i'm just amazed by this quant thing. let's say if you are an accountant or a lawyer, you help the society by trying to solve the basic human problem of selfishness(though it can't be solve completely) by maintaining trust. if you are a civil engineer, you help the society by building tall buildings which provide more space(30, 40 storeys as oppose to 1 storey) for use. if you are a mechanical engineer, you probably can help the society by building trains which save time. but what does quant do that deserve a high pay? what good does it do to society?
If you want to be the model citizen, go and be a model citizen. If having some sort of "yay I'm a helper to society!" feeling is worth the loss of all of those potential dollars that you can reinvest in your own standard of living and building your own family in financial security, so be it. In fact, please do. Anyone that can be deterred from adding to the bazillions of people wanting to work in finance improves the chances of anyone that actually has a dream staked out there.
The way I see it is that Wall Street is a soulless place. You leave your soul, pick up your briefcase, and go to work. You return from work, put down your briefcase, and take your soul back.
In my opinion, I don't care how uncaring I have to be in my decisions, if I'm ever faced with a large financial decision that will always screw over some group of people.
Money isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another.
I'd rather be the perception that it's transferred to, rather than from. I don't care how well the guy next to me does. He's not me. And yes, I realize I'm the guy next to me for every other guy. It doesn't matter. Those that have the talent and the passion and the desire will reap the rewards, or so I hope in my case.
Now as an aside to foreign outsourcing, here's my stance.
Remember that this is only my opinion drawn from my own experiences.
Basically, my thoughts can be summed up in the following way: mortgaging the future by outsourcing all labor and letting in massive amounts of foreign students completely screws over the American populace that have paid their tax dollars to Uncle Sam and command regular American salaries. If you wish to work in America, you should be a citizen with strong enough English to teach a class. Why does America have to provide the opportunity for everyone in the world at the cost of its own citizens?
As for how quants aid society--in order for quants to do well, their employers have to do well. In order for their employers (read: investment banks) to do well, their clients have to do well. When these end-clients do well, you get better managed retirement/pension funds, or more people with more money to play with (read: SPEND, thereby boosting CONSUMPTION, which is the main driving force of our GDP), and thereby GDP growth and so on.
Yes, it's trickle-down economics in some sense. But if people are making more money and there is prosperity, everyone wins. Anyone that can do financial optimization, therefore, goes a long way into shortening or preventing recessions, and also goes a long way into prolonging times of prosperity.
And that IMO is no less of a help to society than any other profession.