Good, we need more functional programmers actually solving real problems.  But please put your skills to work in an industry other than investment banking.

I've received a lot mail on this comment; mostly positive. Here's one from someone who wishes to remain anonymous:

First of all I would like to say that I like your work regarding e.g. Atom. Second, I would like to know what exactly is bad about a Haskell job in investment banking as a lot of good programmers work in this industry.

It's disproportionate. 95% of the job offerings in functional programming are with investment firms. I believe investment banking is important, but does it really need to dominate a large percentage of the world's top tier programmers? Is computing the risk of derivative contracts more important than pursuing sustainable energy, new drug discovery, improving crop yields, etc. Some will argue investment banking enables all of these things -- and I'm sure many people in the industry go to work everyday feeling proud of their contributions. But I just think most of this talent is going in to improve the bottom line and little else. (Yes, I realize that's were the money is, and that's who's hiring. Actually I'm very glad. Investment banking is the first industry to adopt functional programming on a large scale. And others will follow.) -Tom

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Lennart Augustsson wrote:

But do you think there would be more Haskell jobs offered (in absolute terms), if no investment firms offered jobs? Is there some kind of quota of job offers that gets used up?

No and no. Again, I think it's awesome an industry as finally woken up. I just wish the others would get with the program.

Of course Banks/Financial Firms/Investment Banks want software that is correct, secure, and logs transactions. Aspects are great for cross-cutting concerns like security and logging; as in AspectJ. For correctness, functional programming has that. With monads its easy to add logging and security. Something the BCLC (British Columbia Lottery Corporation) has missed entirely. :) On Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:05:50 +0800, you wrote:

Remember that Banks/Financial Firms/Investment Banks were among the first big uses of punch card readers, mainframes, cobol, C, C++ (and OOP), VBA, Java.. I'm not saying if I like any of those languages (my presence on this list should give a clue how I feel) but investment banks picking up FP and Haskell bodes quite well for Haskell in the future.

Max

On Aug 10, 2010, at 12:59 AM, Tom Hawkins wrote:

...

...

Good, we need more functional programmers actually solving real problems. But please put your skills to work in an industry other than investment banking.

I've received a lot mail on this comment; mostly positive. Here's one from someone who wishes to remain anonymous:

...

First of all I would like to say that I like your work regarding e.g. Atom. Second, I would like to know what exactly is bad about a Haskell job in investment banking as a lot of good programmers work in this industry.

It's disproportionate. 95% of the job offerings in functional programming are with investment firms. I believe investment banking is important, but does it really need to dominate a large percentage of the world's top tier programmers? Is computing the risk of derivative contracts more important than pursuing sustainable energy, new drug discovery, improving crop yields, etc. Some will argue investment banking enables all of these things -- and I'm sure many people in the industry go to work everyday feeling proud of their contributions. But I just think most of this talent is going in to improve the bottom line and little else.

(Yes, I realize that's were the money is, and that's who's hiring. Actually I'm very glad. Investment banking is the first industry to adopt functional programming on a large scale. And others will follow.)

-Tom

-- Regards, Casey

...

It's disproportionate. 95% of the job offerings in functional programming are with investment firms.

I'm not sure that is really true. You might see more adverts for financial jobs, but often those jobs may be advertised multiple times, because different headhunters see an opportunity to earn a slice of the pie. By contrast, non-financial FP jobs are likely to be advertised only once, or not at all, because candidates are easily found. Regards, Malcolm

Rather than high turnover it indicates (in my experience) that it's difficult to fill positions in finance. That's one reason they are advertised repeatedly. On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

Malcolm Wallace writes:

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It's disproportionate.  95% of the job offerings in functional programming are with investment firms.

I'm not sure that is really true.  You might see more adverts for financial jobs, but often those jobs may be advertised multiple times, because different headhunters see an opportunity to earn a slice of the pie.  By contrast, non-financial FP jobs are likely to be advertised only once, or not at all, because candidates are easily found.

It could also indicate high turn-over for investment firm jobs... (i.e. people get sick of it).

-- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

The former. On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 2:59 PM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:

Lennart Augustsson writes:

...

Rather than high turnover it indicates (in my experience) that it's difficult to fill positions in finance. That's one reason they are advertised repeatedly.

Because you can't find people that are good enough (in terms of required skill sets, etc.) or because no-one wants the job?

-- Ivan Lazar Miljenovic Ivan.Miljenovic@gmail.com IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com

Henning Thielemann wrote:

about functional programming jobs in investment banking ...

