https://blog.turboawesome.win/tags/career/ Recent content in Career on Bits, Trades & Systems Hugo en-us Wed, 22 Jan 2025 11:15:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2025/01/staff-engineer-or-engineering-manager-on-choosing-the-road-that-doesnt-come-back/ Wed, 22 Jan 2025 11:15:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2025/01/staff-engineer-or-engineering-manager-on-choosing-the-road-that-doesnt-come-back/ Thirteen years in, the fork in the road becomes real. The honest framing of what each path actually involves, and why the choice is more reversible than people claim — and less. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2024/02/engineering-at-enterprise-scale-what-changes-when-the-system-is-actually-big/ Wed, 14 Feb 2024 10:22:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2024/02/engineering-at-enterprise-scale-what-changes-when-the-system-is-actually-big/ After a decade in financial technology — trading firms, institutions, a startup, a European fintech — joining a large US technology company. The technical and organisational delta. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/11/eleven-years-in-a-retrospective-on-careers-choices-and-compounding-knowledge/ Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:41:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/11/eleven-years-in-a-retrospective-on-careers-choices-and-compounding-knowledge/ Eleven years of software engineering across trading firms, financial institutions, startups, and large technology companies. What compounds, what doesn't, and the decisions I'd make differently. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/08/navigating-org-change-as-an-engineer/ Wed, 16 Aug 2023 11:20:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2023/08/navigating-org-change-as-an-engineer/ Reorganisations, leadership changes, and strategy shifts are facts of life in growing companies. The engineers who navigate them well share some common practices — and some common misconceptions about what's actually changing. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/07/hiring-senior-engineers-what-the-interview-loop-cant-tell-you/ Wed, 07 Jul 2021 14:02:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/07/hiring-senior-engineers-what-the-interview-loop-cant-tell-you/ After running hiring loops for senior engineers at the European fintech firm, the pattern was clear: the things that determined whether a hire was successful were almost never well-measured by our interview process. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/03/after-the-startup-joining-a-larger-organisation-without-losing-your-mind/ Wed, 17 Mar 2021 09:11:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2021/03/after-the-startup-joining-a-larger-organisation-without-losing-your-mind/ Two years into a fast-moving startup, I joined a larger, more structured European financial technology firm. The culture delta was significant in both directions. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2020/05/from-ic-to-lead-the-first-90-days-managing-a-technical-team/ Wed, 13 May 2020 13:44:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2020/05/from-ic-to-lead-the-first-90-days-managing-a-technical-team/ The transition from individual contributor to technical lead is the career move that most engineers underestimate. The skills that made you good at the IC role don't automatically transfer — here's what the first 90 days actually taught me. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2019/01/why-i-left-on-risk-pace-and-ownership/ Wed, 09 Jan 2019 09:04:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2019/01/why-i-left-on-risk-pace-and-ownership/ After three years at a large financial institution, why I took a significant pay cut to join a tiny startup. The reasoning, the fears, and whether it was the right call. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2018/08/what-big-bank-engineering-taught-me-about-system-design/ Thu, 23 Aug 2018 13:51:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2018/08/what-big-bank-engineering-taught-me-about-system-design/ Three years at a large financial institution changed how I think about failure, compliance, and the relationship between constraints and good design. Not all of the lessons are obvious. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2016/01/when-the-scale-changes-moving-into-institutional-finance/ Wed, 06 Jan 2016 10:31:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2016/01/when-the-scale-changes-moving-into-institutional-finance/ Four years in a latency-obsessed trading environment, then a move to a large financial institution where the problems — and the constraints — were completely different. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2015/11/five-years-in-high-frequency-trading-what-i-actually-learned/ Thu, 12 Nov 2015 16:03:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2015/11/five-years-in-high-frequency-trading-what-i-actually-learned/ Looking back at five years of low-latency systems work: what the environment teaches you that you can't learn elsewhere, and what habits it instils that don't always transfer cleanly to other domains. https://blog.turboawesome.win/2012/02/from-zero-to-production-my-first-month-in-electronic-trading/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:17:00 +0000 https://blog.turboawesome.win/2012/02/from-zero-to-production-my-first-month-in-electronic-trading/ What nobody tells you when you join a trading technology firm fresh out of university — the systems, the culture, and the first time you push something live.