For entry level quants working for quantitative funds, how much can make? What is the growth for this career? If compared to working at silicon valley, which is better, finance or technology?
This is a pretty wide question. There can be a variety of entry level quants at a fund. Pricing quants, trading quants, risk quants, research quants, execution quants, some part of a trading team, some part of a support team etc etc. It depends on the particular role and firm. But normalizing for all that, around $100K in base is where I would place the average. Career growths are also pretty unique to individuals. Some become heads of support teams like risk and research, other become PM's or even partners. I've known quants who now head investor relations etc. At one point in time, there was nothing like working on wall street. Nowadays not so much. At least at silicon valley you may get the pleasure of building something useful and of value. Or such is my impression. Might be a case of green grass and other sides...
Well, it appears that folks in the Silicon valley build something useful, but they constantly keep complaining that the value of their RSUs/espps/401K loose value for no reason and keep wondering what it would be like to be on Wall Street.
simple: If you want to trade and manage risk and believe you have a deep-rooted passion and love for this field then go for the financial industry. (Avoid banks, hardly any proprietary risk taking is done in banks anymore, seek out hedge funds and buy side firms, prop firms if you look to market make [prop in the sense of professional proprietary trading house, not retail prop (aka, Bright,...)]). Else, definitely shoot for tech industry because you will participate in the actual creation of products (hopefully) which is much more rewarding long-term, personally especially.
really? How can this be with equity markets making all time highs every other day? You must be talking to people at Yahoo.
No, I was talking about employees of quite a few companies whose stock price is not going up due to various reasons... Besides, majority of the engineers here sell the moment their employer grants them some stock (espp/RSU) just to avoid a flash crash that can happen any second (according to them!). A few days later, they get disappointed as they see their stock price rise… this cycle keeps repeating itself unfortunately. I have a few friends at Yahoo who have been doing this since the past 2 years! I don’t know, looks like most people have not yet recovered from the 2008 shock. I personally know 3-4 engineers who have completely exited their 401K positions when S&P crossed 1500 last year… they reentered the market a few months back after realizing that they missed out a near 20% return… The moral of the story here is, folks out here hardly know the basics of investing. They follow whatever their financial adviser (etrade/fidelity in most cases)/CNBC/Jim Cramer tells them. They are a little happy right now since the equity markets are going up, but I don't know how long that happiness is going to last.
ha, don't worry, people with such mindset and way of handling their finances and savings are much better off in technology. They would be skinned alive in the quant world and on trading floors.
I have a friend who is a requiter, and she needs few quants for a major US bank. PhD is required, not sure how much experience is needed. Bank is offering 400K, and she can not get it filled. Anyone she talks to want around 600K.
Experienced folks sure, but that doesn't sound right for noobs. No entry level quant will get 400K guarantees.