Ironic, isn't it?
I was walking past the Lehman Brothers building in Canary Wharf complex of London today. Outside there was a Lamborghini on a trade stand, complete with bimbo model.
Ironic, eh?
Yeah, I chuckled a little inside too before returning to the same thought I’ve been having all week. The traditional ivory tower techie attitude has it that "the business" are a bunch of baffoons who know nothing about technology, and should just get back to wowing each other with Powerpoint effects. The rest of us understand that, for the most part, we need "them" as much as they need "us".
It’s a worrying time for anyone involved in financial IT. Budget freezes, canned projects, collapse of whole organisations. Even if you’re not directly working within the finance industry you and your clients need money, and a healthy economy in which to operate. Droves of newly unemployed people who presumably didn’t anticipate it are going to drive real competition in the recruitment market.
In sentence: things are looking bad.
What to do? Well, as all the best faces on Bloomberg like to say, "there is some hope". Share trading systems generate revenue no matter whether the stock is rising or falling. A trade is a trade, and they still get paid, so to speak.
Plus, the UK at least still has a strong gambling market - and a modern online gambling infrastructure is not that far removed from any other financial trading platform. As Cal Henderson said in his recent Django 2008 keynote, speed seems to be the key in that sense (it’s also a refreshing good talk - funny bloke with some good ideas).
