Ready to Commit? The Advantages of Staying at a Company for the Long Haul.

While job-hopping often stems from employees searching for more competitive pay and benefits that can be recognized immediately, there are many advantages to tech employees committing to a company long-term.

Just ask Marquis Wong.

Wong, a software engineer, has been at IMC Trading for a decade, and during his tenure, he has seen plenty of people in the industry leave good jobs behind. And with them goes the institutional knowledge they gained along the way, whether it be the business processes, tools, or software that their previous employer used, which is not necessarily transferable to their new company.

Wong, on the other hand? He has an in-depth knowledge of several software systems at IMC Trading, along with how the company operates generally, and that comes with perks that can’t be quantified, like career development and influence.

“Over time, I’ve earned institutional trust. So I feel comfortable telling our recruitment team that I’d like to redesign the entire interview process, or have a say with traders on why they should try a new user interface,” Wong said.

Staying at a company for 10 years has also given him more confidence to access senior leaders. 

“I believe that a new hire could absolutely walk up to the managing director or head of technology’s desk with an idea or a challenge, and they’d take them seriously,” Wong said. “However, it’s definitely a little less intimidating for me to do that since I’ve been working with them for so long.”

Are you finally ready to commit? Built In Chicago sat down with Wong to learn more about the advantages of staying at a company long-term.

What made you stick around at IMC Trading for so long?

I like IMC! There are a few reasons why people change jobs. One is that they don’t get along with their co-workers or managers. Two is that they are bored and feel like they aren’t growing or learning. Three is that they think they can get better compensation elsewhere. For me, I’ve always felt that my co-workers are one of the best parts about IMC. I’m surrounded by intelligent and dependable people, who I enjoy spending time with. In addition, I’ve always been given lots of opportunities to grow and work on different things, so there’s no concern about being bored or stagnating. And of course, it’s a bonus that the pay and benefits remain competitive.

I’ve always been given lots of opportunities to grow and work on different things, so there’s no concern about being bored or stagnating.’’

What are some of the highlights of your 10 years with IMC?

I played a hand in convincing our traders to try a completely new user interface. I am also very proud of the technical final round interview redesign I spearheaded a few years ago. Since we made this change, we’ve gotten great feedback from the candidates about how enjoyable and interesting the problem is. Not to mention the interviewing team has much more confidence in whether or not to extend offers. 

These are great examples of things that are easier if you’ve been with a company for a long time. Neither of these projects was part of my core skill set, or what I was originally asked to work on. Still, I was able to take advantage of my breadth of experience to recognize and execute on these tangentially related improvements. 

I heard you’ve had overseas assignments. Tell me more.

I’ve been on four different overseas assignments — two in Sydney and two in Amsterdam, each time for one-to-three months. My overseas trips have a primary business reason. Either I have specific expertise that the other office doesn’t have, so I go over there and help out by sharing my knowledge. Or, there’s particular expertise that another office has that our office doesn’t. So, I go over there to learn as much as possible and bring that information back to Chicago. Every time, it feels like we get a lot of value in just being in another office and working closely with our colleagues on a different continent and time zone.

I understand that you foster and mentor new talent at IMC. How so?

At IMC, all senior engineers do a lot of informal mentoring through code reviews and knowledge-sharing about existing code. We also tap experienced folks to do presentations to trainees about tools and internal systems. For example, I created an interactive presentation and demo on Git usage a few years back that still gets used for every training class. We also do more formal mentoring of new hires, where each trainee is assigned a mentor on their team who is their first point of contact for questions, along with weekly one-on-one catch-ups. During the pandemic, when we were all working from home, I also added a couple of pair-programming sessions to the trainees program every week to ensure that we had plenty of facetime to ask questions or go through code as necessary.

At IMC, all senior engineers do a lot of informal mentoring through code reviews and knowledge-sharing about existing code.’’