How to Get a Quant Job in Finance • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#31

Post by radikalus » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:36 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #24

Having hired a lot of quants and programmers in finance I can probably give a bit of background on what to expect: Get this book, read it and understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Heard-Street-Quantitative-Questions-In... Quants tend to be in 1 of 3 categories: 1) pricing quants, you work for a bank or investment house like Goldamn. You know stochastic calculus very well, you know finite differencing like the back of…

Pay is reasonably divided based on those 4 category breakdowns as well.

1) High guaranteed, little upside 2) Low guaranteed, high upside 3) Moderate guaranteed, little upside, better QoL? 4) Low, none..., excellent QoL

I'm not sure how I'd feel discussing kernels of an SVM with someone -- to me, that feels pedantic. I generally feel that the fundamental driver to 'models no longer working' is evolving covariance dynamics (changing linkages) -- this has very little to the mechanisms of most ML tools.

Perhaps the metaphor I'm looking for is that I wouldn't expect a carpenter to be able to build and explain the components of a power drill to use it to help my house.

QuantFi is a huge discipline -- you build teams with hopefully a mixed bag of skills. On the trading side, I'd rather have someone with experience w.r.t to the market + products than math-jutsu any day.

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#32

Post by brotoss » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:38 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #24

Having hired a lot of quants and programmers in finance I can probably give a bit of background on what to expect: Get this book, read it and understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Heard-Street-Quantitative-Questions-In... Quants tend to be in 1 of 3 categories: 1) pricing quants, you work for a bank or investment house like Goldamn. You know stochastic calculus very well, you know finite differencing like the back of…

Can you do 2 or 3 without a CompSci/Math degree?

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#33

Post by Igglyboo » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:40 PM UTC

radikalus wrote: post #31

chollida1 wrote: post #24

Having hired a lot of quants and programmers in finance I can probably give a bit of background on what to expect: Get this book, read it and understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Heard-Street-Quantitative-Questions-In... Quants tend to be in 1 of 3 categories: 1) pricing quants, you work for a bank or investment house like Goldamn. You know stochastic calculus very well, you know finite differencing like the back of…

Pay is reasonably divided based on those 4 category breakdowns as well. 1) High guaranteed, little upside 2) Low guaranteed, high upside 3) Moderate guaranteed, little upside, better QoL? 4) Low, none..., excellent QoL I'm not sure how I'd feel discussing kernels of an SVM with someone -- to me, that feels pedantic. I generally feel that the fundamental driver to 'models no longer working' is evolving covariance dyna…

How high is high and how low is low? I'd assume even the lowest payed quants are making high 5 or low 6 figures at a bank.

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#34

Post by Dalkanon » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #24

Having hired a lot of quants and programmers in finance I can probably give a bit of background on what to expect: Get this book, read it and understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Heard-Street-Quantitative-Questions-In... Quants tend to be in 1 of 3 categories: 1) pricing quants, you work for a bank or investment house like Goldamn. You know stochastic calculus very well, you know finite differencing like the back of…

How would one go about getting a job as a #3 with an MS in economics but no practical finance experience? I can code reasonably well, know stats reasonably well, and know calculus reasonably well, but could easily bone up on all 3 in about 2-3 months, enough so to confidently pass the interview process. But how would I get an interview without any finance connections?

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#35

Post by radikalus » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

Igglyboo wrote: post #33

radikalus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay is reasonably divided based on those 4 category breakdowns as well. 1) High guaranteed, little upside 2) Low guaranteed, high upside 3) Moderate guaranteed, little upside, better QoL? 4) Low, none..., excellent QoL I'm not sure how I'd feel discussing kernels of an SVM with someone -- to me, that feels pedantic. I generally feel that the fundamental driver to 'models no longer working' is evolving covariance dyna…

How high is high and how low is low? I'd assume even the lowest payed quants are making high 5 or low 6 figures at a bank.

All relative and the curve is certainly right tailed.

There are trader/quants who basically work for free for just upside at lots of prop shops + HFs. There's actually deals WORSE than that where people sacrifice a lot for upside participation in their strategy.

Trading at a bank is a mixed objective problem generally -- much of what you do is NOT about making $ so understanding how and why people make what they make is not trivial.

