How is the quant life?

Uber
zxysjeth

Go to company page Uber

zxysjeth
Nov 24, 2020 81 Comments

I have been a faang engineer for 10 years. Wondering if I should try something new. Can someone give a high level view of life as a quant engineer (?) / trader? Not finding good articles on my own.

As an example, here's a summary of my software engineering role: I mostly develop new infra products in a product focused area. My day to day involves leading multiple medium sized projects; collaboration with wide variety of engineers. Pay is decent at 500k+. Work life balance is also pretty good (9-5 for the most part).

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TOP 81 Comments
  • Most front office hires are from:

    1. Straight out of undergrad/ PhD
    2. A well respected industry research lab
    3. From a competing firms quants

    Not an impossible transition, but probably more difficult than you’re imagining
    Nov 24, 2020 11
  • Facebook
    $uckerberg

    Go to company page Facebook

    $uckerberg
    Uber is not faang
    Nov 25, 2020 11
  • Everyone saying it not worth the switch, won’t OP be offered 700k+ if he interviews well?
    Nov 25, 2020 13
    • Yeah, not even Citadel would pay 700k+ for a senior FAANG engineer. For a senior QR role, you don't know enough math/stats. For tech lead, you don't know enough about low latency trading systems (at least that's what would be needed on the citsec side -- asset manager might be different). CitSec certainly hires plenty of FAANG engineers into infra roles but those are not paid >500k since they're a bit more disconnected from pnl.

      I would assume the reverse also holds true for FAANG. Would Uber pay 700k for a senior QR who is very good at math/stats but can't code or LC? Maybe they could grind out enough LCs to pass an interview, but it's far more difficult to grind out enough stats to get hired into a quant role. And the senior engineering roles that pay well are not about LC but focus on domain specific knowledge.
      Nov 25, 2020
    • NVIDIA
      g9h3aa

      Go to company page NVIDIA

      g9h3aa
      Agreed. Being senior is not about the yoe. And if you change field then you basically start over (not quite, but still a big step back).
      Those companies have different roles which require knowledge, and you can't expect max salary when you join.
      Nov 25, 2020
  • Twitter
    JonSnow⚔️

    Go to company page Twitter

    JonSnow⚔️
    Given your background, and your TC, not worth it. You’d be treated as a second-class citizen with respect to folks who have PhDs.
    Also, generally speaking those who implement trading algos come from hard science PhD backgrounds.
    Nov 25, 2020 7
    • Google
      huli lifer

      Go to company page Google

      huli lifer
      Myself and many of my colleagues have math, stats, or physics Ph.D.'s or similar!

      @AgeOfAdz people who are in researchy roles now may not be happy being in a support role. I think the advice is more for e.g. ML SWEs at FANG who are pursuing their own modeling and ideas, that they may not be happy in quant dev. For people working on infra or product infra, quant dev might be fine. The one snag I often hear about is in some companies, the quant devs are looked down on and treated as second class citizens. It's not like that everywhere but that's what people are talking about.
      Nov 25, 2020
    • Google / Eng
      AgeOfAdz

      Go to company page Google Eng

      AgeOfAdz
      Makes sense. IMO we’re quite spoiled at Google being treated like SWEs and RSs generate all the business value while it’s quite the opposite. I think the financial industry is moving towards engineering having more value if you look at firms like HRT, Citadel, Two Sigma.
      Nov 25, 2020
  • Amazon
    QelW38

    Go to company page Amazon

    QelW38
    May I suggest making your own basic algorithms for trading ?
    Nov 25, 2020 9