Starting career in buy-side or sell-side ?

[Bipeumania]

Hello everyone. I was fortunate enough to receive internship offers from both banks and hedge funds. I am currently trying to decide where I should go and would be very grateful to have your input.

HF are similar to [Millennium, Squarepoint, Balyasny], banks are similar to [GS, MS, JPMC].

For now I'm leaning towards the buy-side, as the internship compensation is way better and I want to pay back my tuition fees as soon as possible. I also feel like having a big HF on the resume weights more than a big bank. However I am afraid that I will potentially be focusing on a very specific signal/strategy in a small team and won't learn as much. I'm also concerned about growth prospects, as I heard that banks pay less than HFs for juniors but quickly catch up as you gain seniority.

I would be happy if you could challenge my preconceived ideas and share your advice with me. Thank you in advance for your advices !

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Congrats. This is excellent given how competitive it is to get these offers.
It's true that many MFE grads dream of getting into buy-side roles. It seems like MFE programs have been training people for sell-side roles for too long.
I'm curious to hear what people familiar with these firms have to say.
Maybe @QuantCoach can give some comments.

 

[weab]

What are the roles?

 

[Bipeumania]

What are the roles?

HF : Quant Research
Bank : Sales & Trading

I don't have a lot of details on what I'll be doing in either case, but I guess it will be small projects (maybe data cleaning & preprocessing ?)

 

[weab]

HF : Quant Research
Bank : Sales & Trading

I don't have a lot of details on what I'll be doing in either case, but I guess it will be small projects (maybe data cleaning & preprocessing ?)

Nice. Like Andy said most people want to go to buyside for better pay and more interesting work. I would just take the HF offer.

 

[QuantCoach]

I’m biased but I would easily take the buyside. Pay is much higher, growth is better, more opportunities, work is more interesting, it’s a lot more meritocratic, a lot less politics, the role is more respected as it’s harder to get, coworkers are generally more sharp and driven, things move a lot faster and I can push things directly to prod without jumping through hoops and going through a lengthy approval process. Downsides are you typically have to work a lot harder, stress is usually higher, turnover is generally higher, there are very high expectations (they don’t pay us so much for nothing) and you’re expected to pick things up very quickly