I can't imagine a world where any of these wouldn't be at least low 6 figure roles -- the banks/HFs/prop-shops have to pay to compete with the Googles/Facebooks of the world.

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#36

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:56 PM UTC

Dalkanon wrote: post #34

chollida1 wrote: post #24

Having hired a lot of quants and programmers in finance I can probably give a bit of background on what to expect: Get this book, read it and understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Heard-Street-Quantitative-Questions-In... Quants tend to be in 1 of 3 categories: 1) pricing quants, you work for a bank or investment house like Goldamn. You know stochastic calculus very well, you know finite differencing like the back of…

How would one go about getting a job as a #3 with an MS in economics but no practical finance experience? I can code reasonably well, know stats reasonably well, and know calculus reasonably well, but could easily bone up on all 3 in about 2-3 months, enough so to confidently pass the interview process. But how would I get an interview without any finance connections?

People act like finance is some secret inner sanctum, but it isn't. Finance companies/hedge funds advertise on job boards like any other company. They also often use very aggressive recruiters so finding the recruiting company du jour in your area and talking to them can help.

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#37

Post by radikalus » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:57 PM UTC

Dalkanon wrote: post #34

chollida1 wrote: post #24

Having hired a lot of quants and programmers in finance I can probably give a bit of background on what to expect: Get this book, read it and understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Heard-Street-Quantitative-Questions-In... Quants tend to be in 1 of 3 categories: 1) pricing quants, you work for a bank or investment house like Goldamn. You know stochastic calculus very well, you know finite differencing like the back of…

How would one go about getting a job as a #3 with an MS in economics but no practical finance experience? I can code reasonably well, know stats reasonably well, and know calculus reasonably well, but could easily bone up on all 3 in about 2-3 months, enough so to confidently pass the interview process. But how would I get an interview without any finance connections?

Lots of options:

One-hops (1-2 year stint then transition out)

1. Programming gig at finance facing software shop 2. Programming gig at exchange

No-hops

1. Work on popular open source framework in heavy use (ZeroMQ, QuickFix, pandas, sympy, sklearn, etc) 2. Find headhunter/recruiting agency 3. Attend local finance oriented meetups and schmooze

I wouldn't trivialize the hiring process -- all of these roles are pretty competitive.

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#38

Post by dreamweapon » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:58 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #24

Having hired a lot of quants and programmers in finance I can probably give a bit of background on what to expect: Get this book, read it and understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Heard-Street-Quantitative-Questions-In... Quants tend to be in 1 of 3 categories: 1) pricing quants, you work for a bank or investment house like Goldamn. You know stochastic calculus very well, you know finite differencing like the back of…

Someone asked about brain teasers. They do get asked, you have to deal with it, whining in an interview that this type of question gives no useful hiring indicator won't get you hired.

Or to put it another way: if your hiring culture enshrines shallow, game-show style intellectualism along with such a condescending, "just suck it up" attitude towards candidates... then don't whine that you can't find decent programmers.

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#39

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 2:58 PM UTC

brotoss wrote: post #32

chollida1 wrote: post #24

Having hired a lot of quants and programmers in finance I can probably give a bit of background on what to expect: Get this book, read it and understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Heard-Street-Quantitative-Questions-In... Quants tend to be in 1 of 3 categories: 1) pricing quants, you work for a bank or investment house like Goldamn. You know stochastic calculus very well, you know finite differencing like the back of…

Can you do 2 or 3 without a CompSci/Math degree?

Most quants do NOT have Comp Sci degrees. There is a lot of Math degrees in teh field but physics, signals processing, etc are also common.

Re: How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

#40

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 3:02 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #11

"Hirers tend to be looking for strong programming and data management skills as much as mathematical ability" This cannot be over emphasized. You cannot just have an aptitude for math/statistics/probability. You will need to be able to write high performance production quality code.

Now admittedly this is sampling bias, but I have never seen code written by a quant that could be put into production without being reworked by a software professional.

The skill sets are in some way exclusive of each other. Quants do lots of exploratory work. This involves tons of one-of experiments and throwing away things that don't work. They often frequently don't have the operational understanding of the way the systems they interact operate. Further, making stuff fast on a computer is a very, very particular skill. People that could do all of that are extremely rare (such that I've never met one).