Quantitative Programmer-advice needed

[northernladuk]

The agent mentioned that Hedge fund companies are better than IBs if I consider going back to contracting again in the future. But if I want to become a senior director in the future, IB offers better career path than hedge fund companies. He also said that the pay in hedge fund is much better than IB.Is he right?

Thanks

Erm, I think you are in a pickle here. What exactly do you want to do? You have no chance of becoming a senior director from contracting. The fact you use the term senior director at all tells me you don't even appear to know what you are aiming for. Directors of large IB's/Pharma's etc are not asking questions about career choice in public forums IMO.

I also think you vision on what is out there is skewed and open to manipulation and at best shows a certain level of naivety. You can't base a career choice and aspirations on what your mate tells you. There are loads of career paths that you may be more suited to rather than picking one you think sounds nice. This isn't even mentioning the fact the advice comes from an agent!!

I think you need a good think about what you want long term and set yourself some achievable goals first and then ask for advice how to get there.

[BlasterBates]

A friend of mine is a perm quant dev/modeller for an IB and he said that the interview for his role was the hardest he had ever had.

He has a PHD in pure maths.

So be prepared.

Indeed I have been for an interview for one of these roles. It is extremely tough!!! Things like write a program to get out of maze, which actually is a neat simple recursive routine.

If they don't expect you to answer all the questions on financial derivatives or algo trading they will be stretching you on maths and statistics. So it is necessary to be on the ball. The agent should give a brief on what topics wll come up, and you need to gen up on it. You will be given problems to solve such as if it rains on one Wednesday in the month and the man wears a mac on every second Wednesday what's the probability he'll get wet (made it up but it's the sort of thing they ask).

[7of9]

Erm, I think you are in a pickle here. What exactly do you want to do? You have no chance of becoming a senior director from contracting. The fact you use the term senior director at all tells me you don't even appear to know what you are aiming for. Directors of large IB's/Pharma's etc are not asking questions about career choice in public forums IMO.

I also think you vision on what is out there is skewed and open to manipulation and at best shows a certain level of naivety. You can't base a career choice and aspirations on what your mate tells you. There are loads of career paths that you may be more suited to rather than picking one you think sounds nice. This isn't even mentioning the fact the advice comes from an agent!!

I think you need a good think about what you want long term and set yourself some achievable goals first and then ask for advice how to get there.

I was quoting the recruitment agent, not express my interest or my vision here! Please try to understand my post before you post!

He was trying to convince me that hedge fund companies are a better choice than IBs, which I am not sure its 100% true.

He also said the only scenario that IB is better choice is: someone wants to be a senior director, that means it has to be a permanent role. Because this is NOT what I want (I told him that I want to go back to contracting after gain enough experience), he suggested going for Hedge funds companies.

Again, I am not sure he is 100% right, hence the questions to people who knows hedge funds/IB! If I trust him completely like you think, I would not ask for advice at all! Is it not obvious to you, considering how smart you think you are?

If you know whether he is telling the truth or rubbish, please do share!

[7of9]

Indeed I have been for an interview for one of these roles. It is extremely tough!!! Things like write a program to get out of maze, which actually is a neat simple recursive routine.

If they don't expect you to answer all the questions on financial derivatives or algo trading they will be stretching you on maths and statistics. So it is necessary to be on the ball. The agent should give a brief on what topics wll come up, and you need to gen up on it. You will be given problems to solve such as if it rains on one Wednesday in the month and the man wears a mac on every second Wednesday what's the probability he'll get wet (made it up but it's the sort of thing they ask).

Thanks for the info. If I decide to get into the quant programming world, I will definitely read up (or even attending a course) on financial derivatives/statistics/algorithms =) So are you a quant developer now? Do you enjoy the work?

[BlasterBates]

Thanks for the info. If I decide to get into the quant programming world, I will definitely read up (or even attending a course) on financial derivatives/statistics/algorithms =) So are you a quant developer now? Do you enjoy the work?

I have to say I work on the cash side of the business, so we don't do exotics. Fairly plain fx, and interest rate derivatives. I wouldn't mind having a go at something more demanding. To be honest most of the challenge is in trying get performance out the system, and making sure it's reliable, which is typical on the cash side; simple derivatives but high volume, as opposed to exotics which is far more involved mathematically but fairly low volume. No stochastic models in our system I'm afraid. Though I have learnt all that stuff so I can do OK in the interviews.

Working on the cash side can be an entry route into the real "he man exotic" stuff because in principle a complex derivative is still the same as a simple one, just uses more algorithms.

Anyway if you want to learn you need to read and understand the following book:


Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives

This is the bible (chapter 1 to 7 covers the cash side, the rest is "exotic"). It's helpful if you've had some accountancy training and you understand the idea of discounted cash flows. ie. a pound in a year is worth less than a pound now because you can invest a pound now and it's worth 1 pound plus the interest.

And if you're really keen here is an open source Quant library:

http://quantlib.org/index.shtml

You can download it and see how a quant app actually works. Just execute some of the more simple test programs. Very useful to actually see how you can implement this stuff.

Actually comes on a CD with this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Modeling-Deriv...9762606&sr=8-1

[7of9]

I have to say I work ...Anyway if you want to learn you need to read and understand the following book:


Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives

This is the bible (chapter 1 to 7 covers the cash side, the rest is "exotic"). It's helpful if you've had some accountancy training and you understand the idea of discounted cash flows. ie. a pound in a year is worth less than a pound now because you can invest a pound now and it's worth 1 pound plus the interest.

And if you're really keen here is an open source Quant library:

...

Thank you so much for your advice, BlasterBates. really appreciated your help.