Hum... as someone who's also in the general proximity of 'there' (maybe the other side of the street), banks have only a few TA guys and lots of quants. Not sure why you would lump the two together.
IMO, there's a lot of overlap between what is TA and what is Quant in terms of strategies/prop (not pricing) - the distinction probably lies in levels of sophistication (and arguably, not effectiveness). m2c. How would you distinguish?
Philosophically, I see TA as quant without the rigor of analysis (this is obviously my personal bias showing). Practically, I've never seen any saleside with more than a handful of TA analysts. Certain, the ratio is TA analyst/quant analyst is pretty lop sided. On that point, I don't believe anyone hires a quant based on whether or not he has a CMT.
One thing I've noticed: quants don't seem to believe in directional trading. Everything is arbitrage and hedging, or so it seems.
What's more fun than making money? Either directional trading works or it doesn't. I believe it works, like most other TAers. I go to a quant site and all I see is pairs trading, arbs, options, swaps, zzzzzz. Seems these guys are afraid to take a chance on a direct move.
A friend of mine has been a professional portfolio manager for some time and just took the CMT exam. I asked him why, and he said for professional recognition in the field, as there are less than 1,000 with the designation; plus, it will help him with promotion in his own company. It doesn't seem to be much different than professional designations in other fields. p.s. I think most professional quants don't actually trade anything, at least professionally, being more risk managers than anything else. Just my impression. There also seems to be a huge difference between academic quants and those otherwise employed.
Comparing "technical analysts" as described here to quants seems to me like comparing astrologers to astronomers. (That's not to say that many quants and their models haven't failed over the past few years -- many have, even "epically" -- but the analogy still stands.) But it seems that large banks do hire a few plam readers, albeit in far lower numbers than actual quants, if they feel it will help them generate a little extra business. As they say, "there's one born every minute".
I disagree with that analogy. TA admittedly ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime but that's because it includes literally everything involving analysis of price action and/or volume action. But unlike astronomy, QA is based on questionable assumptions. QA starts with assumptions of random walk, normality conditions, etc. all of which have been shown to be false for real-world price series. Most of QA is no less like astrology than most of TA is (excepting of course that portion of TA that is directly based on astrology ).
Other differences: -Among all experts/analysts/gurus, there are 80% quacks in TA compared to a manageable <25% in QA -Among all spam/scam, it is 95% in TA while a less formidable 50% in QA. A little research will tell you that even the MTA has scam artists as half of its core committee members.