The problem is that it's more like sports than math/science: a tug-of-war (zero-sum game) instead of win-win. You're pitting your intelligence against the inte

The problem is that it's more like sports than math/science: a tug-of-war (zero-sum game) instead of win-win. You're pitting your intelligence against the intelligence of other quants (not against the complexity of some natural system or something). You have 3 phds? they bring in 4. You bring in 6? they bring in 10. You bring the processing down to 50ms, they go 45ms; you go 5ms, they go 2ms. The game never ends. It's even more depressing when you realize that, even if you win, you're essentially propping up, what I like to call, a "fluff market", instead of adding-value the way Silicon Valley and the manufacturing industry does.