Is this a QD position?

[biggsy]

Hi,

I am currently finishing a PhD in CS at a top 3 university in the UK. I only started to look into potentially getting a Quant / Quant Developer some weeks ago. Before that, I was already in the application process with an asset management company in the City for their IT graduate program. In the first round interviews, I realized quite quickly that this seems pretty boring. I was interviewed by several IT people and told them quite clearly that I am interested in doing algorithmic work as opposed to what looked to me like IT support. In the second round interview, I got then interviewed by their head of Risk and the head of IT. I felt from the very beginning that they were interested in me and they told me that they sat together after the first interview and realized that the IT program isn’t the right thing for me and that they think I could be more suitable for a QD opening in their company. They told me several times that they were quite impressed by my CV and my accomplishments (during my PhD I had quite some success in an engineering perspective, some patents and commercialisations). They told me that the position would be in IT but very close to the Quants developing the models. Some days ago they send me an offer as a “Quant Developer”. Salary £35k, small signing bonus. There wasn’t much more information and they told me, they’ll send a contract soon.
I did a lot of reading through this forum in the last couple of days and have some questions you may help me to answer:

1. During my 4 interviews with different people, I wasn’t asked any technical questions at all. There were no programming and no maths questions, everything was competency-based. How should I interpret this?

2. Since I have no background in finance and I would probably have to do some reading before being able to pass many QD interviews so this may be an opportunity to start working in the field and pick up some knowledge. I have the feeling that maybe they had not even invited me if I would have applied for a QD position right away. What are your thoughts?

3. Is the salary a bad sign with respect to the tasks involved or is it appropriate for an entry QD position? Should I try to negotiate?

Thank you!

 

[ThinkDifferent]

the salary is humiliating.

 

[biggsy]

I know it's quite low but thought it's just about in the range for a starting salary. They offer a one year training period and I thought it should go up afterwards. Do you think it's unacceptable?

 

[ThinkDifferent]

I know it's quite low but thought it's just about in the range for a starting salary. They offer a one year training period and I thought it should go up afterwards. Do you think it's unacceptable?

if it's the only choice and you are short of money then sure, take it. it's something relevant to have on your CV afterall.

 

[biggsy]

if it's the only choice and you are short of money then sure, take it. it's something relevant to have on your CV afterall.

Thanks, ThinkDifferent! What do you think would an appropriate starting salary be? Is it normally negotiated after the offer?

 

[ThinkDifferent]

Thanks, ThinkDifferent! What do you think would an appropriate starting salary be? Is it normally negotiated after the offer?

if the company is based in London then you shouldn't consider anything less than 45K.

if you are working with a headhhunter then it's his job to negotiate your salary. otherwise, you should definitely negotiate before signing the offer since they already mentioned the number I assume they want to offer, so you should start negotiate now.

Also, ask DominicConnor on this forum, he will give you a professional advice

 

[DominiConnor]

First, where did you go, and what was your topic ?

Based upon what you say, I'm 90% confident that it is at best a QD position, for which you are superbly over qualified, so of coursethey are interested in you.

"They told me that the position would be in IT but very close to the Quants developing the models."
That's an industry standard lie.
You are either part of the quant team, or you are not. These are Abelian sets not Zadeh. Yes you will get to meet the quants. I've met Natalie Portman and most of the stars of the second Star Wars Trilogy at a charity event. That doesn't make me a Jedi, I would be surprised if any of those people even remembered who I was, though Miss Portman did scare my 6ft 1in godson so much that he hid behind me.

Some days ago they send me an offer as a “Quant Developer”. Salary £35k, small signing bonus. There wasn’t much more information

To an extent, that's all the information you need. 35K is an OK starting salary for a BSc level CompSci grad, but if my BSc level interns got offered that little, I'd regard myself has having not brought them up properly.

I wasn’t asked any technical questions at all. There were no programming and no maths questions, everything was competency-based. How should I interpret this?

Negatively.
There is no objective evidence that you can program at all. I'd rather hope you could, but as a graduate of a UK CS programme, I'd want to see if you'd ever tried to program, and would be delightfully surprised if you had. A good test is whether you've ever rendered a complex system unusable by an ill advised coding experiment.

They don't seem to care about this.

Since I have no background in finance and I would probably have to do some reading before being able to pass many QD interviews
It's a lot of reading. Aside from my scepticism that you can program, you'd need to learn C++, and/or F#, CUDA or maybe just C#. Then you'd have to learn numerical methods, I have found that for the majority of CS grads the interview question "when does x = x+1 ?" Leaves most speechless, that's before we get to Monte Carlo, FDM, FEM, et al.

But it can be done, many people have done that. It's tough.

" so this may be an opportunity to start working in the field and pick up some knowledge."
No it isn't.
You won't be taught much, and you can bet real money that if you show interest in anything outside fixing other people's code your manager will give you grief for "not focusing".

"Is the salary a bad sign with respect to the tasks involved "
No. They are paying for the sort of work done by an OK newbie CS grad.

or is it appropriate for an entry QD position? "
On the lower end of the distribution.

