I’m a few years (a “senior software engineer”) into my career as a full stack software engineer in San Francisco. I’m getting bored of full stack web dev and thinking about transitioning to the finance world as a quant – I want something new where I could learn a lot and I’ve been interested in the finance world for several years now. Some questions: - how does the job differ from software engineering? - how does quant work life balance compare? - how does work culture compare? - how does pay compare? - what career tracks exist at these different firms? what progression options exist for ICs? - today, I don’t have friends or contacts at finance firms. Will a strong tech resume carry me through to in-person interviews? Or should I start doing some networking?
Did you study math or stats or win competitions? If not it's going to be a slow crawl, you need to first go to some finance firm and work on only tangentially related stuff, then try to build knowledge to laterally move closer to quant work. Or you can be a core dev at an HFT if your C++ is really good. Pay is only good if you're a manager or you work at an elite shop. Work life balance is fine, worst case is Citadel or Jump Trading where you pull 60+ hour weeks. The money is very good at those places. Work is much more mathematical than most stuff in Silicon Valley which is a huge draw if you like math.
I can’t see software eng becoming quant. Maybe trading app dev or something like that. You don’t know any math or stats, useless, and this stuff can’t be learned in 20s.
Get a swe job at a hedge fund and then move departments. Much easier than getting a hedge fund quant job through the front door.
As a SWE turned Quant at the biggest investment firm, you can do it. It’s a very strong background and combined with statistics, machine learning and portfolio theory is very doable. Take a look at the Quantopian program as it will give you all the basics you need. Hours are probably 60-70 hours a week. Not as bad as most Wall Street jobs but definitely hardcore. The challenge in the SF Bay Area is that tech comp is very competitive. Risk adjusted, tech comp is probably more.
could you share your experience of transitioning? how long it took you to become Quant and what is your TC?
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