Cantonese is not needed in HK unless you are going to work for a local company. But knowledge of Cantonese will help you to speak with people after your work.
For those who Planning to work at Asia
- Thread starter Rebelex
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Cantonese is not needed in HK unless you are going to work for a local company. But knowledge of Cantonese will help you to speak with people after your work.
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You assume "all the jobs" I referred to were quant positions. I believe at the time I was looking at investment management/analyst roles.
And as the poster did not say he was only interested in quant positions, I assumed a broader finance context. (Though as I did not reread this entire thread I could be mistaken)
This is what I call Chinese exaggeration.
I came from Europe to work in Asia for Financial Markets and
I'm disappointed (not with my work), but with some cultural attitude.
Many Chinese really think that they are on the top of the mountain, but they are not.
It disgusts, and I appreciate to leave Asia in the future.
In fact, they have no idea how far they away: I mean education and science research, culture.
Even some Asian countries have good financial indicators,
some Chinese do not understand anything behind those indicators.
They do not see real life behind books and financial system developed by West, lah.
All those countries, which you mentioned, are very dependent on American and European capital.
Not so many Chinese want to work for pure Asian banks,
but for American and European banks, because pay is much higher and attitude is far away as east from west.
Now guess who are managers in those banks? Usually, all major managers are white, and also all major quants.
Now guess who do complain? I tired to read local newspaper with complains
and even do not want to know many Chinese because according
to the probability theory many of them aren't happy with Ang Mo presence.
About top business capitals:
#1 are N.Y. and LN.
Famous Asian countries with good law system only provide land for bank branches from these cities.
Buy the way how many famous Chinese quants do you know?
I don't know any. Mathematicians? I know only a few surnames. Even google doesn't find for me too much
Main Page - Wilmott Wiki
The Thirty Greatest Mathematicians
You are welcome to disagree.
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yes, in that case any position that is client facing will most likely require language skills.
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quants are not movie stars. there are plenty top notch quants who are not "famous". "famous" are those who publish papers. there are a lot of (actually most) people in the industry that don't do that. And there are a lot of those who are chinese. And there will be more for sure. ( in terms of famous I can name Li (introduced a copula approach in credit correlation modelling)).
As for mathematicians there are A LOT of great mathematicians ... Yau and Terence Tao the first two that come to my mind.
Nobody says that they do not exist.
The question is about proportions.
Let's consider a small example.
Wiki says that Terence Tao has received Fields Medal.
Now let's go to the Fields Medal wiki page.
Some preliminaries:
Population of Russia is 150 million people. Population of PRC? You know.
Click: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal#Fields_Medalists
How many Russian (+Soviet Union) mathematicians do you see there?
Grisha Perelman maybe one of the greatest mathematicians now living.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
And it is only Russia. If you add white people from Europe, America... still less than a Great Wall.
I wouldn't add Chinese from other Asian countries, like Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia....
I hope you know how many Chinese in those countries.
Or just open any decent Quant book and count Russian surnames:
Kolmogorov, Markov, Chebyshev... etc. it's funny, right?
Living in Asia for some years, discussing professional topics with locals and attending local universities (the best in Asia accoding to the web-site and some Asian University rankings)
I'm not sure that those proportions are going to change.
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Please, don't give me links to wiki about Perelman
(I know who he is and I am familiar with his work, to some extent...by the way, there was a controversy related to the completeness of the proof which involved 2 mathematicians. their names are Cao and Zhu. both Chinese.) ....and definitely do not educate me about Russian mathematicians. ??????? Perelman is hardly the greatest. He is the most well known among general public, that's for sure. Yes, he tackled old and incredibly difficult problem.
However, there are a few mathematicians (Serre, Gromov, Atiyah, Smale... and Tao will definitely be one of them) ) whose impact on the development of mathematics outweighs Perelman's achievement.
As for the topic discussed (Asia), I am more interested in forward looking analysis, not proportions or statistics in retrospect. And the trend is clear, Asian scientists moving forward faster than anyone else.
Talking about fields medalists, one of the last recipients is from Vietnam. Who would've thought some 20 years ago that Lagland's problem will be solved by a guy from Vietnam...)
Another evidence is IMO results. For the last 10 years China was consistently taking the first place.
Now if you look at the results back in the 80's Chinese were nowhere as dominant as today.
So, again, the trend is obvious. ...and nothing really shows that the trend will stop in the near future.
Please, don't give me links to wiki about Perelman
Perelman is hardly the greatest. He is the most well known among general public, that's for sure. Yes, he tackled old and incredibly difficult problem.
