Quant (Developer) Vs IT ?

[UsmanAli]

Hi Everyone!

I am new to this forum. I finished my education and I have the following degrees: MSc Software Engg and PhD in Data mining and machine learning from UK (University of Southampton). I am really confused over my career path. I am stuck between Quant (Hedge Funds, Developer etc.) and IT (e.g. Microsoft, Google etc.).

I have interview calls from Microsoft and Google and some of Hegde Fund companies for Quant development. I can't go for all the interviews as I have to make preparation for them and both paths have different things to prepare, i.e. IT is more concerned about data structures and how well you can code, whereas Quant care more about your math skills and how well a person can code in C++ (mostly).


1- Can anybody give me some suggestion, which path to choose in terms of career? Which will *pay* more in long term?

2-It looks that IT path is becoming saturated everyday; however, there is a lot of room in Quant fields where one can also learn trading stuff ( and in future might go for trading themselves..:P) .

3- If Quant is a good field for Computer Scientists?

Waiting to hear from you and Thanks in Advance everyone!

Ali

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Start off with this reading list https://www.quantnet.com/forum/thre...uants-mfe-financial-engineering-students.535/
Keep in mind that recruiters may advertise jobs as quantitative but it's just IT jobs. There is a growing trend of slapping "quant" in front of many job titles to increase its attractiveness.
https://www.quantnet.com/forum/thre...o-spot-lies-told-to-quant-developers-101.490/

 

[Shantanu Kumar]

I have interview calls from Microsoft and Google and some of Hegde Fund companies for Quant development. I can't go for all the interviews as I have to make preparation for them and both paths have different things to prepare, i.e. IT is more concerned about data structures and how well you can code, whereas Quant care more about your math skills and how well a person can code in C++ (mostly).


Ali

Its not true that only IT companies look for data structures and all.You will need to have such skills even as Quantitative Developer.Just browse through questions asked for developer positions at major banks/trading firms on glassdoor.You will see.

 

[DominiConnor]

Although it may be confusing, trust me when I say a lot of entry level people would like to be in the position where batting off hedge funds, google and M$ is a hassle.

First question is of course how good are you at maths ?

The term "quant developer" is getting overloaded (as in the normal English usage as well as OO)
It is becoming a rank as much as a job description as Andy implies, basically a notch above developer but below quant.

My general advice is to find the area where you're better than as many people as possible, then find a niche within that.
What sort of ML have you been doing ?
The right sort might be lucrative.

To answer your questions:

1: No one knows, anyone who sounds highly confident is bullshitting you. A lot goes to which bit of any given firm you work for.

2: Everything is getting saturated, that's the nature of well paid jobs, people try to get them, hence my point about picking something where you have competitive advantage.

3: No. Actual quant finance, in the style of Wilmott, Derman et al requires maths that you won't have done enough of and probably aren't excellent at.

"quant" in this sense is a mix of stats, partial differential equations and stochastic calculus, the thumbnail sketch of your education implies you won't have gone deep in those.
Of course quant also means "using maths based analysis" and I'd expect you to be good at that and some people use "quant" as "hard stuff that I do that you don't really understand", ie a term of approval like "organic", "scientific" or "natural". (anyone who can show me a food that is inorganic and violates known scientific law because it is unnatural wins a prize.)

 

[alain]

What sort of ML have you been doing ? The right sort might be lucrative.

<offtopic> Dominic, in your opinion, which is the right sort of ML?

 

[DominiConnor]

News analytics are trendy

 

[JNell]

News analytics are trendy

Any other areas of ML, if I may ask?

 

[UsmanAli]

Although it may be confusing, trust me when I say a lot of entry level people would like to be in the position where batting off hedge funds, google and M$ is a hassle.

First question is of course how good are you at maths ?

The term "quant developer" is getting overloaded (as in the normal English usage as well as OO)
It is becoming a rank as much as a job description as Andy implies, basically a notch above developer but below quant.

My general advice is to find the area where you're better than as many people as possible, then find a niche within that.
What sort of ML have you been doing ?
The right sort might be lucrative.

