Business

Geeks cash in on their Street appeal

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They studied advanced algorithms instead of art history, and now it’s paying off.

The hottest commodities on Wall Street aren’t silver and gold, but new graduates with degrees in computer science, recent data shows.

New York, which ranks third on a list of cities sweeping up the young talent, has become an increasingly competitive hiring market, as banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs square off with Google and Facebook for the best recruits.

While some land jobs earning upward of $100,000 a year at large tech companies, many are entering the financial sector, designing and operating the black boxes that perform high-frequency trades.

“The data side of banking has always driven it toward IT,” said Guy Pickrell, a managing director at NationStaff, a financial-technology recruitment company.

“There’s a huge demand for technology people because banks are building proprietary trading software and they need to maintain it, which takes a lot of effort,” Pickrell said.

Earning roughly $65,000 a year working as analysts in the back offices of investment banks and other trading firms, graduates help computer systems manage thousands of electronic trades — a number of trades that would be impossible to process by hand.

The high volume is a result of increased high-frequency trading in recent years, as banks rely more heavily on robots using algorithms to identify and carry out favorable trades.

“On the trading side, there’s been an understanding that you don’t necessarily need a guy making the decisions,” said Pickrell. “You can make machines do that — even before the data has been made usable for humans.”

While the shifting science of Wall Street has presented rich opportunities for developers building high-tech tools for banks, the entry-level jobs it’s spawned aren’t always seen as exciting.

“You write code,” said one former Goldman Sachs analyst, who noted that the jobs lack the glamour associated with more traditional roles in finance. “You’re like an alter ego of Steve Jobs sitting in a basement.”

Some students seek positions at software companies and tech startups over large broker-dealers because of the stigma attached to Wall Street. “A lot of computer guys weren’t the most popular kids in school, and they’re tired of it. In the startup scene, you’re cool and hip.”