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I'm not convinced that smart people gravitate to quant roles. The hours may be longer on the "soft" side but it is more prestigious and the work is less taxing
by foobarqux 12y ago
I'm not convinced that smart people gravitate to quant roles. The hours may be longer on the "soft" side but it is more prestigious and the work is less taxing and doesn't require continually learning new skills.
I don't know how you can enter "soft" finance at the VP level.
> Absolutely. This is completely true. Any idea what we should do about this in engineering? (Or just call it hopeless and exit for finance?)
I think the ship has sailed for many people, you can't get into PE or non-quant HF mid-career. When I was younger I often thought along the lines of "if only everybody..." but I realized the hard way that it is much easier to change yourself than to change the world.
When I give advice to smart kids entering college I tell them they should strongly consider targeting PE/HF: If they hate it they will know from experience and still have superlative exit ops, trivially able to land a management/executive-track job at a tech company or elsewhere.
- michaelochurch 12y agoWhen I give advice to smart kids entering college I tell them they should strongly consider targeting PE/HF: If they hate it they will know from experience and still have superlative exit ops, trivially able to land a management/executive-track job at a tech company or elsewhere. This is not a comment on what you're saying (I don't think you're far off) but it's pretty disturbing a reflection on tech that executive roles in our companies are what finance people fail into. Most tech management and VC is failed finance/business guys who failed down into those roles, not programmers who worked their way up the ranks. The latter almost never happens, to tell the truth.
- foobarqux 12y agoYup, definitely something I didn't understand when I started out which is why I make an effort to inform others in college.