However, there are a few mathematicians (Serre, Gromov, Atiyah, Smale... and Tao will definitely be one of them) ) whose impact on the development of mathematics outweighs Perelman's achievement.
As for the topic discussed (Asia), I am more interested in forward looking analysis, not proportions or statistics in retrospect. And the trend is clear, Asian scientists moving forward faster than anyone else.
Talking about fields medalists, one of the last recipients is from Vietnam. Who would've thought some 20 years ago that Lagland's problem will be solved by a guy from Vietnam...)
Another evidence is IMO results. For the last 10 years China was consistently taking the first place.
Now if you look at the results back in the 80's Chinese were nowhere as dominant as today.
So, again, the trend is obvious. ...and nothing really shows that the trend will stop in the near future.
ThinkDifferent has a point.
Just curious what are the professional topics?
Data mining, Genetics Algorithms, Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems.
ThinkDifferent thinks like a trader using technical analysis.
If fact, fundamental analysis shows a different picture.
IMO is another funny story, where Russians usually take 2nd place, actually.
It was discussed many times why Russians are not taking the first place, and the justification is clear:
Chinese more technical, Russian more ideological, i.e. Russians have a great thinking process, while Chinese have a good skill of remembering a solving algorithm. Example from music:
How many of you knows Yngwie Malmsteen? Usually only professional guitarists know him, because he is very technical.
How many of you knows Eric Clapton? Everyone knows him because he sings great songs, he is one of the greatest musicians.
But even one of major contributors to school mathematical techniques is Jakow Trachtenberg from Odessa.
Trachtenberg system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
IMO is not a major contribution to QF or World Mathematical problems. It's just school mathematics.
Actually, I'm not going to argue with Russians from HK on this forum.
I've replied, because it's high probability that author of that exaggerated note is Chinese,
because in my current location all Chinese speak like that.
So I explained my view to add some balance.
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IMO problems have nothing to do with "good skill of remembering a solving algorithm" as all problems are highly original in nature and do not require "solving algorithm" but rather an extremely clever approach, with solution most of the time occupying just half a page.
I recommend you try some problems available on the official website.
"just school mathematics"? getting top places at IMO surely does say a lot.
There is a reason why IMO winners are getting admitted (with full funding) to places like MIT.
By the way, most of the guys mentioned (Tao, Perelman, Ngo Bao Chao) are IMO winners.
Coincidence?
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Looks like Japan isn't a very friendly place for foreign workers
Its Workers Aging, Japan Turns Away Immigrants - NYTimes.com
Don't tell me about MIT ;-) I work with some graduates from that organization.
There are a lot of good places behing American educational self-pr-politics.
Moscow State Univesity is a very good place, for example.
I may judge, for example, Baruch, because I was a student there.
American education is overpriced compare to Russian.
I don't want to judge Perelman anymore. Wasn't it you who said that you know his work only to some degree?
So how may you judge him? Are you much more proficient than Fields commision? Otherwise show me your real name.
I have few friends who work in Japanese banks. These banks are not that generous in terms of compensation. Also they tend to put some constraints on you which may seem a bit inflexible. However Japan itself has a lot of interesting culture/traditions and people are very civilized.
It's quite off-topic and I'm afraid the conversation is starting to get more and more silly.
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I agree, let's all stay on topic of "whether Asia is a good place to work for quant finance professionals".
Perelman does not care about the Fields prize money and he wouldn't want his name to be mentioned in this "working in Asia" discussion
Perelman does not care about the Fields prize money and he wouldn't want his name to be mentioned in this "working in Asia" discussion
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To Denis,
I think your confusion about china is very cute. I guess you will never find the truth unless you try to understand the real work that is going on in China, and do not assuming it with a western system.
I grew up in China, I found many things I saw are nothing but confusion and I still do now. But the fact is, institutions never stop advancing their technology and challenge, and they are fast.
So my conclusion for you is, there are many greatest mathematicians out there who are not famous, and perhaps you will never know them. One thing for sure, university certainly is not where real academias lived and worked.
What you see is often not truth in China, this is my opinion from experience.
As for quant in china, I am sure there isn't many famous quant out there since people does not tend to classify them as quant. But the truth is there are many people that are fabulous at math, finance, programming and engineering and they can do the job.
If you wanna talk about names and titles and branding etc., there isn't much in China. But do not assume there isn't such people and resources in reality.
I think your confusion about china is very cute. I guess you will never find the truth unless you try to understand the real work that is going on in China, and do not assuming it with a western system.
I grew up in China, I found many things I saw are nothing but confusion and I still do now. But the fact is, institutions never stop advancing their technology and challenge, and they are fast.
