2 offers- Which one should I choose?

[physguy]

Hello Everyone,

I am confused between 2 offers and I would like your input in them. Both of these roles are in a big European country, not UK:

1) Quant in Trading Risk in bulge bracket bank (one of the Morgan Stanley, Jp Morgan, GS, Citi, BoFa): senior role, pretty good salary, big exposure to London team too. On the downside, it is a risk role.
2) Equity Derivatives trader in smaller Bank (think Nomura, HSBC, ING ), in the European entity of this bank: junior role, smaller salary but still ok. On the downside I am afraid of pigeonholing myself.


I have a very quantitative background (advanced degree in mathematics/physics) and the dream job is quant trader/quant researcher in a hedge fund/trading firm in London. Maybe it's even too late for me for that, but this is at least the dream. The plan is to stay 1-2 years in any of these jobs and then try either for a quant or a trader role in London. My dilemma is the following:

I know that the trader job seems more aligned perhaps, but it is in a smaller and more regional bank. Also, when I see in Linkedin, all the traders in big banks are coming from a target school and then through the grad programme of the respective banks/trading firms and not from external moves from smaller banks. For example I have not seen a senior trader going to GS from ABN AMRO, whereas for quants I have seen this happening. Also, as a quant I can prove much more knowledge from personal projects (and I have done that in the past), whereas as a trader I don't think this is so possible.

In a nutshell, I am afraid that it is much easier to pigeonhole myself in this trading position.


So, what do you guys think? I would appreciate any feedback.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

@physguy
Curious if you made the choice yet? If so, what was your thought process?
I'm hoping your experience would help others you are facing similar dilemma.

 

[physguy]

@Andy Nguyen

Indeed, thank you for reminding me. Yes, I chose the Quant Risk role.

For making my choice I considered mainly 4 criteria: 1) interest/alignment to end goal, 2) brand name of the firm, 3) proximity to markets, 4) backgrounds of team members.

1) Interest/alignment to end goal: As I wrote in my first message, my dream goal is to end up as a quant researcher/trader in the buy side. This is for two reasons: I like to have proximity to markets and own the risk, but at the same time I am a quantitative person in nature and this is how naturally makes more sense to me to analyse and substantiate investment choices. The quant risk role (1st role), although not close to the markets, will definitely give me a lot of knowledge in the "quant" part: from math/stats/programming will be used on the day-to-day+plus some minor exposure to traders. The equity derivatives role(2nd role), would give me pretty much zero quant skills.

2) Brand name of the firm: Maybe I am wrong here, but "brand" plays a big role in finance from I what I understand. From what university you went to what was your previous firm, the name in the CV is a big factor, maybe more than it should be. And here, the advantage lies with the first role for sure. It's one of the largest banks, very famous for its quants, and gives much exposure to both the local and the global activities. The 2nd role, was not a small bank, but definitely smaller. Also it was somehow "siloed" from the main headquarters (actually my guess is that this banks works a bit like a "franchise", but this is just my personal guess based on anecdotal stories). For sure though the team had nothing to do with the headquarters, the team was there just to do local (only within the country) coverage on derivatives. So I thought that this role would just pigeonhole me to regional trading roles forever without much probability to move to something much better.

3) Proximity to markets: of course the second role has much bigger proximity to markets. And this was the reason why I was even considering this position.

4) Backgrounds of team members: that's a bit of an unorthodox indicator, but most times it has been prove correct in my decisions. In the first role, all the people in the team have a MSc or a PhD in a quantitative discipline (math, physics, statistics, MFE). In the second role, the people I met in the interview had BSc in finance/business administration. They told me that there were also math/physics graduates, but overall it seemed a much more "traditional" traders team.

Overall, it seemed to me that the 2nd role was just a non-quant regional traditional traders role. So, for all the above mentioned reasons, I chose the quant risk position.