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I'm a bit surprised to hear it put this way. Aren't physics students usually welcome in finance as quants?

(1) Most don't want to be quants. It's a soul-sucking no work-life-balance career path. You're getting paid better, but it's a hyper-abusive work environment.

(2) Quant hiring is super-competitive. most physics students wouldn't get jobs. A lot of quants are physicists, but the converse isn't true.

(3) And students? Not so much. Quants like to hire Ph.Ds or possibly ABDs.

Ones who are ALSO good programmers can go the CS route, but most aren't. You need to do basic programming to do physics, but not industry-grade software engineering.

Most employed programmers can't do "industry grade engineering". Physics grad students are plenty capable, with a boot camp if needed.

It's not a hard set of skills for physics grad students to pick up, but it's a bit more than a boot camp. Most of the deep stuff is there. There's a lot of shallow stuff at this point, though.

Most don't want to do the work (not implying laziness -- it's about interest / fit / etc.).

There are definitely unpleasant quant shops. But there are pleasant ones, too. Interviewing with shops is like asking people to dance. If you stop after the first rejection, you're doing it wrong.

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