Survey of forum members backgrounds/credibility

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fina

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Just out of curiosity and to establish the level of credibility of the forum in general what are the backgrounds of various members offering or asking for advice?
* Is the board mostly undergraduate or graduate: which tier of universities?
* Which majors are represented: comp sci, engineering, finance, physics, math?
* Which tier of hedge funds and banks are represented if any employees are giving back to the comunity once they entered the job market?
 
Surely the responsibility falls on you to vet the validity of given advice as well as the people who give you advice. This is the internet and often the case, people may give you second hand information or something completely wrong.
That said, Quantnet has been around since 2003 and I have run it for several years so I can give you some general idea of the members here.
There are high school/undergraduate students here but they are vastly outnumbered by graduate students and working professionals.

To get a sense of the diversity of our members, take a look at the Tracker. They represent people who applied and graduate from all major MFE programs. It's a new feature so it only represents a fraction of our 10,000+ members strong community.

There are director/staff from many MFE program here. There are recruiters, hiring managers, academic and professionals in many sector of the industry.

And those are people I know and met in person over the years. Hundreds of new members sign up here every month so trying to categorize everyone is not an option.

In the end, I believe you should take every post for its own merit and soundness. You should treat everyone equally with the idea that they may be your future coworkers or employers regardless of where they went to school or work. Finance is a very small community and everyone here is and will be connected to the industry in some capacity.
 
Andy Nguyen you're too nice.

fina I think it's pretty absurd to demand people's credentials without first stating your own.
 
groutgauss said:
Andy Nguyen you're too nice.

fina I think it's pretty absurd to demand people's credentials without first stating your own.
Click to expand...

How is that demanding? Maybe you are too cynical and view the question as aggressive. I read it as an innocent question which isn't inappropriate. It is understandable to want know who is answering your questions. Think of school--the first day the professor gives you a syllabus with his credentials, or has a web page that states them, or tells the class I received this from this school etc.
 
Dwsmith said:
Think of school--the first day the professor gives you a syllabus with his credentials, or has a web page that states them, or tells the class I received this from this school etc.
Click to expand...
The difference is, you're paying the professor's salary.

As Andy said, it is up to the individual to determine whether or not the information on a public forum is appropriate.

Assuming that a question about credibility is aimed at establishing some kind of trust, how does someone giving you a job title (that you could hardly confirm) on a public forum bring you any closer to your goal? You are better off reading the forum content and answering the questions for yourself.

That being said, I would agree with you, Dwsmith, that the OP isn't demanding anything; they are just being explicit about their curiosity.
 
Knowing someone's background info, even just partially, can ease one's mind. If someone wants to lie about who they are, the facade will eventually come crashing down.
 
some jobs prohibit giving out that information or even worse, just posting on a forum could be grounds for termination so asking might not be the best.

However, if the OP wants to know, he should first reveal some information about himself/herself. Maybe that would encourage people to do the same.
 
fina I am a headhunter for quants so I have no credibility and my background is essentially anecdotes that I've heard in bars, though I'm proud to say that a few of my lies are ones I made up myself.

The picture on the left is heavily photoshopped and isn't even me, I'm fatter and older than that.
 
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