Experience of working from home for a HFT firm
As you guys know I have been working as a Quant Trader in a HFT in India since 2020. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, I have been working from home from the start and even now. I am not even sure when things will relax and when will they call their employees back at the office. In this post I will be sharing the experience that I had working from home and how does that affect the work for a HFT.
Setting up Systems
Working as a quant trader involves monitoring various things at once during trading and analysis and hence there is a higher requirement for real estate in screens. Generally, multiple large screen monitors are used by a trader. To set up this at the homes for each of the traders was a big task. Of course, they sent all the monitors and systems at home but we had to set it up on our own which was a pain. Also, it takes up large space so it might be a little problematic for those who have space issues in their home office.
Coordination and Communication
Often as a trader, our job involves alerting other traders about something or asking, sharing information with them during the trading hours. This means we have to constantly be on call with them during work hours. This means the communication is not as good and efficient as it would have been in the office where we sit next to each other. Also if a trader wants to look at another system, he would have to remotely connect to the screen of the other trader instead of directly looking at their screens quickly in the office.
Costs incurred for an employee
Working from home involves some costs for the employees. A few examples are electricity bills due to higher usage of multiple screens and systems, internet costs (high-speed internet is required) for trading, other ergonomic expenses.
Savings for the company
in contrary to the last point, the company actually saves during work from home since they do not have to pay the infrastructure costs. Even if they do, it's just for occupying some space in the office and not running costs like electricity and internet etc.
Overall I feel that working from home is a lot more boring than it looks and it lacks the support and cooperation that you get from other employees when you work with them in the office. It may look like everything is good in working from home, you save time travelling less, waste less time and be more productive but I feel the opposite. Even though we spend more time travelling and stuff when we work in the office, but that helps us relax our mind and the time we spend talking and chatting with our colleagues definitely adds some value in our lives.
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