I know this is a ridiculous questions- are any of you quants?

I work with quants.
Most of them are PhD in Maths, Physics or Computer Science.

What do they do? They build financial models in Python, C++ or C#.


Feel free to ask more questions.

>>1707750

Do I need to go to an ivy league school or could I get my PhD from a public school? If I have two undergrads would a masters do? Is it realistic to anticipate high six figures from this job? I like the job description and would probably do it for much less, but knowing how much you're worth seems to be more important than people give it credit.

>>1707759
Ivy leage PhD is a bread and butter way. Studying at Ivy will give you a lot of contacts and many companies hire there on campus.

However PhD from a public school is very good too. I'd say that the most important thing is how you manage during your interviews.

Ivy leagues give you some edge mostly because you will be referred by someone and you will know where are you applying. However if you network properly, ace your interview and you will have some nice portfolio of achievements you will land it for sure.
If you have some projects on github - show them. If you did a scientific paper - share it with them. Gain the experience now. Register at quantopian and start tinkering. Master NumPy. Find your niche. Maybe algo trading, maybe derivatives modeling. Read the books, model it on your own, gain experience.
I'm sure everyone will take someone with experience over ivy freshmen.

If you're applying to some smaller boutique firm you can also apply for other roles (like junior software developer, junior risk manager or even trading support guy), make friends with quants and switch roler. Also in boutique you need to be more jack-of-all-trades kind of guy.

Cash depends on your experience. Pretty much the more complex instruments/strategies you model - the more you should get paid.

>>1707794

I already work in corporate finance as a programmer(SQL, C#, Webshit), I'm an intern. The company I work for isn't an investment-facing group. Are there any projects I could start working on now to get an advantage?

Also, where are you located? I'm in Silicon Valley. Do you know of any good quant firms here or should I plan on moving to NY?

>>1707794
Not OP, but would it be possible to get a quant position with just an undergrad, obviously with the programming experience. I'm majoring in finance and applied mathematics and go to a top school in Australia/Asia Pacific.

>>1707813
I'm from EU. Consulting company from US. IR and FX derivatives.

Basically a lot of firms that hire quants are located everywhere in US. You know - people ditch NYC after some time and open a small shop with their friends in a more enjoyable place. I'd say do the search on your own.

If you are interning with SQL and C# it's very nice already. Try either to find some niche you'd enjoy in finance or check what kind of roles are open now and prepare for them.

Check this website:
https://www.quantstart.com/quant-finance-101

Even though I'm not a quant, I've been using some books from this list and I say that this list is very, very solid.
ps. Machine Learning is now getting more and more trendy. Learn it now, brag about it on your linkedin, you should get some offers sooner or later.

>>1707849

I've done light ML stuff in R for my Econ UG, I did it at work with this business intelligence package too to predict what next years profits were maybe going to look like, but I haven't taken any formal ML classes. I was thinking in majoring in ML, but everyone says Financial Engineering is the way to go.

yes, starting my own black box is the endgame, but for now I need to focus on learning and making money.

>>1707839

Lots of people go in from undergrad but have some form of experience and a good problem solving toolset, a PhD makes it much easier to get there though.

>>1707907

Stop thinking 100% full-on finance bro. Learn more about ML, AI, Deep Learning etc. They're massive buzzwords right now and you could land some seriously big gigs by having an in-depth knowledge regarding them.

Let's put it this way, mankind is approaching a era where we are investing more money and time into AI as the resources, research and technological capability to do so are there. I read that our tech. capabilities treble each year - with the emergence of big data, IoT, AI, ML etc. we could easily be on the verge on seeing our capabilities multiply by hundreds each year.

E.g. Cancer has been researched into for years and years and years, with very little successful progress, losing countless lives and spending trillions in the process. Now, imagine we have an AI which knows everything about medicine, chemistry, biology etc. If we train that AI on big data deriving from cancer cases (lets say throat cancer) then we could program the AI to run simulations on cures. We don't currently have the capability to do this on a feasible scale, but once we do, an AI would be able to run thousands of simulations of day and come to a cure in a matter of days or weeks. Now imagine we run another simulation by using the data gathered from the patients with that disease to create a virtual replica of that individual - we then have a batch of virtual test subjects, eliminating the need for dangerous and lengthy trials. A cure could go from creation to deployment in a matter of months.

The applications of AI are unbelievable and ground-breaking, there will be no need for financial engineers in 20 years. Get in on the buzz now and you will be making some serious bank where ever you go

>>1707983

ML as we know it is just translating functions into better functions to handle the amount of data within them. We don't actually have computers that think and we're very far off from there. We can parse sentences, but can't really have the computer interpret that.

I know AI is the hot new thing, but that future is definitely further away than 20 years.

What I do know is that automation is taking lots of jobs. Those low-level office jobs? Automated. Call centers? Soon to be automated. What about unskilled labor? Forklifts, Big rigs, etc. All automated.

I know most people's vision of the future is all people being paid UBI and not needing to work, but that's far away and the future I'm going to live investment will be the only "true" way to make money. Also, as far as "AI" is concerned, the companies that dump the most into ML are usually banks or investment groups- unless you want to make some token app for your phone that will speak to people and explain bullshit off the front page of google.

Check these quants my man.

I've only ever met one Quant. He studied finance at UVA. Went into investment banking at a firm in DC. Went back to UVA for his MBA. Went back to work for few more years before moving to Hawaii to start a business. That failed and he moved back to DC and went back to school again for computer science at George Mason while being an investment adviser at a credit union. He then got an internship at a quant fund and got hired after graduating.

He was my Uncle's child hood best friend. He's just a normal person. Not a genius. Not a nerd. He never really explains what he does at his job though. He always beats around the bush. But I know that he makes around $220k a year, lives in a nice condo, drives a meme Porshe, and has a model tier Hawaiian wife