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Career changes OUT of quant finance

Joined
1/4/15
Messages
3
Points
11
Hello everyone,

First things first, let me wish you the best for the new year.

I am new to this forum, been reading it for a while now. The career section is very handy and there are good pieces of wisdom around. That being said, I'm posting today because I haven't seen lot on moving out of a quant career.

I was wondering if any of you changed or know people who changed career from being a quant to something else. I am keen on getting more colors on ideas, jobs and/or companies which welcome quant profiles. The quant job is very "niche" imho so I couldn't figure out something obvious apart from trading or risk management - but they must be some interest in quant type profiles out of finance, right?

Thanks a lot,

Marc.
 
I don't see quant as a "niche" skillset. If you look at the skillset you're bringing when you come out from a quant position, you will find it very useful in a lot of quantitative roles. This could be very useful in tech companies like google, microsoft etc.
 
you can go into being a trader, portfolio manager... but most that I saw went into academic teaching. Or started their own consultancy.
 
Thanks so much for your replies.

Kann - I realize I've been a little pessimistic on that. Do you know yourself some people moving from banks to google to do quantitative jobs? tbh, I've seen a lot of developers from microsoft or google moving to IB as dev quant/it quant because from their perspective, it's easier, but less of the other way around.

Keith - Consultancy-wise, are we mainly talking about financial services or something more open?

Quantitative analysis goes beyond finance, but practically, have you seen any IB quant moving to a more economics, sociology or political science quantitative analyst?
 
@MarcMarronnier
It think it really depends on what skillset you have. You might have a good MFE, but what about the bachelor degree.
I don't think the roles are so different at all. Obviously you can't be a python developer at Google if you only can write c++. I think hitting good jobs at big companies is much about how you are as a person. You might not have all the right qualifications, but if you have proven before, that you can get these qualifications on the road and you can prove that you have delivered results in big well known IB's/funds, i'm almost sure, that you will find a job in a tech firm if you want it.

You might not be head of the developer team, and you might also go down in "job-levels"(don't know what it's called) because you don't have all qualifications.

You're changing your career path, and there is probably a lot you need to start over with from the beginning, but i think that's how the game is.

Other than that i think it's important to say, that quant roles also exist in other companies than Banks and hedge funds.
 
I don't see quant as a "niche" skillset. If you look at the skillset you're bringing when you come out from a quant position, you will find it very useful in a lot of quantitative roles. This could be very useful in tech companies like google, microsoft etc.
It depends. It could be a culture shock in many ways.

Creating an industrial s/w product != C++ quant library.

And consider a job at companies that are not called Google, Apple,... because that where your chances are...
 
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Teaching, if you are good at it.

Lots of things. How flexible are you?
 
I don't see quant as a "niche" skillset. If you look at the skillset you're bringing when you come out from a quant position, you will find it very useful in a lot of quantitative roles. This could be very useful in tech companies like google, microsoft etc.

Depends on the kind of quant you were and the kind of place you worked. Some quants don't have a wide skillset. For example, they might be very very good at banging out some Python in a fast-paced environment that absolutely requires accuracy, but may be lacking in real software development skills or data analysis or model building. There's also a high level of detailed financial knowledge required for some roles and that's how some guys survive and make a living. If that's what you sunk a lot of your time into learning, then your skills may not be that developed at all.

There's also the Wall Street environment. At the larger institutions, they are not generally encouraging of innovation. Reliability is highly valued over creativity. Or perhaps I should say the appearance of reliability. I never got why wearing a collared shirt made you more reliable, but I think a great many people on Wall Street believe this. This is the opposite of Silicon Valley. If you've been successful in the typical big bank world, a lot of the skillset you have is for bolstering the appearance of reliability and covering your ass.
 
Depends on the kind of quant you were and the kind of place you worked. Some quants don't have a wide skillset. For example, they might be very very good at banging out some Python in a fast-paced environment that absolutely requires accuracy, but may be lacking in real software development skills or data analysis or model building. There's also a high level of detailed financial knowledge required for some roles and that's how some guys survive and make a living. If that's what you sunk a lot of your time into learning, then your skills may not be that developed at all.

There's also the Wall Street environment. At the larger institutions, they are not generally encouraging of innovation. Reliability is highly valued over creativity. Or perhaps I should say the appearance of reliability. I never got why wearing a collared shirt made you more reliable, but I think a great many people on Wall Street believe this. This is the opposite of Silicon Valley. If you've been successful in the typical big bank world, a lot of the skillset you have is for bolstering the appearance of reliability and covering your ass.
i cant find any other jobs outside of ib and maybe insurance companies... so ya
 
any of you tried data scientist? some of the job requirements shared between quant finance jobs are relevant.
 
@TehRaio
I know some who got offers from both "worlds", but they didn't have a mfe. So i don't know how relevant it is.
 
Thanks for all your replies. I realize how code-related some suggestions are, which make sense. But as mentioned below, depends on which kind of quant you are. To be a little bit more specific, when you work as a desk quant coding-wise, we are talking VBA or debugging/fixing the library but not much more - or the least, not enough to consider valuing this experience in the dev world.

Data scientist sounds like a good option, on paper the least - would be curious to see what is the IB quant fame from their perspective ...
 
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