Study Time

[samuel]

Hello again,

I wanted to know the proportion of time that FE students and alumni now on the job spend on developing/learning math vs C++ programming vs finance.

Of course this becomes an individual decision heavily influenced by preparation level in each catagory, so, I'd like all FE students/alumni who reply to give a rouph estimate of the amount and proportion of time spent on each of these.

Also, I'm sure these overlap often, so I'd suggest using the following 'guide:'
If it involved programming or sketching an algorithm, call it programming.
If it involved exclusive use of a math text or only pen and paper where the results may be expressed in financial lingo but the work is basically math, call it math.
If the math was trivial (basic calc, probability, etc), no programming was used, call it finance.

If any other general skill set was employed, please tell!

Thanks a bunch.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I would be surprised to hear anyone here spends majority of their time using pen/math text/blackboard. At least, that is for the FE circles around here.
I'm FE alum and most of my time spent working on trading models, build them, tweak them, maintain them, use them to generate trading idea. There are thousands like me on Wall Street who are doing the same tasks for the same goal: generating profits.
No mater what roles you end up, there are always learning, be it the financial inner working of the product you work on, how to write code for a specific task.
If your goal of asking this question is to see the percentage of each part, I'll throw it out there 50%, 30%,15% for programming, finance, math respectively. 5% is to deal with useless sale pitch calls, meeting stuff.

 

[samuel]

Thanks

Thank you, very informative.

Yes, I was asking for time breakdown of activities. Since my strongest skills are math and programming, I suppose it's natural to entertain the idea of becoming a quant-something.

While on this topic. What C++ text(s) do you recommend for someone who knows C++ well, to learn to code for financial applications?

Thanks again,