5 ms·

What FAANG are you at that's more stressful than being a quant?!

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
FAANG sorted by stressfulness decreasing is N>>>AAF>G, from what I hear. So if they're working for N, this wouldn't be too surprising.
- Bahamut 7y ago
  Everything I hear from friends at all these companies is that for stress, Amazon > Apple > Netflix > Facebook > Google. Netflix seems far less stressful than Apple from everything I've heard from employees that have worked at both.
  - _jal 7y ago
    Think it really depends on where you land. I think everyone agrees that Google is easy-mode; beyond that, it depends on which group you're in. Two friends at Apple illustrate: one says he does basically nothing but surf the web, the other last I heard is is nearly sleeping under his desk in a crunch.
  - pertymcpert 7y ago
    The impression I got was that Netflix was a very cut-throat environment due to their propensity to fire people quickly. I can't speak for all roles at either company, but Apple doesn't seem to have that reputation.
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
Most of them are. Quant jobs are often highly academic. Basically the same project structure as FAANG but never any deadlines. Banks are where the arbitrary high stress jobs reside, and then certain specific companies that choose to enforce stress culture, like GSAM and Citadel. But most have normal 9-5 hours, few deadlines, autonomy, project self-selection.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  Maybe I don't really understand what a quant does, but I imagine it would be stressful because if you make a mistake I imagine it could have huge financial consequences. That's true at FAANG, too, but maybe just cause I know how things work there it doesn't seem like something I need to worry about very much.
  - Bubbadoo 7y ago
    Most quants are copying their friends algos any way. At least until that model doesn't work. Not too much stress there.
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    Like most software, quant investing models are usually separated from production systems when being created and undergo integration testing, back testing, etc., and have all sorts of automatic and manual revert capabilities in the deploy systems. Not much different than shipping something broken to millions of users and needing to triage a rollback. Of course there are outlier firms that play fast and loose and can have risk of huge sudden losses that can’t be stemmed, but most firms do risk management as a core part of their purpose for existing, and this applies to risk of bad code / bad model just like anything else.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
      Yeah, but even with integration & unit tests, people regularly miss some corner case. Again, maybe I just don't know enough about how it works, or maybe I just know enough about what I do -- but every once in a while you make some catastrophic mistake that takes done Google or Facebook for a few minutes -- the only cost you incur is opportunity. The same mistake at Knight Capital cost them like $500M in 15 minutes or something crazy. So, taken a step further, the little bugs that regularly make it into Google that cause 1% of requests to 500 on some service is a big deal, the opportunity cost can exceed your salary for years. I imagine the same thing is true in trading, except it's not opportunity -- it's real money. That just seems way more stressful to me, but maybe it just doesn't happen very often, or the test coverage is taken much more seriously, and it's better.

FAANG sorted by stressfulness decreasing is N>>>AAF>G, from what I hear. So if they're working for N, this wouldn't be too surprising.

Bahamut 7y ago
Everything I hear from friends at all these companies is that for stress, Amazon > Apple > Netflix > Facebook > Google. Netflix seems far less stressful than Apple from everything I've heard from employees that have worked at both.
- _jal 7y ago
  Think it really depends on where you land. I think everyone agrees that Google is easy-mode; beyond that, it depends on which group you're in. Two friends at Apple illustrate: one says he does basically nothing but surf the web, the other last I heard is is nearly sleeping under his desk in a crunch.
- pertymcpert 7y ago
  The impression I got was that Netflix was a very cut-throat environment due to their propensity to fire people quickly. I can't speak for all roles at either company, but Apple doesn't seem to have that reputation.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

Most of them are. Quant jobs are often highly academic. Basically the same project structure as FAANG but never any deadlines. Banks are where the arbitrary high stress jobs reside, and then certain specific companies that choose to enforce stress culture, like GSAM and Citadel. But most have normal 9-5 hours, few deadlines, autonomy, project self-selection.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Maybe I don't really understand what a quant does, but I imagine it would be stressful because if you make a mistake I imagine it could have huge financial consequences. That's true at FAANG, too, but maybe just cause I know how things work there it doesn't seem like something I need to worry about very much.
- Bubbadoo 7y ago
  Most quants are copying their friends algos any way. At least until that model doesn't work. Not too much stress there.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  Like most software, quant investing models are usually separated from production systems when being created and undergo integration testing, back testing, etc., and have all sorts of automatic and manual revert capabilities in the deploy systems. Not much different than shipping something broken to millions of users and needing to triage a rollback. Of course there are outlier firms that play fast and loose and can have risk of huge sudden losses that can’t be stemmed, but most firms do risk management as a core part of their purpose for existing, and this applies to risk of bad code / bad model just like anything else.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    Yeah, but even with integration & unit tests, people regularly miss some corner case. Again, maybe I just don't know enough about how it works, or maybe I just know enough about what I do -- but every once in a while you make some catastrophic mistake that takes done Google or Facebook for a few minutes -- the only cost you incur is opportunity. The same mistake at Knight Capital cost them like $500M in 15 minutes or something crazy. So, taken a step further, the little bugs that regularly make it into Google that cause 1% of requests to 500 on some service is a big deal, the opportunity cost can exceed your salary for years. I imagine the same thing is true in trading, except it's not opportunity -- it's real money. That just seems way more stressful to me, but maybe it just doesn't happen very often, or the test coverage is taken much more seriously, and it's better.