quantdev1

Welp. Now I’m regretting shutting down a similar business - because I felt like single product businesses were a dead end.

Sheesh.

Big fan of your content design :)

Thanks - I'll look into that!

I doubt it's something I'll need to worry about though, haha

Thanks for clarifying, and great points.

I could see how it would be dangerous in large-scale production environments.

*zero experience

Short answer: No idea. Because I don't trust my existing sources of feedback.

Longer answer:

I've only gotten feedback from two sources...

AI (multiple models) and a friend that's a SWE.

Despite my best efforts to shut down AI's bias towards positive feedback - it keeps saying the work is ridiculously good and thinks I need to seriously consider a career change.

My friend - who knows my lack of experience - had a hard time believing I did the work. But he's not a believable source - since friends won't give you cold, hard feedback.

I'm thinking about sharing it on here when it's done.

I think something people really misunderstand about these tools is that for them to be useful outside of very general, basic contexts, you have to already know the problem you want to solve, and the gist of how to solve it - and then you have to provide that as context to the LLM.

Politely need to disagree with this.

Quick example. I'm wrapping up a project where I built an options back-tester from scratch.

The thing is, before starting this, I had zero experience or knowledge with:

1. Python (knew it was a language, but that's it)

2. Financial microstructure (couldn't have told you what an option was - let alone puts/calls/greeks/etc)

3. Docker, PostgreSQL, git, etc.

4. Cursor/IDE/CLIs

5. SWE principles/practices

This project used or touched every single one of these.

There were countless (majority?) of situations where I didn't know how to define the problem or how to articulate the solution.

It came down to interrogating AI at multiple levels (using multiple models at times).

Why not take a pragmatic approach?

Your options are becoming an FTE or doing some sort of contracting/consulting.

After your experience - and given your message - it sounds like you're leaning towards employment.

So:

1. Focus on the managerial route for a period of X months. Forget about positioning yourself for an IC role, since it's not your preference.*

2. Treat this as a GTM project. You are the product.

I'm willing to bet that - based on your experience - you'd have a hell of a narrative that differentiates you.

*If an IC role is offered to you while you're looking for a managerial role - seriously consider taking it - to hedge.

Do you have any examples of ways you incorporate them into your day-to-day?

This is interesting. I’ve often thought about building a dashboard for my personal life, comparable to the dashboards I build for growth teams.

And then iterating on it over time, and I find what’s valuable and what’s not.

Is this related to getting a job at a YC-backed org, or getting funded?

Looks interesting. Do you have any white papers or backtests to share?

And which instruments does this work with (e.g. stocks, options, futures)?