Career Change For Engineer/Marine Corps Veteran

[Jon Sullivan]

Hi All!

I recently came across this website while exploring different graduate degree programs that would help me change my career from engineering to finance. The 2017 MFE Rankings have been very helpful. I had a few questions that hopefully the forum would be able to help me answer, but any advice about changing careers would be appreciated!

A little about me - I served 6 years in the Marines (2006-2012) and graduated from Northeastern University (Boston, MA - 2016) with a undergraduate in electrical engineering. I've been at my current employer (Lawrence Livermore Natl. Lab.) for just over a year. I'm quickly realizing that the part I enjoyed most about engineering was the advanced math (stochastics, diffeq/pde and lin. algerbra) which I don't have to do most of the time in my current role. I'd like to move out of the defense/energy sector and move into finance and business (NYC or BOS areas) by getting a graduate degree at one of the top schools on the 2017 rankings.

A few questions -
Is it possible to have a successful career change into finance without any undergraduate experience in the field?

In engineering soft skills like leadership, experience in multicultural environments, performance under pressure, organization and initiative have a much lower priority when determining your performance indicators than you're overall engineering ability. How are these skills prioritized for quants?

Should I be pursuing an MBA to capitalize on skills I've gleaned during my military career? Would this path require some undergraduate experience?

I know this was pretty long...thanks for reading if you got this far, and thanks for the advice.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Yes to the first question -- it's knowledge of hard math and hard coding that's key. The MBA appeals more to second-rate minds who want to be "leaders." If you say you're interested in math, you'll likely be frustrated as an MBA corporate type. But also, even if you get a quant degree from one of the better schools, there's no guarantee you'll get a job using stoch calc and PDEs. Incidentally, didn't know they taught stoch in undergrad EE. Do you mean statistics and probability?

 

[Jon Sullivan]

Thanks for your reply. It sounds like the financial engineering degree is where I should start looking. I was concerned about what an MBA would mean, thanks for making that clear.

The class I took was called Noise and Stochastic Processes. It was mainly theory - random variables discrete and continuous, joint Gaussians, correlation, etc. Detailed Course Information

 

[bigbadwolf]

The class I took was called Noise and Stochastic Processes. It was mainly theory - random variables discrete and continuous, joint Gaussians, correlation, etc. Detailed Course Information

Seems to have been mainly non-measure theoretic probability, with something on random processes towards the end (probably something like the Poisson process). In quant finance, it will be more measure-theoretic, which sounds more intimidating than it really is. There's the old adage about eating an elephant one spoon at a time, and this is apposite to learning math. Start with something on real analysis -- the favorite here is probably Rudin's "Intro to Mathematical Analysis" but I prefer Goffman's "Real Functions" (both were initially published at roughly the same time, incidentally). Good thing about Goffman is he covers Borel sets and measure, which provide your intro to measure-theoretic probability later. A comparative review of Rudin and Goffman can be found here:

Munroe : Review: Casper Goffman, Real Functions, and Walter Rudin, Principles of mathematical analysis, and Henry P. Thielman, Theory of functions of real variables

Assuming you haven't taken this kind of math before, it will take a bit of time to get used to this abstract definition-lemma-theorem-corollary style of doing math (in contrast to the computational plug-and-chug of engineering math). A book for making the transition might be Courant and Robbins' "What is Mathematics?"

Once you've mastered the rudiments of real analysis, you can start looking at measure-theoretic probability and indeed, the necessity of it. But one bridge at a time.

Of course, if you haven't the time or patience for this, the MBA option is there -- replete with mostly useless filler courses designed to get you that coveted corner office.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

With real analysis, "epsilons and deltas" will play a major role.

(ε, δ)-definition of limit - Wikipedia

 

[Ken Abbott]

Hi All!

I recently came across this website while exploring different graduate degree programs that would help me change my career from engineering to finance. The 2017 MFE Rankings have been very helpful. I had a few questions that hopefully the forum would be able to help me answer, but any advice about changing careers would be appreciated!

A little about me - I served 6 years in the Marines (2006-2012) and graduated from Northeastern University (Boston, MA - 2016) with a undergraduate in electrical engineering. I've been at my current employer (Lawrence Livermore Natl. Lab.) for just over a year. I'm quickly realizing that the part I enjoyed most about engineering was the advanced math (stochastics, diffeq/pde and lin. algerbra) which I don't have to do most of the time in my current role. I'd like to move out of the defense/energy sector and move into finance and business (NYC or BOS areas) by getting a graduate degree at one of the top schools on the 2017 rankings.

A few questions -
Is it possible to have a successful career change into finance without any undergraduate experience in the field?

In engineering soft skills like leadership, experience in multicultural environments, performance under pressure, organization and initiative have a much lower priority when determining your performance indicators than you're overall engineering ability. How are these skills prioritized for quants?

Should I be pursuing an MBA to capitalize on skills I've gleaned during my military career? Would this path require some undergraduate experience?

I know this was pretty long...thanks for reading if you got this far, and thanks for the advice.

PM me. I can put you in touch with several senior vets on Wall Street who can give you advice. I work with several, including a recovering ROTC Marine vet now very senior in my company.

 

[Jon Sullivan]

Start with something on real analysis -- the favorite here is probably Rudin's "Intro to Mathematical Analysis" but I prefer Goffman's "Real Functions" (both were initially published at roughly the same time, incidentally). Good thing about Goffman is he covers Borel sets and measure, which provide your intro to measure-theoretic probability later. A comparative review of Rudin and Goffman can be found here:

Munroe : Review: Casper Goffman, Real Functions, and Walter Rudin, Principles of mathematical analysis, and Henry P. Thielman, Theory of functions of real variables

Assuming you haven't taken this kind of math before, it will take a bit of time to get used to this abstract definition-lemma-theorem-corollary style of doing math (in contrast to the computational plug-and-chug of engineering math). A book for making the transition might be Courant and Robbins' "What is Mathematics?"

Once you've mastered the rudiments of real analysis, you can start looking at measure-theoretic probability and indeed, the necessity of it. But one bridge at a time.

I remember Real Analysis being an elective that I didn't have a chance to take. I'll start looking into these book recommendations. Engineering math was definitely plug-and-chug except for our stochastics class. The thought process required wasn't similar to other engineering courses.