Comment by boston_quant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boston_quant | Hacker News Reader

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What industry are you in?

Quantitative finance

How much are you making?

155k in salary, 100k - 250k in bonus and equity grants.

Is your income stable or volatile?

Salary's been very stable, bonus fluctuates a bit more dependent on the vagaries of the market.

Where do you live?

I live in Boston.

How long did it take to get to your level?

5 years.

What kind of work do you do?

Trading signal research, statistics, machine learning, discrete optimization. Also a lot of time working on infrastructure, operations, and communicating with different stakeholders.

Do you enjoy it, or is it the stereotypical "highly paid because it's crappy" work?

I enjoy it. The work-life balance is great(40 hour weeks), and I work with smart people on interesting problems.

Is this a short-lived opportunity, or do you expect it to exist in 5 years?

Jobs like this will definitely exist in 5 years.

What would your advice be to a 20-year-old aspiring developer? 25? 30?

The world is your oyster if you can master the following:

- doing difficult technical things - knowing the business side of things well and always working towards good outcomes for everyone involved. - communicating well, both in person and in writing - working independently on original, important ideas that are germane to the business activity you're involved with - being friendly, positive, and easy to work with

It also probably helps to pick companies and industries where you're appreciated for all of those things.

300k for 40 hours a week in quant finance after 5 years in Boston? You are very lucky indeed. Most people don't make this much after 5 years in New York and usually work much more.

I'd be the first to tell you I'm very lucky, on a number of levels -- getting a position in the first place, stumbling into a firm with a healthy attitude towards work volume, etc. I mainly wanted to get a data point out there for others.

To answer some of the other downthread questions:

- Educational background: Ivy League, comp sci major and math minor. I wasn't the smartest person in any of my classes, but I got my work done well and didn't blow it off.

- I didn't have any connections that helped me get in, but had been pretty interested in the markets for a long time.

- As for chances of getting in, I'd say that it's definitely still possible but harder than it was. Most of the quant finance firms draw from the same pool of seniors graduating from highly selective colleges, and mostly just the good programmers from that group. Finance is also pretty cyclical in its hiring -- most firms were probably hiring record numbers of people right before the financial crisis.

I still have a copy of the cover letter I sent to apply for a job in structured credit products at Bear Stearns.

Similar story here - developer at NYC HFT shop making $180k base + about the same in bonus and equity grants.

The work is mostly very interesting, low-latency java programming, distributed systems, etc on a small highly capable team. 40-50 hours per week.

If you're unable to expand on your role, that's fine, but as this is a huge interest of mine, I'm willing to take a shot.

What sort of problems do you attempt to solve? How much risk are you allowed to take? How much return is expected? Is it true that most quants are ungodly intelligent and frequently come from PhDs in science?

Curious what is your educational background?

No idea about parent's background but in my experience those jobs are almost impossible to get if you are not already "inside". HFT is probably the most competitive part of finance for software engineers and the market is not expanding anymore. Same goes for other kinds of quantitative trading, but they generally pay less and are less competitive nowadays.

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