Articles in this series:
- Endlessly Curious and Maximally Effective: Engineering Education at Two Sigma
- Building for the Future: Architecture Month at Two Sigma
- Gyms for the Mind: Two Sigma’s Hacker Labs
- From Epsilon to Omega: Making Small Strides Toward Important Goals
- Curiosity at Two Sigma: “Poking and Prying with a Purpose”
- Series: Career Pathways for Software Engineers
As technology continues to evolve at a dizzying pace, continuously learning new skills is essential for software engineers’ success over the long term. The same concept also applies to an engineering organization–especially one like Two Sigma’s, which relies on a scientific mindset and deep expertise across many subfields to stay at the cutting edge.
That’s a key reason why Two Sigma places a heavy emphasis on learning, and on having fun while doing it. We like to say that we’re “hypercurious,” meaning that we tend to be unusually driven to question and explore. This series highlights a few of the ways the company supports the ongoing growth and development of its engineers, helping them to cultivate their ability to think about hard problems in novel ways and apply fresh approaches to solving them.
Getting schooled
The first article in this series, Endlessly Curious and Maximally Effective: Engineering Education at Two Sigma, provides a brief overview on our extensive Engineering Education program: why we offer it, what kinds of classes we offer, and how Two Sigma engineers at any stage of their careers can expect to benefit from these formal learning resources.
While individual classes and self-guided learning can be immensely valuable, sometimes an organization-wide deep dive on a particular area is called for. This focused approach is the motivation driving Two Sigma’s Architecture Month series of talks, workshops, and other events. In Building for the Future: Architecture Month at Two Sigma, we outline how the program helps the company’s software engineers move beyond writing algorithms to thinking about designing systems.
We’ve found that when you give people leeway to do something creative, a lot of innovation can result—and some of that finds its way back into our ‘day jobs.’
Learning by tinkering
The next article poses the questions, “What does connecting a 1930s-era teletype machine to the internet have to do with financial services? Or building a NASCAR simulator have to do with modeling or machine learning?”
The answers to these questions can be found in Two Sigma’s makerspaces, as we outline in Gyms for the Mind: Two Sigma’s Hacker Labs. The article takes readers on a trip into these unique exploratory laboratories in our New York and Houston offices, where employees make things, break things, try out new ideas, and geek out together. Why do we have them? Senior engineer Mark Roth explains the purpose succinctly: “We’ve found that when you give people leeway to do something creative, a lot of innovation can result—and some of that finds its way back into our ‘day jobs.’”
Nurturing our hypercuriosity
While Two Sigma’s Engineering Education programs are a cornerstone of our efforts to support their long-term growth and development, critical knowledge also propagates through the organization in less structured ways. Two Sigma’s culture is one of the most important of these conduits.
From Epsilon to Omega: Making Small Strides Toward Important Goals offers an example of how this process can play out, and what happens when it does. In it, Two Sigma’s Chief Innovation Officer explains how we use two concepts—Epsilon and Omega—to define clear strategic objectives and design thoughtful pathways to reach them.
Finally, Curiosity at Two Sigma: “Poking and Prying with a Purpose” zooms in on the essential role curiosity plays in our jobs–and our lives beyond the workday. Here, a group of Two Sigma colleagues of various seniority levels share how they think about curiosity in their daily lives: how it applies to their work, how to nurture it, and what they’ve been ruminating about lately.
Come for the career perspectives; stay for the disco balls.
Summing up
Two Sigma strongly believes in the value of continuous learning, which is why it invests considerable time and effort into actively supporting the growth and development of our engineers. Interested in learning more about engineering careers at Two Sigma?
- Check out our series Career Pathways for Software Engineers.
- Visit our Careers page to learn more about working at Two Sigma, find open roles, and more.
