Goldman Sachs, Jane Street, hiring purple minded programmers
Having exhausted kinetic expressions (agile) and naturalistic expressions (waterfall, cloud) technology vernacular has shifted to pigmentation instead. The new desired skillset involves being "purple." Goldman Sachs and Jane Street both want purple people. It's just that Goldman Sachs doesn't know it yet.
Jane Street recently advertised for a “purple-minded offensive security engineer” for its London team.
It's not what it sounds.
Rishipal Singh at recruitment firm Nicoll Curtin said purple minded is used to describe an approach. "The term purple people has been used in the technology sector as an identification that an individual poses both business (blue) and technical (red) skills." This makes people "technofunctional," says Singh. Confusingly, Singh says that in cyber-security being purple also means being able to understand both sides: "defensive (blue) and offensive (red). “
Goldman Sachs isn't advertising for purple minded engineers yet, but that time may come soon. The Wall Street Journal reports that Marco Argenti, the firm's CIO, wants developers more engaged with the business from the start of projects and to understand the "why" and the "business purpose behind their work." Speaking yesterday, Argenti said GS engineers need to feel like they're in the front office rather than the back office and that this will help "them to solve problems." Being purple would surely be a plus.
Purple-mindedness won't replace engineering aptitude as the key skill required, though. Most clients are interested in candidates with "programming skills and fundamentals to produce clean code as the main priority,” said Singh. Being colourful is an afterthought.
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