Career transition from Software Programmer to Quantitative Analyst

[pgh]

I am in the Computer Security industry. I have a Bachelors in Electronics and Masters in CS. I have around 6 years of work experience as a Software Programmer. I am considering a career in Finance. I am more interested in the Investment Management and Risk Management/Risk Analyst roles. I am contemplating between an MBA in finance and Masters in Finance/Financial Engineering/Quantitative finance


Can anyone please suggest which one would be more close to my career interests?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Yike Lu]

MFE is much different than MF. Also MFE is what you should do.

 

[pgh]

Thanks, Yike. May I know what are the differences between MF and MFE. I have been reading a few article about this. Most of them say that they are just named differently. Is the any difference between Masters in Finance vs Masters in Quantiative/Compuational finance too?

 

[New Trader]

Masters in Finance is like CFA, more geared to ER, or M&A. It wouldn't equip to be a quant.

 

[Liam]

Masters in Finance is like CFA, more geared to ER, or M&A. It wouldn't equip to be a quant.

Yep - modeling in MBA is vastly, vastly different from MFE quant finance, not really as mathematically rewarding.

But it's more than just a technical difference - many MBA modelers are required to be front office/client facing, which is where software engineers are rarely suited and ultimately would fail. Even when not client facing the politics is far more severe than for a middle office quant. Maybe the OP is really better suited to that kind of modelling rather than being a quant, but he/she would be in that case looking at equity analyst or loans based roles and not wasting time on forums like this - just a thought.

 

[Sailor Sam]

Yep - modeling in MBA is vastly, vastly different from MFE quant finance, not really as mathematically rewarding.

But it's more than just a technical difference - many MBA modelers are required to be front office/client facing, which is where software engineers are rarely suited and ultimately would fail. Even when not client facing the politics is far more severe than for a middle office quant. Maybe the OP is really better suited to that kind of modelling rather than being a quant, but he/she would be in that case looking at equity analyst or loans based roles and not wasting time on forums like this - just a thought.

Can you give a description and examples of the differences between a client-facing modeling jobs vs the behind-the-scenes kind of guys? I never knew modeling could be FO

 

[Liam]

Can you give a description and examples of the differences between a client-facing modeling jobs vs the behind-the-scenes kind of guys? I never knew modeling could be FO

Financial modelling of loans would be FO - basically you'd create a Base Case model which is presented to investors which shows how to fund a project. The financial products are not complicated and you don't need stochastic modelling to understand it.

On the quant side you would have FO roles where you'd be asked for on the spot solutions to quickly look at market trends and potential arbitrages etc, while MO would be more about building or maintaining pricers or RM tools.