Should I try to negotiate?
No.
Getting to 40K won't make it a better job, it will be a mediocre job that pays better.
The key term is where 2-3 years of this will leave you, focus on the area under the curve of lifetime earnings, not the first derivative.

Be very clear here that I'm not telling you not to take this job...
I'm saying it is probably not a great option, but since I don't know your abilities it's entirely possible that it's the best offer you are going to get.
I think that's not the centre of the distribution since you have the sense to realise that it smells bad and to seek advice, but I can't be certain, since for some reason you seem to regard the name of your university and your field of studies as secrets.

For completeness, there are a few options that allow you to educate yourself to a level of a QD.

In London there are evening programs at Cass, Birkbeck and the CQF (where I am on the faculty in addition to my day job as a headhunter). These aren't cheap, and require serious chunks of your time on top of a job that will itself suck up most of it, together with your energy.

One negotiation you might try is to ask if they will sponsor you through them, since none are exactly cheap, but add value to you as an employee. Saying 'no' is not a very strong signal, but if they counter offer with sponsoring you for the CFA, in your particular case that is strongly negative. Ask them to explain what your "training" will be, odds are they will say something like "osmosis" ie, you will be near people who know what they are doing, maybe some of it will rub off.
Did you learn calculus that way ?
No.
I'd guess the most complex thing you've so far learned though osmosis is student level cooking.
Would people pay you to be a chef as a result ?
Probably not.

 

[biggsy]

Thanks for your detailed reply!

First, where did you go, and what was your topic ?
I'm doing a PhD at Imperial. My work involves mostly signal processing and machine learning.

Based upon what you say, I'm 90% confident that it is at best a QD position, for which you are superbly over qualified, so of coursethey are interested in you.
How does a QD differ from a normal developer/programmer? How much algorithmic work is usually involved? I think I would be quite happy with a position that involves some coding but also requires an understanding of the models used.

"They told me that the position would be in IT but very close to the Quants developing the models."
That's an industry standard lie.
I thought, the fact that they proposed to go for the QD position instead of the graduate program (which I applied for) makes it more credible. Is this wishful thinking?

"There were no programming and no maths questions. How should I interpret this?"
Negatively.
The interview process was quite complex with an online logic/maths test, telephone interview and 5 personal interviews. Why do they spend so much time and then don't ask highly technical questions? For any position, they should be interested in either the programming or maths part.

There is no objective evidence that you can program at all. They don't seem to care about this.
During a one-year industry placement after my MSc and during my PhD, I did quite some programming. Maybe having this on my CV convinced them...

You won't be taught much, and you can bet real money that if you show interest in anything outside fixing other people's code your manager will give you grief for "not focusing".
I thought, I would be able to at least learn some finance on the job and potentially read through some numerical books. Is this unrealistic? Do you think all I would be doing is to debug some code or do boring programming without thinking about the algorithms behind?

Be very clear here that I'm not telling you not to take this job...
I'm saying it is probably not a great option, but since I don't know your abilities it's entirely possible that it's the best offer you are going to get.
Would it lower my market value to do the job instead of trying to go for something 'better' right away? I would at least work in finance and would probably be able to pick up some of the relevant knowledge.

 

[biggsy]

Any more ideas on this? I need to make up my mind soon and I am still not sure what to do. Thanks!

 

[Steven]

I think what others have been saying is that if you didn't receive very positive reply from other interviews or even has difficulty in getting an interview, then you better accept the offer. It is better to get in the door at least. However if you feel OK in other interviews and interviews seem easy to come by then you may have more bargaining power and you can "choose" a better position.

 

[DominiConnor]

Signal processing at Imperial is generally worth more than 35K as a faux QD,
It sounds like you have at least the basics for an entry level algorithmic trading role, which in my experience never pay £35 K at entry level, it's either rather more or zero.

My public advice is to say no.
You say that you are still in your PhD, so there is no huge rush, and unless you are tragically shit at interviews or the economy crashes, someone will offer you at least that doing something at least as good.

A term missing from your conceptual framework is real option theory google on that.

A QD is different from a standard developer by the fact that he uses more maths in his work and is paid considerably more. QDs rarely use Java or other quiche languages. He also understands finance to a level >= Wilmott's introduction to quantitative finance.
That's actually part of my advice, you've got time, and optionality, use this to learn stuff that makes you more valuable.

They obviously like you, and I don't believe they are bad people, more like they don't actually know what to do with you.

Your interview process sounds odd. Occasionally newbie algo quant developers are clearly smart but have studied things far away from the job in hand. But when like you they've been close to the field they get attacked question of such spiteful complexity in things like C++ that I can't answer some of them,.

Some algotrading roles just specify 'really smart' so we don't filter hard to technical skills, but I agree it's just odd. A lot goes to what sort of person interviewed you, were they admin people or traders/quants ?

Of course they may be even more sceptical than I am about the shambolic mess that is CS education in the UK, and simply not bother to even try and measure the
ability of CS grads directly.

Given you've got a deadline, you might want to contact me directly, via dominic of PaulDominic.com

Be aware that I'm thin on the ground, today/tomorrow since our nanny has contracted pneumonia.