
In Battle to Recruit New Quants, Hedge Funds Outpay Banks - Bostonian
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-battle-to-recruit-new-quants-hedge-funds-outpay-banks-11577646001
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JumpCrisscross
> _recent graduates working at hedge funds made significantly more than their
> peers working at banks_

This has always been true, for the entirety of my career. Buy side pays more
than sell side for alpha-generating activities. (Sell side pays more for flow
and scaling advantages.)

This article strikes me as a submarine [1] for Baruch’s program.

[1]
[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

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jgalt212
seriously, no disrespect to Baruch, but if Baruch grads are making up to $1MM,
are MIT grades making $5MM?

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markoman
Considering that QuantNet ranks Baruch's Financial Eng program #2 (behind
Princeton's) and that MIT ranks #10, I'd say you may be jumping to
conclusions...

[https://quantnet.com/mfe-programs-rankings/](https://quantnet.com/mfe-
programs-rankings/)

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melling
What does a quant do? Machine learning, linear regression, moving averages?
Lots of statistics on time series data?

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npo9
Furthermore, what is a good way to become a quant?

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tansey
The type of quants talked about in this article probably has a PhD in math,
stats, CS (with a focus on machine learning), or something similar.

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sukilot
and especially _physics_ , since financial modeling is based on physical
modeling.

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curiousgal
Well not directly, it's just that they both make use of stochastic calculus.

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melling
Any good MOOCs, etc for the topic?

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RookyNumbas
Hedge Funds have always paid quants significantly better.

In the past decade or so many banks have built out their engineering teams.
Goldman is now 25% engineers. More recently these banks have started to
compete with hedge funds for the same quant talent that can better take
advantage of their new technical prowess. But the comparatively strict
compensation structure still means you can make a lot more on the buy side.

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ajaalto
Quant here. I used to be a seismologist but switched to finance one year ago.
This year I earned well below 100k€.

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ck425
Out of curiosity how did you switch to being a quant?

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amiga_500
Because the west is collapsing as rentier work dominates over true wealth
creation!

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finolex1
Would you rather that resources be allocated blindly? The fact that some
people can live comfortably off their investments does not mean that the very
investments themselves do not create wealth. Hedge funds do the latter, it's
up to the government and society to decide on the former - i.e. how to
distribute this wealth.

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amiga_500
Resources are being allocated into a bubble, because every time the market
falls the Fed prints money via QE.

Hedge funds aren't looking for companies doing valuable work, they are trying
to figure out if Powell will print more, or gaming Bank of England APIs.

The system is not functioning.

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caymanjim
Not going to fight the paywall to read the article, but as a developer
consultant (not a quant), hedge fund clients pay better across the board than
both commercial and investment banks. They tend to be small shops, so it's not
really a fair comparison. I've worked for boutique hedge funds, market makers,
wealth management funds, pension funds, and two huge investment banks. The
small hedge funds pay a lot more and the work is more interesting and less
bureaucratic. Just my anecdotal take.

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fishingisfun
do they also work you more?

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caymanjim
No. Working hard is almost always counter-productive.

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CodeSheikh
Is Financial Engineering still relevant these days? I thought it is all Data
Science now.

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natalyarostova
Nah, most data scientists don’t know stochastic calc, even if they are capable
of learning it.