To answer your questions:

1: No one knows, anyone who sounds highly confident is bullshitting you. A lot goes to which bit of any given firm you work for.

2: Everything is getting saturated, that's the nature of well paid jobs, people try to get them, hence my point about picking something where you have competitive advantage.

3: No. Actual quant finance, in the style of Wilmott, Derman et al requires maths that you won't have done enough of and probably aren't excellent at.

"quant" in this sense is a mix of stats, partial differential equations and stochastic calculus, the thumbnail sketch of your education implies you won't have gone deep in those.
Of course quant also means "using maths based analysis" and I'd expect you to be good at that and some people use "quant" as "hard stuff that I do that you don't really understand", ie a term of approval like "organic", "scientific" or "natural". (anyone who can show me a food that is inorganic and violates known scientific law because it is unnatural wins a prize.)

Thanks for the detailed reply.

Well Yesterday, I got my first Hedge fund Quant Developer interview. The questions they asked were about
1- Probability, not very diff, if you keep your mind open
2- Covariance, which i could not answer
3- OOP
4- MySql and some database related

I think they are mostly looking at people which are smart in MATH especially in Probability and Matrix manipulation.


DominiConnor

My area of ML was classification, clustering, matrix factorisation. I worked on the recommender systems (i.e. when you buy a book from Amazon, they can recommend you more books) and I was thinking to move to Quant jobs as they have the same kind of problems, where they have the historical data and they want to forecast/predict the trend.

Yes, I know I am not that strong in Math as an ideal candidate should be. What you think, can I learn the Math stuff required for Qaunt in my spare time in 1-2 yrs?

Thank you

 

[UsmanAli]

Its not true that only IT companies look for data structures and all.You will need to have such skills even as Quantitative Developer.Just browse through questions asked for developer positions at major banks/trading firms on glassdoor.You will see.

So you are advising me to learn by heart the data structure?

 

[Shantanu Kumar]

So you are advising me to learn by heart the data structure?

Aren't you supposed to know them already if you have a degree in Software Engineering? Yeah you can be rusty with certain concepts if you haven't used them in a while.So going over some key concepts will be helpful.

 

[Lana]

Dear All,
I am fascinated by the quants, quant world! May I ask you about an advice how to proceed to be a junior quant? I would like to switch my career, and I know I can do it. I am a physicist with 8 years after my Ph.D and significant experience in research. I have M.S. in Physics and Engineering, Ph.D. in Physics and Math. from Russian Academy of Sciences. I am pretty good in differentials, math, know Monte-Carlo simulation (but for scientific applications), a bit of C++, Python, Matlab. I have begun preparing myself to be ready for interview, reading books. Took some courses from Stanford/Princeton in Model thinking, statistics, probability, etc. to remind myself about it. But the problem is - nobody wants the worker without an experience in that particular (finance) environment! That does not matter where to apply the math rules - in basic research or in financial industry. Math is Math What do you think about my chances to become a quant? Any advice would be appreciated!
Thank you!!! Lana

 

[Edward Zhou]

Dear All,
I am fascinated by the quants, quant world! May I ask you about an advice how to proceed to be a junior quant? I would like to switch my career, and I know I can do it. I am a physicist with 8 years after my Ph.D and significant experience in research. I have M.S. in Physics and Engineering, Ph.D. in Physics and Math. from Russian Academy of Sciences. I am pretty good in differentials, math, know Monte-Carlo simulation (but for scientific applications), a bit of C++, Python, Matlab. I have begun preparing myself to be ready for interview, reading books. Took some courses from Stanford/Princeton in Model thinking, statistics, probability, etc. to remind myself about it. But the problem is - nobody wants the worker without an experience in that particular (finance) environment! That does not matter where to apply the math rules - in basic research or in financial industry. Math is Math What do you think about my chances to become a quant? Any advice would be appreciated!
Thank you!!! Lana

Read the general description of quant developer, the math demanded, since you got a PhD is physics, I assume math should not be a problem for you.