer trying to make it work. That being said, I had success in many other avenues of programming/making tools for the team, and I am of the firm belief that it is one of the few ways you can try to add value while in a junior position. I bet you are more clever than I, so you likely won't run into as many problems as I did.
The nice thing I've found about Python so far is its ecosystem of libraries is so built out that data can be parsed straight into a Python-readable format and then exported to Excel (or analyzed directly in Python) relatively painlessly and typically in under 10-20 lines of code. Can't speak on other languages (aside from VBA which I try to avoid) but Python has been extremely easy to learn for this reason. I'd recommend anybody look into it in a role writing non-performance critical code.
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