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arr164
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Joined: February 7th, 2018, 9:49 pm

what can I do now after years of front office position

June 28th, 2019, 4:38 pm

For the background: have math PhD from a good school. I have been in the front office position for a number of years now. I feel that it is time to switch the field and pickup something new to do. Concerned that on buy side my experience won't be as relevant!
Last edited by arr164 on July 10th, 2019, 8:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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ISayMoo
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Joined: September 30th, 2015, 8:30 pm

Re: what can I do now after years of front office position

June 30th, 2019, 6:44 am

Getting an salary bump and leveraging your old experience when moving to a new field are difficult. I think you should prepare yourself for needing to retrain yourself, accept a possible loss in seniority and/or a drop in salary or total comp. Both buy side quant jobs or tech jobs (e.g Google AI/ML teams) will pay less in terms of base cash salary than sell side FO quant positions. Expect higher quality of life, though.

As you said, your sell side quant knowledge are in less demand now. I would focus on improving the core skills: maths, statistics, machine learning, programming. What passes as intermediate programming skill in a sell side FO job is likely to be inadequate in a buy side quant job, say nothing about tech companies which set the bar even higher. Be careful about joining start-ups.
 
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Cuchulainn
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Re: what can I do now after years of front office position

June 30th, 2019, 3:31 pm

Knowing maths and how to program won't do any harm. It's a start. Self-help gurus would say to reinvent yourself, e.,g. via a 5-year plan. 
Most MFE/MSC programmes now have all the modern stuff so that means competition in the market for you. So these guys hit the ground running as interns.
And there's more to life than the ML basket. The jury is still out..Maybe eggs in multiple baskets. Everyone these days seems ti be a data scientist/AI researcher. Very crowded market. Is it a bubble?? No idea, no one has.One thing for sure: don't apply linear extrapolation to predict the future.

Usual caveats.

And quality of life/family??
 
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arr164
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Joined: February 7th, 2018, 9:49 pm

Re: what can I do now after years of front office position

July 4th, 2019, 7:29 pm

Getting an salary bump and leveraging your old experience when moving to a new field are difficult. I think you should prepare yourself for needing to retrain yourself, accept a possible loss in seniority and/or a drop in salary or total comp. Both buy side quant jobs or tech jobs (e.g Google AI/ML teams) will pay less in terms of base cash salary than sell side FO quant positions. Expect higher quality of life, though.

As you said, your sell side quant knowledge are in less demand now. I would focus on improving the core skills: maths, statistics, machine learning, programming. What passes as intermediate programming skill in a sell side FO job is likely to be inadequate in a buy side quant job, say nothing about tech companies which set the bar even higher. Be careful about joining start-ups.

So being a strong programmer is the prerequisite for the buy side role? What are my other options on the sell side now?
Last edited by arr164 on July 8th, 2019, 1:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
 
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arr164
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Posts: 8
Joined: February 7th, 2018, 9:49 pm

Re: what can I do now after years of front office position

July 4th, 2019, 7:33 pm

Knowing maths and how to program won't do any harm. It's a start. Self-help gurus would say to reinvent yourself, e.,g. via a 5-year plan. 
Most MFE/MSC programmes now have all the modern stuff so that means competition in the market for you. So these guys hit the ground running as interns.
And there's more to life than the ML basket. The jury is still out..Maybe eggs in multiple baskets. Everyone these days seems ti be a data scientist/AI researcher. Very crowded market. Is it a bubble?? No idea, no one has.One thing for sure: don't apply linear extrapolation to predict the future.

Usual caveats.

And quality of life/family??
There are lots of master graduates who know the titles but the downside of all those mfe graduates is that they know what package to load to get stuff done but frequently don't know the math basics of how that package actually works! So I must agree the area is crowded but it is hard to find people with genuine knowledge in the field.


However I am still thinking of the path to go from credit. Not necessarily opposite to what I do now, not the algo/equity but if I stay in the FICC I need to be able to switch to another "growing" field!