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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?
For top end quant stuff, you kind of need the pedigree. But the backdoor option is still good. It may take some networking, but there are a lot of "support" roles for the quants themselves that are still highly technical. In my own lived experience I saw a lot of large scale infrastructure dudes get recruited by quant firms to help manage clusters that included specialty hardware (think high throughput I/O and memory caches). They weren't making crazy bonuses s like the quant strategists / implementers, but they were competitive with FAANG peers at cash plus level.
Calling your route (I assume) "pedigree" and my route "backdoor" triggers me, but thanks for the comment nonetheless. Here's why. The dictionary doesn't even reflect the new definition I see emerging online. It says:
the record of descent of an animal, showing it to be pure-bred. "they are looking for animals with pedigrees"
a pure-bred animal.
the recorded ancestry or lineage of a person or family. "with a pedigree equal to many of the gentry"
So you're saying you're superior to me by blood, essentially. And yes, I know it's a metaphor, but let's be real, those that call math competition "pedigree" are almost all a different race than I, so it smacks of racial supremacy. What's even funnier is that I'm a Legacy American and it's racial supremacy for a different race that just got here. I have responded before that I have the actual pedigree, only to be told I can't prove it because all of my signals have been ruined by, well, people with superior pedigree.
Anyway, sorry for the TMI. I just figured I'd preempt other pedigree comments, since I've seen it all over X and already had this opinion formed.
Also I've chatted with self-declared people with "pedigree" that are less qualified for the job than me, but they're in the field. Yes they have a Putnam score at MIT, but I seem at least as intelligent and I know more of the math relevant to the topic than them. So in an efficient market, there would be a job for me.
Perhaps the less triggering way to describe it would be "traditional" and "non-traditional". I know a couple people in the field who got in by doing a math PhD, deciding academia wasn't for them, and then getting referred by their advisor. That or specific quant finance programs seem to be the traditional pipeline for the industry. You aren't going to get your foot in the door without either that background, someone willing to vouch for you, or specific skills they need that aren't provided by their existing hiring pipeline (eg. hardware, high-performance computing, security, etc). The signal to noise ratio would just be too low if they interviewed anyone with a CS degree.
It's the same issue as with FAANG companies - sure, there are brilliant students who go to average CS colleges, but for them it's not worth the effort of interviewing dozens of duds to find an occasional hidden gem when sifting through applications for junior positions.
I don't just have a CS degree, I had a top 1% GPA which should already put my educational achievement on par with many HYPSM students. I also have several 99th percentile test scores, which even further separates me from the median at my university and puts me on par with HYPSM students.
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.
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