Marketside Chats #4: Costs of replicating an S&P 500 portfolio
What are stock indexes? (For a stock index, this is the correct plural – not “indices”.) Wikipedia says it is “a method of measuring the value of a section of the stock market”. An index includes stocks that are similar in some meaningful way. Examples: all technology stocks, the biggest 100 stocks trading at the… Read more
Career Planning for New Grad and Young Engineers
Over the past 15 years I have hired hundreds of software engineers, many of whom were either interns or young people starting out in their career. I believe a key to this success is my genuine desire to help grow the careers of my recruits. If your teams have a great experience then word gets… Read more
Marketside chats #3: More options for non-dummies
This article will: show you how to convert stock volatilities to something intuitive explain in basic terms the fancy concept of convexity Please read Marketside chats #2: Options for non-dummies first for some of the other terminology. Implied volatility (IV, a.k.a. vol) The implied volatility of a stock (or index) is the standard deviation of its expected future… Read more
Configuration… Hardcode it!
If you’ve read other Wealthfront engineering blog posts (Continuous Deployment: API Compatibility Verification, Move cash faster, Pushing a Feature On My First Day), you’re aware that continous integration and deployment forms the core of our development process. Many consequences of a continuous integration and deployment process such as ours are obvious – high confidence test… Read more
How To Find a Great Engineering Culture
Earlier this year I decided to return to startups after five amazing years at LinkedIn. Finding a company with an engineering-driven culture was one of my highest priorities. My challenge was developing a framework to determine if a prospective employer had what I was looking for. Over the years I have observed that successful company… Read more
DevOps at Wealthfront
A DevOps engineer starting a new position fully expects to be handed over keys to a custom model helicopter (aka company’s infrastructure) and encouraged to take a daring flight on day one. No two helicopters are quite the same, and flying a different model is not quite as intuitive as riding a new custom bike…. Read more