Quant

Just gonna make this post since I see a lot of people want to get into this industry, mostly for money. This is a collection of things in rough order of importance. I'd encourage anybody really interested to read it. # Recruiting is brutal and will take a toll on you I've been trying at this for like three years at this point. Finally got in this year to a place I'd wanna work for. I have like... maybe one friend and a significant other. The friend thing really is a maybe I don't go out. I don't do things. I've missed birthday parties and family stuff to do brainteasers and Leetcode. I kind of hate it and hate myself. None of these skills are useful/transferable and I did them just to get a job. I'm great at interviews at this point, but I've overdeveloped this one thing at the expense of basically everything else and it's made me miserable. I don't even know how to have fun anymore. All my hobbies are gone and even the fact that I have a job doesn't make me happy now. I'd honestly be way more depressed than I already am if I didn't have my partner, like honestly everyone needs someone to talk to and grab you ass once in a while and if I didn't have that I would have gone insane. And this has been going on for three years at this point. Keep that number in mind. It's also just very random. Who gets a job and who doesn't is dumb. I've been OA screened at some D tier firms and gotten to final rounds at some A tiers. It's way more luck than anyone wants to admit. # Do not work for a company called Citadel Ask about retention in every interview. What percent of interns get to return? What percent accept? What's tenure like on the team? A lot of quant firms treat people as disposable until they generate PnL. This includes interns. I have a lot of friends in quant, many firms are planning on cutting half the people they hire. Especially at prop shops and Citadel and some others, many people are burned out after literally three months of work, let alone three years. There is a reason everyone quits even though the pay is so good. You are not special/smart enough to coast anymore, especially not at this level. And for the people who stay, reread the stuff point above. I think a lot of them are miserable. These companies are exploiting your dreams and it is so easy for them to do because people let them do it. This is not a hard rule. A common saying is that "good teams" exist at every company, which is true. However good teams have less turnover, and therefore hire less, and have even higher standards because they are good teams. Just mathematically, your odds of being on one of these "good teams" is low. Your control of where you are as an intern is also usually low. Keep that in mind. This isn't true of everywhere by the way, some companies are quite nice across the board! Citadel is not though. # I'm a bad person Yes, me specifically, and you are too if you want one of these jobs. They exist to make rich people richer. Any arguments to the contrary are either dumb, missing obvious points, or deeply flawed. Yes this is true of tech companies as well, but at least they provide services that are for everyone that people want to have and use. This is a service purely for the wealthy. Anyone smart enough to get one of these jobs could do real good for the world and instead they're choosing to sell out in the worst way, regardless of excuses to the contrary. It's really just kind of disgraceful and I almost don't even know why I want this any more. Like most quant researchers could do ACTUAL research. -Common arguments to the contrary : but market makers make stocks cheaper by reducing bid/ask spread! Yep, this is true. But spreads on everything are already around a cent. This might've been a good point when spreads were five bucks, but now that spreads are a cent they aren't going any lower. You're mostly just making money. Active trading is bad for individuals anyway, and encouraging it is probably net harmful. -Pension funds invest in hedge funds too! Yep, true. But it's mostly the rich individuals both in terms of dollar value and in terms of relative allocation. And more dumb stuff people tell themselves to sleep. Just admit you're in it for the money and move on. Addendum to this point : people in quant frequently run the spectrum of personality types and backgrounds, but most are wildly privileged. These people are way richer than "normal" people and the backgrounds look a lot like anything else on Wall Street, just the nerdier kids. And a lot of quant people are also bad people! Always remember in life, it's very easy to be nice when your life is easy. Quant firms have the same backstabbing and politics as everywhere else, and most people don't give a fuck about charity or the 99%. It's very easy to be basically decent and humble when you're making millions of dollars a year, working 40 hours a week. I would also argue that the more you have, the more responsibility you have to do something with it other than buy a fifth house. Fuck me for being a socialist I guess. # The problems are more interesting Nope, try again. Actually I've worked in Big Tech before, and most people are interested in that experience and want me to do similar things for them. It's not that different from a comparable job at Facebook or Google or whatever. This is just a dumb argument. Tech stacks are tech stacks. # Stop sharing interview questions It reduces your chances. People usually want to interview you again if you did decent, and questions don't change much year to year. By telling your buddies what will be asked, you are hurting your own future chances. Also the people who form cheating rings for this stuff make me sick in general. Stop trading questions with each other just to get a job. You're the worst type of people. I will say though, cheating is pretty rampant in these interviews and a lot of people I will be working with/for probably cheated their way in. Go read The Man Who Solved the Market, this even happened at Renaissance. Cheaters do frequently prosper. # Closing thoughts IDK, I guess this wraps it up. Happy to take any questions.