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Kumm
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Posts: 2
Joined: January 23rd, 2019, 10:47 am

Stranded in non related job. Advice welcome.

September 28th, 2020, 1:45 pm

Hello everyone.

I've been looking to transition to a quant oriented role for a while. However, seats are scarce, especially in Brazil.
I've worked for a while at the back-office of the energy trading desk and now moved to the global distribution team of the asset management branch.
I try to stuff my engineering/cqf/statistics courses everywhere I lay my hands, and given I deal with mostly institutional investors, this knowledge is quite helpful. Nonetheless, It's a commercial role and phone calls, marketing campaigns and meetings are way more valuable than math (especially from my MDs perspective).

I've recently got an offer to lead a dev team to create an automated credit leding flow to small and medium businesses, coupled with a promotion (i get to be called director, just like everyone else in the industry!).

Given the end goal is the (largely unexistant here) role of quant research. You guys think I should switch from the front office of this asset to the technology team at the credit business?

Any advice would be appreciated.
thanks!
 
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tags
Posts: 3159
Joined: February 21st, 2010, 12:58 pm

Re: Stranded in non related job. Advice welcome.

September 29th, 2020, 11:22 am

I can comment on current changes/restructucring of quantitative divisions at (some) oil majors if useful to you. (for now I am not sure what you mean with "energy" [oil? power?], "trading desk" of what type of companies?
Thanks!
 
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bearish
Posts: 5180
Joined: February 3rd, 2011, 2:19 pm

Re: Stranded in non related job. Advice welcome.

September 29th, 2020, 12:58 pm

More often than not, quants (working as such) are pining for the kind of revenue generating, front office role that you find yourself in. But I can absolutely see the downside that you describe. Knowing nothing about your particular market, I’m going to guess that the direction you would like to take your career would involve less pay and less status among the general population, but that may be an acceptable trade off. I’d caution slightly, though, against the logic of getting into role X so as to make it easier to move to role Y in the future, where X<>Y. That has a tendency not to work out, because your performance in X may not be stellar. Just something to think about.
 
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Kumm
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Posts: 2
Joined: January 23rd, 2019, 10:47 am

Re: Stranded in non related job. Advice welcome.

September 29th, 2020, 9:35 pm

@tagoma, I think meaning got lost in translation: I worked at the backoffice of a power trading (as in MWh) desk, similar to nord pool. Quantitative research in this area (at least where I was working) was 100% focused on climate prediction, but given the impossibility of generating any relevant alpha in climate prediction I was a bit turned off. I then started to look for an equaly quant-like seat in equities, however, I eventually ended up in a commercial role.

@bearish: "I’d caution slightly, though, against the logic of getting into role X so as to make it easier to move to role Y in the future, where X<>Y."  This was, word for word, my internal logic, you really got the point. Quitting the role of a fund salesman to lead an IT team, hoping to sell myself as a more experienced technology guy when a more interesting opportunity arises.

Thank you guys for the insight. I'm leaning towards keeping my sales job while trying to keep relevant in quant finance with a few side-projects.