Quant shop hierarchy and Lifestyle
Looking for insight into what life is like in a quant shop, where the real money is and what the average WLB is like. I've been interested in quant trading since college where I got my BS in CS. I wasn't a great student, but thought if I could prove myself a better than average programmer I could hop into a quant dev role and make serious cash. Like > $500k TC. Now that I'm FAANG level and progressing the way I expected, it's beginning to seem like what I just described is wishful thinking at best and straight up delusional at worst. So how does it work? Where's the money in software trading? Can I break into the really high comp roles on my current path? Do they even exist from a purely dev standpoint? Maybe if you manage a team of devs that implement a strategy, it's worth some of the carry? I have 0 visibility into this so I wanna hear all the details. Another important thing I want to consider is the WLB compared to comp. I'd do jumping jacks holding lit candles for 10 hours a day if I could pull a seven figure comp year. But is the chance to make those kinds of figures worth taking the opportunity cost of lost comp to go back to school? If quant devs make like 15% more and work 50% more hours, maybe it's better in my head. #quant #hft
You can break into the Quant Trading industry. Some things to note: - you said you weren't a great student, if your GPA is less than a 3.5 you won't be able to go to Citadel right now, but you could after getting experience at another quant trading firm - not sure what your skillset is, but coming out of FAANG the people that have the best luck transitioning are people who are good with C++ (even if that is just from leetcode and not professional experience) - massive comp packages definitely exist from a purely dev standpoint and will continue to be a need, we'll see more of it as funds become more systematic - you could join a lesser-known fund or a multi strat as long as you're working on a core quant tech, execution, or pod-based PM team to get exposure. You can expect somewhere between $300-$450k for these types of firms in your first year. - after you put time in there, you can leverage your industry experience to go to tier 1 firms, then you'll start even higher comp
Thank you for this response, it is loaded with good facts and information. What are some of those lesser known firms? Is there a specific position/level you would expect someone with my experience to apply for? I'm trying to really narrow down on the part of the process I could be most effective quickly. Bg is mostly systems engineering. I'd be a cloud solutions architect if I felt like taking the time to get the cert. I've never done anything lower level than Java but I've definitely worked with complicated systems of all kinds both on and off the cloud.
Curious here as well