Ketil Malde schrieb:

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Tom Hawkins writes:

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(Yes, I realize that's were the money is [...]) Exactly.

I don't think this is bad: having talented people recruited to work on functional programming will improve the technology for all of us.

I'm not sure I follow this opinion in general. Analogously I could say: Supporting military is a good idea, since they invest in new technologies. That's not my opinion. Maybe the next financial crisis leads us into the next world war.

But that analogy is a bit disingenuous. If investment bankers care so much about performance (because a few milliseconds delay in transactions can cost a lot) then getting a lot of talented functional programmers in finance means there will be a good deal of work in figuring out how to improve performance. Thus, anyone who wants performance will benefit directly; regardless of attendant outcomes. While the military invests in technology, they invest mainly in technology that advances a particular goal. Thus, it's good for them to have smart people if you would like improvements to that particular kind of technology. (Which includes the Internet and natural language processing ---for very militaristic reasons, both of them---, as well as the obvious.) Investment banking isn't likely to lead to improvements in zygohistomorphic prepromorphisms. If that's where you think we need to be improving our technology, then having smart people in investment banking doesn't help. But that's a different claim than the claim that they'd improve performance or overall acceptance in the job market. -- Live well, ~wren

Henning Thielemann writes:

about functional programming jobs in investment banking ...

...

I don't think this is bad: having talented people recruited to work on functional programming will improve the technology for all of us.

I'm not sure I follow this opinion in general. Analogously I could say: Supporting military is a good idea, since they invest in new technologies.

Sure, if the premise is that investment banks (or the military) are evil, then it is morally questionable to support them. If these are the major consumers of functional programming, one might question the ethics of working on FP in general as well. But as I interpreted this thread, the premise was not about the morality of specific sectors, but rather that finance "takes away" too much of the FP talent. My opinion is that we should rather appreciate business or organizations willing to fund FP - perhaps especially for "evil" organizations, where funds would otherwise go to more nefarious purposes. -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants

On Aug 11, 2010, at 7:30 PM, Ketil Malde wrote:

Sure, if the premise is that investment banks (or the military) are evil, then it is morally questionable to support them. If these are the major consumers of functional programming, one might question the ethics of working on FP in general as well.

But as I interpreted this thread, the premise was not about the morality of specific sectors, but rather that finance "takes away" too much of the FP talent.

One (but only one, and I do not say the major one) of the aspects of the "global financial crisis" is that bankers created a number of "advanced" financial instruments which nobody really knew how to value. "Advanced" computational models were developed for the purpose. People were warning about this 10 years ago or more; I bought a couple of books about it from a remainder shop. If functional programming gets associated in the profession's eyes with *that* kind of programming, it will not do FP any good. In any case, what with lambda expressions already in Apple's C (of all languages!), it's clear that FP ideas are becoming mainstream _without_ any need of help from the financial community. (Actually, that particular one is probably due to Objective C with its Smalltalk influence, so the "functional" origin here is ultimately Lisp.)

New technologies are usually introduced by smart people who have the vision, and drive to communicate the benefits of doing it differently and usually better to their peers, and seniors. Few senior IT people will have any FP knowledge, or maybe exposure to the mathematical or CS fundamentals of FP over imperative programming. New technologies need an environment where spending can afford a degree of risk. I the UK, few graduates outside a limited set will have experienced Haskell, OCAML, or Erlang. The talented will dabble for the fun of it. Once MS push F#, the situation will change. Look at the history and acceptance of C++ in the 1990's. -- Andrew in Edinburgh,Scotland. A Haskell convert On 11 August 2010 08:30, Ketil Malde wrote:

Henning Thielemann writes:

...

about functional programming jobs in investment banking ...

...

...

I don't think this is bad: having talented people recruited to work on functional programming will improve the technology for all of us.

...

I'm not sure I follow this opinion in general. Analogously I could say: Supporting military is a good idea, since they invest in new technologies.

Sure, if the premise is that investment banks (or the military) are evil, then it is morally questionable to support them. If these are the major consumers of functional programming, one might question the ethics of working on FP in general as well.

But as I interpreted this thread, the premise was not about the morality of specific sectors, but rather that finance "takes away" too much of the FP talent. My opinion is that we should rather appreciate business or organizations willing to fund FP - perhaps especially for "evil" organizations, where funds would otherwise go to more nefarious purposes.

-k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe