Job Prospects with ~50 hour work weeks - Am I crazy?

[Chuck]

Do 40-50 hour work weeks exist in the Quant world?

I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I took the GMAT (770) and am considering Berkeley's MFE program and MIT's LGO MBA program. I know, I know, they're completely different programs (the crossroads). I very much like thinking about big picture problems and would enjoy business school, though I realize my strengths are more quantitative in nature.

I have a master's in applied math, and have been a software developer in the entertainment space for the past three years. For the first two years I pretty much worked 60 hour weeks, with 4 months of 80-100 hour weeks. Lately I've been about to cut it down to 40-50 which has been great for my personal life. I should be happy, but as cool as it is working on a retail product I'm just not challenged at work.

Any takers on the 40-50 hour job question, and are there salary trajectory numbers out there for these roles?

Thanks everyone,

Chuck

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Mid/back office roles?
Risk management roles?
70-100K inc bonus.
40-50 h/w

Does it sound like what you are ok with? Then again, you may ask yourself whether you are challenged enough a few years down the road.

Just my experience but challenge and 40 hours/work are not on the same sentence, not at this stage of your career.

 

[GoIllini]

Mid/back office roles?
Risk management roles?
70-100K inc bonus.
40-50 h/w

Does it sound like what you are ok with? Then again, you may ask yourself whether you are challenged enough a few years down the road.

Just my experience but challenge and 40 hours/work are not on the same sentence, not at this stage of your career.

There's plenty of front-officey roles for 40-50 hour/week quants, but they're not going to be on the trading floor. Most of them will be in research or institutional consulting. For example, institutions will come and ask the bank lots of what-if questions about their portfolios, and most banks, including mine, will have a team of quants that assesses what would happen.

It is intellectually stimulating, and IMHO, underrated relative to the treatment the trading floor gets by many students.

 

[chaoticrambler]

There's plenty of front-officey roles for 40-50 hour/week quants, but they're not going to be on the trading floor. Most of them will be in research or institutional consulting. Institutions will come and ask the bank lots of what-if questions about their portfolios, and most banks, including mine, will have a team of quants that assesses what happens.

It is intellectually stimulating, and IMHO, underrated relative to the trading floor.

I would take it any day and would rather prefer such a role, if it is paying ~120K or more (inc. bonuses).

 

[GoIllini]

I would take it any day and would rather prefer such a role, if it is paying ~120K or more (inc. bonuses).

Wish I had the power to help you, but I can say that one or two of these positions open every year at practically every firm on the street. They're usually a little harder to fill than other positions by virtue of the fact that they're not as sexy.

If this is a spot that you want to wind up in, and you're a competent developer, it actually should be pretty easy if you're patient. Most of the people who get hired into my firm's institutional analytics group's development team tends to migrate towards quant roles once they get a CFA or MFE anyways, and you already have the MFE. People with strong math and financial engineering bacgrounds can also get hired in directly. I'll be happy to discuss whatever extra information I might have more specifically with you via PM, but as always, as a simple analyst in IT, I'm not the kind of person who you need to impress and/or can give you any help beyond advice.

If you're worried about comp, you can always discuss it with the appropriate folks, but I doubt it will be a problem.

 

[chaoticrambler]

@Goillini: I am not a MFE but a soon-to-be engineering PhD, but you have a PM.