So – yesterday was my last day in Equity Linked Technology @ Merrill Lynch in New York. I have spent the past 2 years working on building their ‘next generation’ sales/ trading pre-trade trade lifecycle platform. To avoid any confusion or concern – no – I was not let go – I left on my own (it was a hard decision to go) for a great opportunity working at a hedge fund doing just what I want to do.

It has been full of fun, trials and hard work. At the end of the day, I will really miss certain people. Also, it was very hard for me to leave after only 2 years. It took a lot of hard thinking, introspection and consideration to decide to leave with only 2 years in. I am a very ‘goals oriented’ person and one of my goals going into this job was to have a 5 year run. That being said, goals are ordered, and my other goals have overridden this one – so… life is full of trade-offs.

I will not understate how much I will miss my friends from within Merrill. I will also miss a whole bunch of coworkers that I was only fortunate enough to get to know a bit. Many people made a good impression on me. I believe that I was fortunate enough to make a good impression on many people. The small emails I got in response to my goodbye email were in many cases very flattering and humbling. Thanks again to all of those people who thought well of me – your kind words and thoughts are appreciated.

Next…

Well – it has been a VERY long time since I have had 3 consecutive weeks off – but that is what I am doing 1st. I will be taking 1 week around my neighborhood (Cobble Hill Brooklyn). Since Gabe (my ~6 year old) has summer camp every day this coming weel, I will be spending a lot of time with Shannon and Micah (my littler 3.5 year old). I am looking forward to just taking lazy time this week.

After my week of relaxing at home – we are off to California for a bit of a vacation. We will have 2 weeks out there – some in San Francisco, some at Yosemite. We will be seeing many missed/ loved friends out there – so we are really looking forward to it.

Our kids will be seeing some of their long-time good kid friends, so we are excited for them. Each time we go on a family trip – they change a bit. This will be a ‘bigger’ trip for them – so we expect them to change quite a lot. Kids are great fun – they are a wonder. They are also of course quite a lot of work!

…and after vacation??

So – after vacation – I will be going to work for a hedge fund. I will be starting in their NYC office, then within the next 2-3 months (fingers crossed for the paperwork and all). We will be moving to their London office. I was supposed to go work for Merrill in London as well, so this was ‘in the works’ in either case – but this job is going to actually be it.

Me, and why did I move jobs?

Essentially the new job is more aligned with what I want to do. A former colleague called me and said he had something that was a good opportunity. I have known many recruiters for years, and sitting in a desk in a bank, everybody knows there is no shortage of incoming calls for ‘good opportunities’. Jobs coming from people you know and respect in the field however are about the only worthy source of REAL good opportunities of that ‘next level’ variety.

For me – I can either go up the ‘management of technology’ ladder, or go get closer and closer to the business of trading. I have had teams in the past, although only up to ~10 people. At Merrill, I had the opportunity to help move our larger group of equity derivs technology to more agile methods. I have helped many people run their development teams. I like to run dev teams. I am a ‘field marshal’ type according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (see here, or here). It is in my nature to want to go accomplish something with a team. In my current world, I think I am more likely to lead ‘in the trenches’ in a very hands on tangible way. I do not really think this lends itself well to the investment bank hands off management of technology. My current opinion is there is too much politics to be a hands on field marshal leader in an investment bank, or at least at Merrill.

So – that leads me to the new fund. Essentially, I will be working with a very small team with – as far as I can judge – very talented people. The general mindset of ‘hiring few and excellent people’ as opposed to many many many people of varying skill levels rings with me.

Business Proximity

Sitting on the desk – it is important to me to have that immediate attachment to the business. I have spent years working with traders trying to automate parts of their work from your standard ‘enter these limit orders’ to automate an entire trading strategy, to flowing quote requests across global trading desks. I have often said that what I think I do, and what I think is valuable is executing strategic solutions incrementally bit by bit in those more tactical time-frames. In other words – you do not have to hack away day by day on the desk and grind to a halt at some point. You can have a strategy and execute within your own strategic directives for the software and deliver business value rapidly building the platform out bit by bit – ALL THE WHILE delivering business value.

Plinko

Prioritization. It all comes down to executing the business needs in EXPLICIT order of priority. All the while, dumping the answers (the code/ software) into the right strategic buckets. I have called this the Plinko model of software development.

So – that is plenty of chatter – I am off to play with the boys!

-Chris

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.