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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
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.
Relevant means that it boosts job performance. It's a disctinct concept from a desired hiring signal.
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.)
The fallacy of sufficient competition is asserting that observed practices are optimal because you assume without evidence that the market is competitive enough to optimize itself, when the reality is often that people and firms are too finite to reach perfect optimization through competitive processes alone.
We know how SAT translates to IQ, we don't know for math competitions, though I suspect the ceiling is in the 130s just the like the SAT and it's just ethnic chauvinism that leads to unsupported assertions to the contrary.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link