Hi Blind I am a quant trader in the front office department of a hedge fund. I started my career at Bloomberg in NYC and then quickly moved to hedge funds, specifically Citadel in Chicago and now another boutique hedge fund here. I have a PhD in physics with lots of statistics experience, but I’ve always loved programming, and in my free time I like to study distributed systems, scalability, ... on the job, I mostly due models in C++. Fairly easy from a programming point of view. I would like to make a move to a FAANG on a pure software engineering role, but I’m afraid they wouldn’t be able to pay me enough. I’m 37 and for the past few years I’ve done really well, last year my TC was 3M (base 250k and the rest from bonuses, since that’s how the industry works), and from what I’ve read it’s very difficult to reach those comps in FAANG. I don’t live an overly lavish lifestyle, so I’ve been able to save about 5M, which is pretty much all invested in index funds. Before considering slowing down or retiring I would really love to try a real tech company experience, but would like a similar comp. Any recommendation?
It’s impossible to make that kind of money in tech. Also, interested in knowing what your working hours were if you don’t mind telling.
Wlb is not the best, probably around 60h, but the year end bonus makes it worth it lol.
60h is not the best? Lol
Why not code in your spare time? Tilling the land with peasants is not for a nobleman.
Why . You will not make that kind of green on a pure software engineering job at FAANG
Insane that front-office quants make that much. I left a back-office quant job but that was paying shit so it was easy.
What’s the difference?
Yeah what is?
Why don’t you have money invested in your own hedge fund?
Just partners are allowed to invest. I’m a non-partner standard employee, the partners are 7 people. They make a boat load of money. Last year my boss made ~27M, crazy. The structure is complicated.
Well 3 ain’t bad either :) sounds like a bumper year for your career considering 5M saved
How do I get into a career like you’re in?
My jaw is dropping. Can we achieve this without PhD? What’s the key to your success? Thx
No one will pay that in FAANG, maybe for a senior VP. Stay at your place and retire soon. Why do you need this corporate shit for 10% of the pay?
But you work for New?
What do you mean? Our hedge fund here in Chicago is pretty small. It’s all ex citadel senior folks who branched out to create a boutique private fund where they trade for themselves rather than institutional clients, we’re about 60 people, so I’m assuming it is not recognized by Blind?
Just was referring to your company label. Idk what New is but it looked like a marketing company from cursory googling.