Trading Floor Support

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Morning All,

I have been having a browse on the Internet and I saw a role that caught my eye. Great salary, good location, and very nice benifits package.

The role was for IT Service Desk on a Trading Floor.

I just wondered if anyone had any experience of working on a Trading Floor and how they found it?
The job spec seems pretty much along the same lines as I am doing now, but with a significant salary increase, etc.

I have not applied and wont be looking for a new role for at least 6 months as I would like to get some certs out the way first, but if anyone has any experience of a Trading Floor role, input would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Ron

 

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Depends on the size of the company and the amount of traders. Alot of it is based on personality. You deal with alot of 'dominance personalites' and can be very stressful when it goes wrong.
I personally i dont like working in that part of IT as the people usual dont have alot of time for IT and i found trying to fix things was always a battle with the user. That being said i know people that enjoy the fast pace and usually the IT departments have a good budget so you work with some nice kit. The people are generally nice and friendly they are just very time poor.

 

First off I don't and haven't worked on a trading floor, however, I know those that do and have some interaction with Traders in my role so have some inside knowledge.

You have to have the right attitude and right personality to not only do well but actually survive. The traders are extremely demanding often to the point of unreasonable and can be plain rude and offensive especially to staff they regard as junior and haven't earnt their respect. This probably isn't true for all places but is certainly for the two of the three or so trading floors I've dealt with which are on the smaller scale with face-to-face support.

That's the negatives the positives are that the roles are typically well paid and well rewarded for those that do well. The role is likely to be fast paced and demanding and a typically higher than average staff turnover means progression is good. There is also likely to be a good social side to the role and the rest of support team is liable to be a good bunch. If you can talk a good game, even if the knowledge is missing a bit you should be fine.

Anyway that's my experience of it/them, yours and others may differ .

 

how much we talking ron?

 

Looking at £35,000 to £45,000 basic mate, with Bonuses (some of upto 30%).
Lot of money (well I think so anyway)

 

Its as much to do with your attitude as much as anything else, if you'e easily swayed, have a nervous disposition or cower easily I wouldn't bother, also if you can't work to tight timescales and actually don't know the subject you can forget it as well. Traders as a rule want things done now because any issues could cost them millions in lost trade if something goes wrong and you can't\don't fix it for them now. Also because of the stress of working on a trading floor most people burn out after a while.

On the plus side it's always a good earner and as you said bonuses can be great (obviously different as a contractor) but you will be expected to work long hours, if at 5pm something crops up you will be expected to stay there until it's fixed, even if it takes 5 hours.

Let me give you an example of how a trader can act; a few years ago I worked for a Swiss Investment Bank, over a weekend I and my boss (the head of IT for the company of 45 people that had 14 traders) moved the offices from two floors down to one, part of the move included giving each of the traders a new set of three 21" monitors on a threeway monitor stand, following H&S requirements these were placed at a specific distance away from the front end of the desk (to prevent headaches and eye strain). We finished doing this at 11pm on the Sunday night and I was back in at 07:00 the following morning to provide support.

One of the traders came in at 07:30 and started complaining about the distance of the monitors from his eyes, they were too far away and he wanted them moved 2cm forward, as you can imagine this wasn't possible. All of a sudden this was my fault and he wanted it fixed now, at this point I turned around to him and said "never mind me, don't worry that I spent all weekend coming in to move you and everyone elses desks and giving you new monitors (up from the single 19" to 3 21" monitors), I don't need your thanks for the work I did over the weekend" and told him to speak to the H&S person about the monitors. I said this to him infront of 4 or 5 of his peers and walked away. 10 minutes later he came over to me and apologised for the way he acted, after that day I never had any issues with any of the traders.

If you can handle the stress and long working hours then I say go for it, it's good character building stuff BUT and I have to stress this BUT if you can't work under really tight timelines, can't fix things on the spot, can't take verbal abuse and don't know your stuff then you won't last long in the role.

 

I had an interview for a stockbroker last year, it is extremely fast paced and you really need to be aware of the amount of hours could potentially shoot up (without additional pay) if required. You're paid well because you really do help the business make BIG money. If a machine is down more than 5 minutes you could be expected to swap it out.

I didn't get the job, but looking back I think the speed (and increased experience) is definitely something I'll be looking for in my next job - It's amazing to see the buzz in that type of environment.

 

wowsers