• C++ Programming for Financial Engineering
    Highly recommended by thousands of MFE students. Covers essential C++ topics with applications to financial engineering. Learn more Join!
    Python for Finance with Intro to Data Science
    Gain practical understanding of Python to read, understand, and write professional Python code for your first day on the job. Learn more Join!
    An Intuition-Based Options Primer for FE
    Ideal for entry level positions interviews and graduate studies, specializing in options trading arbitrage and options valuation models. Learn more Join!

Are engineers/physicists stealing financial jobs?

Abdel

Abdel

Economist
Joined
5/22/11
Messages
303
Points
38
Since the financial sector is shrinking, this might become a problem in the coming years in my opinion. It happened in the movies industry (wich is shrinking with all the free downloads and 3D characters), where actors feel like comedians & singers are stealing their jobs when they accept to play in a movie.

How do you feel about it?

Does it bother you at all if you studied ''all your life'' in finance just to see someone from engineering or physics come in and take your job?
 
Joy Pathak said:
Is this really a thread? come on.
Click to expand...

I know I know,

It's just that I was having this mini 'convo' about it with IlyaKEightSix earlier, so I wanted to expand it in a topic in case someone in his work place lived/witnessed some type of descriminations or tensions between the two.

I have plenty friends who switched from physics to finance. Actually one of them, completed his phd in quantum physics and is now working in an IB in London.

And as I said, it might be a problem in the coming years, as the financial sector keeps shrinking.
 
Well if Goldman Sachs can make investment bankers out of English majors...doesn't that go to tell you that there really isn't too much to learn about finance itself, but more the train of thought you bring to the table? And having taken undergrad finance courses myself, I can tell you that they're absolutely useless for the most part beyond the derivatives course (that one at least exposes you to the ideas of more complex financial instruments).
 
I think too many people see a degree as a free pass and that their days of having to prove their worth are somehow behind them when their name is called out during graduation. Finance majors shouldn’t be worried about physicists and engineers taking their jobs; they should be worried about people who can perform the job better than they can, i.e., post #4.

The future of the finance workers union:

 
Since the financial sector is shrinking, this might become a problem in the coming years in my opinion.

Although things will change the financial sector will come back in absolute size though will probably decline as a % of the global economy. China has a less sophisticated finance sector than Zimbabwe and all by itslef that will be a driver.

It happened in the movies industry (wich is shrinking with all the free downloads and 3D characters),
The movie buisness is getting bigger. Hollywood is shrinking, but again if you look globally it will continue to grow.

where actors feel like comedians & singers are stealing their jobs when they accept to play in a movie.
As well as being Quant Headhunter, Master C++ programmer, Chemist I've also had an education which includes Jacobean theatre and I will assure you that they bitched about this to Bill Shakespeare who incorporated these people in leading roles. 150 years later they then started bitching about allowing women onto the stage. nothing changes, it just gets the same somewhere else.

How do you feel about it?
I'm on the winninng side. I feel pretty damned good about it.

Does it bother you at all if you studied ''all your life''
They don't, they get a few lessons up to the age of 18, maybe study theoretical finance from 18 to 21 then do an MFE or PhD.
That's not "all their lives", it's a couple of years, and if they'd troubled themselves to learn a decently broad range of skills, such things would not bug them. Part of my crusade is to make people in finance use the techniques they learn on themselves, and make better decisions.

in finance just to see someone from engineering or physics come in and take your job?
If you look at many science and tech firms the decision makers are from finance backgrounds, often accountants. It's a fight, some peple win, some lose. If they "feel bad" then they are shit, the discipline is to learn how you got beat and win next time, better still is to learn how others got beat and not lose.


 
Back
Top