I'm preparing a post in response to this post: https://forum.wilmott.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=100928 Yeah. I'm a quant, one of the unsuccessful ones so read my experience before you venture into the field ======================= Think IT sweatshops having a "quant" as someone who can paste a "can I haz teh formula" without mixing up the signs into an enterprise wonder encompassing all the recent buzzwords you can think of. Enterprise microservices big data cloud AI financial platform. Enterprise = expensive overengineered big bank crap, simultaneously hiring 1000 developers and firing another 1000. Microservices = always broken but can't pinpoint the blame. Big data = 1000 transactions per day. Cloud = we need Amazon AWS to process 1000 transactions per day, that's until we write our own broken stuff who'll do 100 but it's cheaper. AI = nothing, but sounds good. Financial platform = we're selling to financial industry now but we can just as well rebrand "automotive platform" tomorrow. There are higher chances of meeting a tooth fairy (or vampire where I live) riding an unicorn, heading to a leprechauns pool party, than finding a quant in Eastern Europe. Not saying they are mythical creatures, but the probability of finding one is lower than simultaneously meeting all the creatures enumerated earlier in the exact pool party context. I know since I'm one of these quant guys, but then again, I've never met another one like me so this raises multiple questions: am I a quant? Do I exist? What is the purpose of all meaning? OK, the last one was easy, it's 47 (while I'm only 40, unfortunately). I worked for 10 years in finance here and quit 2 years ago for a 50% raise outside finance. Bonus no IP contracts over the stuff I do by myself AT HOME and didn't interest my finance employer the least bit anyways, unless if they prove to be profitable of course. So right now I'm still doing R&D after the day job outside finance, developed my own backtesting system and running live what I pan out on an Interactive Brokers account, again with an auto-trading engine written by myself (same code that runs in backtests). You can see my trading engine on GitHub, except for the business logic which is loaded at runtime, unless I somehow fucked up some git push and committed that code too. Not much problem so far anyways since obscurity is security sometimes I do options, always fully systematic. Shameless speculation, more respectable vol arb and I'm considering market making but with 2-3 hours per day after 10-12 of day job, plus a family that demands my attention at least sometimes, that's an endeavor I'd rather be doing when I can go full time on this, on my own savings. Which means, worst case some 4 years from now, best case some 1 and a half. There seemed to be some opportunity to do this earlier (go full time), even if it's not me but another guy that I'm hiring and mentoring into the stuff I do, while paying board & room plus some extra on discretionary expenses. The Eastern European state I live in has a program for sponsoring new startups with up to $50,000 in non-reimbursable grants. Sounded like something I could make use of, before reading more into the terms and conditions which definitely ruled me out last year. Basically I'd need to setup an LLC which I hold for at least 4 years while employing at least 2 guys (actually only those who employed 3 got the grant). That's $1000 gross per month during this 4 years period, out of which the government takes back half in taxes so the employee only sees $500. Of course there are non-tangible benefits like pension (yeah, out of $500 ), medical insurance, and generally living in a state where you can wonder drunk at night in a gipsy suburb and worst thing that can happen to you is you get out drunker (they buy you more drinks). But the employee sees $500, and I was willing to put another $500 out of my pocket since I'm putting it anyways: apart from IB commissions and buying marketdata at the cost of about $1000 / year, I'm also renting a very small apartment situated right in the city center so I can save 2-3 hours commute time to/from my wage paying job and with some additional 1-2, spend them on learning, experimenting, trading. In short, R&D. I'm already in my 12'th year of R&D in finance and for all it seems, this is my final destination. It wasn't the overall destination some 20 years ago when I decided to go for money first and temporarily push my other projects on the stack but truth is without money (== power), I will never get to realize my space-conquering, disease-fighting, space-time utopia (God anyone?) anyways. So I need money first and I will make them. By the way, I did prospect the idea of getting back in the industry as an insider rather than shameless exploiter but no luck, which leaves me with few options (The Industry is A Casino). "Finance jobs" here means contracting textile lohns hiring the lowest common denominator they can get away with so can I haz teh formula "quant" can be easily swapped with superstar tester who after 5 years of "training" does interiorize the idea that when volatility shows 1 million, there's probably something wrong in the system. I dunno about other places (West or East of me), I did apply to some of them only to get the impression that apart from the general retardness of the layers I get to interact with, including (and starting with) the overhyped "hiring manager", the whole system it's generally a far OTM options selling scheme where my side of the suckers think it's generally a bargain price to pay (just some time spent with the fuckers) for a VERY CONSISTENT WIN at the end, only they neglect to factor in the probability (Dunning Kruger bias) and think they're like at least 10%... what 10%... 90%. Instead of one in 10k at best a few years ago, now it's worse.
Its too much work to review the whole text. Try and avoid the overuse of the word 'I' for starters and give less spiritual insights into your quant/trading experience. If you are Romanian and therefore somewhat Latin, think more in the Cartesian style: axiom, analysis followed by synthesis. As it stands the sentences seem to follow a haphazard logic. Remove or seriously reduce the use of emoticons which are unsuitable for a serious reply etc.. etc..
It would be disingenuous my part to deny the bullet point accuracy of your remark. that was the easy part. now for the more difficult part. as the new trading day begins in the US it is time to remember the most sage advice ever received "leave your ego at the door".