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Quant development aspirations

Joined
11/23/11
Messages
103
Points
128
Hi to all of you. Something has been bothering my mind lately and I decided that this is the best place to ask for answers.

So here is the situation. I am about to graduate from a top 4 UK uni with MSc in CS (hopefully). My main desire is to ultimately be employed in a quant developer role in a hedge fund or a prop trading shop in the UK. As of right now I have secured two roles. One is within the technology department of major investment bank and the other one is a trading technology role in a major oil and gas company. Both roles are in London. For various reasons I have decided to pursue the second opportunity.

My question is whether a role like this would equip me in the long term with the experience needed to join the kind of firm I mentioned above. I understand that big companies offer a lot of opportunities for growing up and getting into management positions etc, but at this stage of my life I am really interested in becoming the best developer I can be. I am very attracted to the idea of working in a small team developing high performance code for trading systems , etc. I know that for this particular kind of work top notch programming skills are required. Do you think that the above mentioned opportunities would equip me with those skills. If not what do you think is the road to such a career path ?
 
you have big aspirations. that's good. when you start work maybe you'll see things differently. good luck!
 
No aspirations are too grand, if you've got a little knowledge, experience and luck.

The second job seems (from your very very brief descriptions) to me, to be the better choice.
 
Than you a lot. I hope I do not end up in a position where there is a learning curve that is not steep enough for those kind of aspirations.
 
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