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Have a look at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1435450 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1435450 I'm actually going the other way from low-latency pric

by ig1 16y ago

Have a look at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1435450 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1435450 I'm actually going the other way from low-latency pricing/trading to the startup world. And with that move I'm accepting that chances are I'll make less money at my startup than I could working in finance. But money's less important than you think it is, it has diminishing returns. The difference between $30,000 and $50,000 can be a huge impact to the quality of your life, the difference between $180,000 and $200,000 is barely noticeable. Once you have enough money to live comfortably extra money essentially just means a bigger house or a nicer car, which in the overall scheme of things have fairly minimal impact on your happiness. Also it can have other negative externalities, do you really want to be worried if the girl you started dating actually likes you or is just attracted by the fact you work for a prop fund ? - and I'm not kidding about this, on one online careers advice forum where I helped out (hence my background is somewhat public) I regularly got hit on by girls who are obviously interested in me because of my job (no that's not a good thing). Basically what I'm saying is don't do it purely for the money, if it's what you're passionate about then do it, but if your passion lies elsewhere then follow it.

zmmz 16y ago
I have to second this. If you consider the industry very "interesting" then go for it, but I would say think wisely about it. Finance is one of the most self-indulgent industries out there (more so even then something like Art), you will be spending a lot of time with a lot of people that spend their time thinking about either how to make money (usually trying to find a way of cheating the system) or people who have already made their money and are now preachers of the free market. I would recommend that you go check them out for a week if you can, especially if you are new to finance. It's not for everybody. Check out a few of the popular blogs (FT Alphaville is a good one) and see if you would be capable of living in that world. The same way that hackers love to code and talk nothing else, quants talk markets and nothing else.

by ig1 16y ago

zmmz 16y ago

I have to second this. If you consider the industry very "interesting" then go for it, but I would say think wisely about it. Finance is one of the most self-indulgent industries out there (more so even then something like Art), you will be spending a lot of time with a lot of people that spend their time thinking about either how to make money (usually trying to find a way of cheating the system) or people who have already made their money and are now preachers of the free market. I would recommend that you go check them out for a week if you can, especially if you are new to finance. It's not for everybody. Check out a few of the popular blogs (FT Alphaville is a good one) and see if you would be capable of living in that world. The same way that hackers love to code and talk nothing else, quants talk markets and nothing else.