It has been a year since this thread was started. Here is a personal update. I have joined one of the most reputable MBS shops on the street, almost doubling my pay along the way. Hours are between 55 and 60 per week. Yes, it is challenging and I miss my kids but it also makes me appreciate the time I do spend with them. Looking back, I agree with exotiq.

QuoteOriginally posted by: nonParametricI work in mid-west as an MBS/ABS quant. I have two young children and my compensation is in the low to mid 200k (US$) range. Here is the dilemma I am facing. The prospect of career advancement at my current firm is rather limited. It?s hard to learn anything new on the job (except reading journals and books) and my fear is losing touch with the market. So from a career perspective, I would like to relocate and find a job in New York. There is no guarantee that I would be able to make significantly more money in NYC in the future but the potential is always there. On the other hand, the city I am working in is terrific for kids and family life. The commute is short (about 15 minutes one way). We live in a great neighborhood and the house we live in will cost well over a million in Westchester, NY. Because of the short commute and everything, I have time to spend with the family and play with the kids. The longer commute and more demanding job in NYC almost certainly means no time for the family. I have friends working for CSFB and GS, who don?t come home until 10:00 or later, sometimes spend the night in a hotel in Manhattan and have to work on the weekend now and then. I am truly torn between going to NYC for my career and staying here for the family. How do you decide when it comes to the tradeoff between work and family life?Go to New York.

QuoteOriginally posted by: nonParametricIt has been a year since this thread was started. Here is a personal update. I have joined one of the most reputable MBS shops on the street, almost doubling my pay along the way. Hours are between 55 and 60 per week. Yes, it is challenging and I miss my kids but it also makes me appreciate the time I do spend with them. Looking back, I agree with exotiq.Need some help?

These's sorts of decisions and issues turn out to be massively complex, and every situation is different.Something that I considered about a year ago was "reverse telecommuting." Work in NYC M-F, fly home on the weekend, have a VPN video link running 24/7 between Austin and NYC so that I'm still at the dinner table. The scary thing was that part of the reason for doing this was financial. I ran the numbers and it was actually financially in my interest to do things this way rather than move the family to NYC permanently. There was also the risk-hedging element. If had gone to NYC and hated it, I could have gone back. Also there was the issue that at the time where this was coming up, it wasn't clear at all that there were any jobs in Austin since the economy was only then starting to recover.In November 2004, I actually decided to turn down an Austin job offer and go an NYC. Before I could make the calls, my wife put her foot down. I couldn't take a job in NYC because it was the year of the rooster and since I was born in the year of the rooster, bad things would happen if I moved. Now, I personally don't take Chinese astrology very seriously, but since my wife does, it was clear that bad things *would* happen if I moved. *wink* So I took the local job. I don't think much about "what would have happened if" since the fork in the road really wasn't a fork. I had only one choice at that time.Since it is now the "year of the dog," I'm no longer under an embargo. At the same time, I've had to ask myself what I really want out of a job, and I'm in a position to say no unless something that I think is useful pops up. Something that is very important to me is *adventure* and *prestige*. Interestingly personal happiness doesn't rank very highly on my scale of importance, because I'm just never going to be happy and content whereever I end up. The most I can realistically hope for is a state of comfortable numbness, and one of the appealing things about Wall Street (and for that matter astrophysics) is that working 15 hour days helps one reach that state of numbness.The other issue was that my financial situation was in reality nowhere as bad as it felt. One feeling that I had to confront (because it was objectively false) was that I was going to go dead broke and be a miserable failure if I didn't get a job in NYC. This is related to family since one of things that males have been socialized to believe is that financial stability is the reasonablity of being a father-figure. The trouble with these sorts of feelings is that they are so immensely powerful that they make it hard to make rational decisions.One issue that made the situation scary is that at the time pretty much all of my information about QF was coming from headhunters, and the situation with headhunters is that they do sense these fears, desires and insecurities, and they will tend to push them in the direction of making it seem that you are doomed if you don't get the job they offer. Nothing wrong or unethical about this, the job of a salesman is to sell. Fortunately, I had a HH in Austin that was very skilled at playing up my fears and insecurities of going to NYC as much as the NYC HH was skilled at playing up my fears and insecurities of not going to NYC. This balanced things, but it did make me afraid and insecure about doing anything. Curiously the opposite situation is probably true. I do suspect now that if I stay in Austin, I'll find a way of making things work for me. Whereas if I move to NYC, I'll also find a way of making things work for me.