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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1833 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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Unfortunately your competitors are in the top 1% at better schools and also did grad school or a specialized masters degree in the field. You can argue that it's unnecessary credentialism, but they are spoiled for choice when the salaries are high and supply vastly outstrips demand. If this is something you are genuinely interested in and you have the intellectual horsepower, why not go back and do grad school? Do a bit of research and find a research group with a track record of placing grad students at quant firms if they don't end up going the academic route. It's that or find some other way to distinguish yourself from the crowd.

I need money to start a family and grad school isn't relevant to the job. I really don't believe my competitors are top 1% among HYPSM people on a valid measure. I think a competent firm would interview me based on my credential and my test scores and claimed knowledge. If they don't, they're probably some mixture of incompetent (they're bad at interpreting signals: they don't know what high test scores mean, and overweight brand name, which is really bad from a psychometric POV) or, to be honest, racist. Is it a coincidence these firms seem to value stereotypically Asian signals? Why don't they have killer quant firms in China if math competitions are such a good predictor of performance? Is it any different than only recruiting smart men who were pretty good at rugby or lacrosse? Why don't they do that instead? I mean, it certainly signals something.

Look having been in your shoes of sparkling-good-but-not-elite academic accomplishment, being a mildly autistic egotistical white guy getting moderately discriminated against in hiring and academic admissions. You don't have to be a quant to make money, always opportunities surfacing and trying to wedge yourself into the elite end of the System(TM) is not necessarily going to be the best fit.

Yes, it's galling that your SBFs or whatever occasionally get grabbed off the pile for having the exact right references and autism vibes to align with the hiring team, but that's life. Poke around stuff that interests you and there'll probably be a couple million dollars lying around somewhere.

grad school isn't relevant to the job

It is when the employers you want to work for say it is. You are perfectly welcome to try convincing them that you are worth their time without having a graduate degree (though, pro tip: saying you are in the top 1% of brainpower out there is just going to make you come off as an arrogant jerk, so drop that line). Other people here are trying to give you guidance as to how realistically you are likely to succeed, but if you choose to ignore that and do your own thing nobody will stop you.

pro tip: saying you are in the top 1% of brainpower out there is just going to make you come off as an arrogant jerk, so drop that line

Either that or they'll say "well actually we are kind of after the upper .01%, sorry" -- probably a bit of both actually!

Relevant means that it boosts job performance. It's a disctinct concept from a desired hiring signal.

saying you are in the top 1% of brainpower out there is just going to make you come off as an arrogant jerk, so drop that line).

I don't have to say it directly if they're smart enough to understand test results. I'm beginning to think this whole quant thing is a DEI program for foreign swots, the way actual intelligence is belittled in exchange for inferior signals that are easier for foreign swots to get and game.

Cool, the answer to that is the usual one: if your competitors are leaving money on the ground by acting suboptimally, prove them wrong by outperforming them. Polymarket and several cryptocurrency trading platforms have open APIs, you can go and write code to fleece the foreign swots with your superior ability right away if HFT is your thing.

(Honestly, though, to me it just sounds like you farmed good scores on easy tests and are very good at finding excuses for avoiding the hard ones that satisfy yourself.)

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