Hedge funds and asset managers are scrambling to poach talent from Silicon Valley and attract computer scientists fresh from college to capitalise on the investment industry’s hottest frontier.

对冲基金和资产管理公司正竞相从硅谷挖人，并吸引刚从大学毕业的计算机科学工作者，以便从投资行业最热门的前沿获利。

So-called quantitative financiers, or quants, have for years come up with innovative, complex ways to analyse and trade on company earnings or economic releases. But thanks to huge gains in computing power and algorithmic research, they are now pushing into “unstructured data” such as internet searches, social media, satellite images, earnings calls or weather patterns to find market signals and overlooked trading opportunities.

多年来，所谓的量化金融家(Quant)想出了各种新颖、复杂的方法来分析公司盈利或经济数据，并就此进行交易。得益于计算能力和算法研究方面取得的巨大进步，他们现在正进军“非结构性数据”，例如互联网搜索、社交媒体、卫星图像、财报电话会议或天气模式，以发现市场信号以及被忽视的交易机会。

To do so they need to deploy innovative, increasingly powerful quasi-artificial intelligence algorithms, ratcheting up demand for computer scientists to do coding that is beyond mathematicians and physicists.

要想做到这点，他们需要部署有创意的、越来越强大的准人工智能算法，因此就需要更多的计算机科学工作者来做数学家和物理学家做不了的编程。

“Traders used to be first-class citizens of the financial world, but that’s not true any more. Technologists are the priority now,” says Jared Butler, a headhunter at Selby Jennings. “It’s easier to hire a computer scientist and teach them the financial world than the other way around.”

“交易员曾是金融界的头等公民，现在不再是这样了。现在技术专家是最重要的。”Selby Jennings的猎头贾里德巴特勒(Jared Butler)表示，“聘用计算机科学工作者然后教他们金融知识，要比反过来更容易。”

Two Sigma, a $28bn hedge fund, and BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, earlier this year snapped up two former Google engineers, underscoring the mounting demand for computer scientists to help gain a digital edge in the cut-throat money management industry.

今年早些时候，资产管理规模达280亿美元的对冲基金Two Sigma以及全球最大资产管理公司贝莱德(BlackRock)从谷歌(Google)那里挖走两名工程师，突显出它们越来越需要计算机科学工作者帮它们在竞争激烈的资产管理行业获得数字化优势。

The problem confronting quant money managers — and banks rushing to revamp and build their technological capabilities — is that the financial industry is less attractive than Silicon Valley’s biggest companies or hottest upstarts, especially in recent years.

量化资产管理公司以及急于改善和建设技术能力的银行面临的问题是，金融业的吸引力如今不如硅谷的大公司或热门的新兴企业，最近几年更是如此。

Many asset managers are, as a result, establishing closer ties with universities so they can tap directly into the pipeline of talent, or setting up contests such as the Man AHL Coder Prize or the WorldQuant Challenge to unearth self-taught programming talent.

因此，很多资产管理公司正与大学建立更紧密的联系、以直接获取人才储备，或者设立竞赛——例如Man AHL Coder Prize或WorldQuant Challenge——来发掘自学成才的编程人才。

Mr Butler at Selby Jennings concedes that attracting top tech talent is a big obstacle for the finance industry, but said the potential salary and intellectual challenges of a career at the more innovative trading firms or hedge funds is still an attraction to many computer scientists.

Selby Jennings的巴特勒承认，吸引最优秀的科技人才是金融业面临的一大难题。但他表示，在较具创新意识的交易机构或对冲基金工作所能拿到的薪资和对智力构成的挑战，仍然吸引着很多计算机科学工作者。