- Joined
- 3/15/20
- Messages
- 10
- Points
- 13
Hi all,
I'm a software engineer in Investment Bank (think JPM, GS, MS) back office in Bengaluru, India. (money is great specially for a fresher living in india)
In undergrad I majored in Computer Science. With an 8.43/10 CGPA. (3.7/4 on the US grading scale? Referred from an online source)
I have cleared CFA Level 1 recently.
I'm not a huge fan of the software engineering industry as a whole, atleast the way I'm seeing it in my firm. The culture i've seen at work is that as a fresher you're involved in a good amount of coding and design of small systems for the first 1.5-2 years and from thereon, you eventually start overseeing work of your juniors or contractors, with your own tasks lined up for you to deliver on as well.
The amount of responsibilities and pressure keeps increasing. So does the team's dependency on you. I look at my managers and other VPs who are leading teams and the work they are doing is not very fulfilling. They thrive solely due to the fact that they have been working on these systems for years so they know the jargons whcih they can throw around here and there and sound like they know a lot. But ultimately, with time, a software engineer in an investment bank ends up working under a ton of pressure to deliver and developing no special set of skills or a specialization.
On conversing with my colleagues, i got to know more about quant finance and how the real technical subjects like CS and Math play a great role when working on the same. Such research/applying research based tasks is something i definetly wont get to work on without doing a relevant masters (i dont even know if any phd program will even consider me).
I've always wanted to develop a specialized skill that would stand out from the masses and quant finance (financial engineering) really seems to lighten my hopes up of acquring the same.
I've been going through Hull's book on derivatives and its been gripping from the start.
I believe internally moving to FO quant roles within GS is not possible solely because of the fact that I see several strat analysts being stuck with leftover work they get to work on and really not getting many opportunities to be called onshore. Because of the fact that most of them solely have a bachelors and their MBAs/ other master degrees dont hold much value to the higher ups in US.
I'd like this community to provide your views on my line of thinking. Feel free to counter/suugest/add on to my points. Let me know if my qualifications would help in securing good MFE schools. Or if there are other better alternatives to get to where i see myself in the future.
I'm a software engineer in Investment Bank (think JPM, GS, MS) back office in Bengaluru, India. (money is great specially for a fresher living in india)
In undergrad I majored in Computer Science. With an 8.43/10 CGPA. (3.7/4 on the US grading scale? Referred from an online source)
I have cleared CFA Level 1 recently.
I'm not a huge fan of the software engineering industry as a whole, atleast the way I'm seeing it in my firm. The culture i've seen at work is that as a fresher you're involved in a good amount of coding and design of small systems for the first 1.5-2 years and from thereon, you eventually start overseeing work of your juniors or contractors, with your own tasks lined up for you to deliver on as well.
The amount of responsibilities and pressure keeps increasing. So does the team's dependency on you. I look at my managers and other VPs who are leading teams and the work they are doing is not very fulfilling. They thrive solely due to the fact that they have been working on these systems for years so they know the jargons whcih they can throw around here and there and sound like they know a lot. But ultimately, with time, a software engineer in an investment bank ends up working under a ton of pressure to deliver and developing no special set of skills or a specialization.
On conversing with my colleagues, i got to know more about quant finance and how the real technical subjects like CS and Math play a great role when working on the same. Such research/applying research based tasks is something i definetly wont get to work on without doing a relevant masters (i dont even know if any phd program will even consider me).
I've always wanted to develop a specialized skill that would stand out from the masses and quant finance (financial engineering) really seems to lighten my hopes up of acquring the same.
I've been going through Hull's book on derivatives and its been gripping from the start.
I believe internally moving to FO quant roles within GS is not possible solely because of the fact that I see several strat analysts being stuck with leftover work they get to work on and really not getting many opportunities to be called onshore. Because of the fact that most of them solely have a bachelors and their MBAs/ other master degrees dont hold much value to the higher ups in US.
I'd like this community to provide your views on my line of thinking. Feel free to counter/suugest/add on to my points. Let me know if my qualifications would help in securing good MFE schools. Or if there are other better alternatives to get to where i see myself in the future.
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