Why FAANG engineers transition to fintech easier than bankers
Funding might be sparse compared to last year but there are still exciting things happening in the fintech space. Plenty of bankers want to be a part of it, but they might be surprised to find that another industry is a better cultural fit: big tech.
A man who knows the struggle of the transition is Huy Nguyen Trieu; a former Citi MD who left to co-found the Oxford fintech program and the Centre for Finance Technology and Entrepeneurship. He says that the "mindset is totally different" in fintech and that “tech companies most resemble the fintech mindset.”
The problem is that people from banks are used to top-down organizational structures. Nguyen Trieu says they "will be waiting for instructions when none are coming.”
Conversely, people with both FAANG and fintech backgrounds are more self-starting. Nguyen Trieu says "You need to be adaptable, resilient, capable of making decisions with limited information."
"It’s harder for people from traditional finance because they assume working in fintech is the same when that’s not the case." says Nguyen Trieu, "They underestimate the gap in terms of culture.”
That doesn't make it a case of plug-and-play for employees moving between FAANG and fintech, though. Although Nguyen Trieu says that companies like Uber and Revolut "have the same ways of working", he admits they "require different industry knowledge."
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