Comments

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  Kid Charlemagne

  5 years ago

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  1Z

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  I worked in financial services on a trading desk for many years.  The basic idea behind the multiple screens is to be able to keep the "gestalt" of the market in continuous view and to monitor conditions better than your competitors.  Only about 1-2 screens are for actually "doing work" such as entering orders or updating risk models.  The rest are all display-only.  
  
  The mental energy required for a "context switch" to change back and forth between applications is actually quite significant -- some studies suggest a 20% to 30% loss of productivity, which can be deadly in a time-sensitive environment.  It's bad enough if you're an architect, but it's way worse when you're a trader.  

  
  

  My job was more long-term thinking than most traders, so I used a 1x5 setup with the monitors mounted vertically (portrait mode).  Left-to-right, my screens were
  
  1) market data -- alerts would highlight the data we needed to see such as price changes outside a given range, etc.  
  
  2) communications -- e-mail to customers and instant messaging to the trading desk.  Apps would flash and stay red when communications came in.  I could see that out of my peripheral vision, and it would cut the time between receiving a response and replying to seconds versus tens of minutes or hours.  

  
  

  3) Writing draft -- notes, a spreadsheet, etc.  The stuff I was writing "from"

  
  

  4) Final writing product.  This was the "main" screen -- what I was trying to accomplish

  
  

  5) Research: browser tabs open with either tasks to do or with research to look stuff up to contribute to the action on screens 3 & 4.  

  
  

  No, the heat from the displays was never a problem, it was mostly the south-facing windows picking up heat that was deadly.  And I have yet to have a melanoma from many years of using that setup.  

  
  

  Also, most traders who worked from home on an occasional basis had complex multi-monitor setups at home already.  So they're not trying to monitor the market from single a 13" laptop screen.  

  
  

  Thought the perspective from someone who's actualy been there might be of interest to someone.  

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  J M C

  5 years ago

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  Z

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  Man these folks love their workplace!........ Very few people in these photos seem to be having a nice time ....
  

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