So my conclusion for you is, there are many greatest mathematicians out there who are not famous, and perhaps you will never know them. One thing for sure, university certainly is not where real academias lived and worked.
What you see is often not truth in China, this is my opinion from experience.
As for quant in china, I am sure there isn't many famous quant out there since people does not tend to classify them as quant. But the truth is there are many people that are fabulous at math, finance, programming and engineering and they can do the job.
If you wanna talk about names and titles and branding etc., there isn't much in China. But do not assume there isn't such people and resources in reality.
DominiConnor
Quant Headhunter
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I've had a reasonable variety of feedback about working in Japan, and opinion seems to vary more than for most places.
Pretty much all agree that Tokyo 'works' functionally better than many other large cities.
However they report a degreen of naked racism and sexism that is unique in developed countries. One example from my own experience was a Japanese girl lent to my team who adored Madonna. A lot. I used certain facilities that a large outfit had made available to me to get her an excellent ticket, this was a non-trivial task, but I've always believed in rewarding people who work hard.
Strictly speaking she wasn't one of my people, and she had to get permission from her boss to go. This was on her day off, not during work hours. He refused for some reason, and she took it as a reasonable thing. Since this fuckwit bowed deeply to me (I don't do bowing), it transpired that I could order him to let her, but he'd take revenge, apparently. One highly qualified black colleague of mine that I had personally hired because he was the best person money could get to do his job couldn't get the Japanese men to speak to him at all. Ironically he was a black belt in two martial arts, and 6ft 5 and with a evil smile that Eddie Murphy would kill for. He dealt with it by standing up straight and talking literally over their heads, smiling in a way that a rational person would see as a cue to grab a gun. He also used a variant cockney dialect that only a native Brit could understand, even though his accent is rather like mine.
Tokyo is not for anyone who has issues with crowds or noise, and it's not a place where you want to go unless you have seriously worked out the expense deal with your firm. I head bad stories about how JP Morgan HR has screwed people over on this.
Tokyo is the least quantish of the major markets, being somewhere around the level of Glasgow but below Delhi and Dublin. My database has more quants in New Zealand than Japan.
It's mostly driven by the size of the Japanese economy, not international trade like London or NY, so is rather like Frankfurt, a city that also divides people. Some say Frankfurt is the worst financial city to work in, some say it's fine because you can land your helicopter near the office and never come in contact with the city itself.
Being inward looking and not on a major growth curve, it's hard to see it as a land of opportunity. But some people really love the culture, and these tend to be people who are either geeks or those who like the rich and deep culture.
It's arguably the worst city anywhere to drive a car, but crime is very low, possibly the two correlate.
Pretty much all agree that Tokyo 'works' functionally better than many other large cities.
However they report a degreen of naked racism and sexism that is unique in developed countries. One example from my own experience was a Japanese girl lent to my team who adored Madonna. A lot. I used certain facilities that a large outfit had made available to me to get her an excellent ticket, this was a non-trivial task, but I've always believed in rewarding people who work hard.
Strictly speaking she wasn't one of my people, and she had to get permission from her boss to go. This was on her day off, not during work hours. He refused for some reason, and she took it as a reasonable thing. Since this fuckwit bowed deeply to me (I don't do bowing), it transpired that I could order him to let her, but he'd take revenge, apparently. One highly qualified black colleague of mine that I had personally hired because he was the best person money could get to do his job couldn't get the Japanese men to speak to him at all. Ironically he was a black belt in two martial arts, and 6ft 5 and with a evil smile that Eddie Murphy would kill for. He dealt with it by standing up straight and talking literally over their heads, smiling in a way that a rational person would see as a cue to grab a gun. He also used a variant cockney dialect that only a native Brit could understand, even though his accent is rather like mine.
Tokyo is not for anyone who has issues with crowds or noise, and it's not a place where you want to go unless you have seriously worked out the expense deal with your firm. I head bad stories about how JP Morgan HR has screwed people over on this.
Tokyo is the least quantish of the major markets, being somewhere around the level of Glasgow but below Delhi and Dublin. My database has more quants in New Zealand than Japan.
It's mostly driven by the size of the Japanese economy, not international trade like London or NY, so is rather like Frankfurt, a city that also divides people. Some say Frankfurt is the worst financial city to work in, some say it's fine because you can land your helicopter near the office and never come in contact with the city itself.
Being inward looking and not on a major growth curve, it's hard to see it as a land of opportunity. But some people really love the culture, and these tend to be people who are either geeks or those who like the rich and deep culture.
It's arguably the worst city anywhere to drive a car, but crime is very low, possibly the two correlate.
