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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1799 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is it worth trying to get into quantitative finance? My background is a CS degree from an okay university, which I went to for financial reasons (scholarship) even though I was accepted to Stanford. I just think my current JavaScript job isn't utilizing my intelligence fully and it's hurting my income, plus it's not as robust against AI as I would like. I currently use Codex extremely heavily and recently I almost never have to write code by hand, I just prompt. I've self-taught statistical theory to the master's level and I'm currently self-studying measure theory and stochastic calculus for quantitative finance. However, I've been told by one insider that many firms only want to hire people who did the Putnam or USAMO which I am too late for; never did these because I had no interest, although I think I would have done okay enough to get hired if I had studied as much as the median good performer. Should I keep aiming for quantitative finance or try to go all-in on coding instead?

plus it's not as robust against AI as I would like

Outside of "surely governments would intervene" or "the world is ruled by an elite cabal that intends to feed 90% of the population into an AI wood chipper and I think finance is in that 10%", what is your rationale for why being a quant is safer than being a programmer?

I'm genuinely asking here. From where I'm standing it seems like they're in similar ecological niches.

Quant supposedly requires mathematical ability; LLMs currently suck at this but are good at JS. I think that's because math is higher on the intelligence hierarchy. AI will automate the most accessible laptop jobs first, because they have the simplest logic and the biggest training sets.

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