I'm increasingly seeing roles advertised that ask for strong stakeholder management skills. Yes, buzzword bingo, but seems to be flavour of the month.My understanding is that this essentially means the ability to play the politics game within an organisation while someone else actually does the work of getting the required job done.Is this a particularly cynical view of the world, or am I missing something big here ?

...or are you being cynical enough ?As you've spotted, job spec go through fashions, but there is an underlying reality here.Many quants work in (or in spite of ) "Matrix Management", ie having a daycare boss as well as a business user who wants stuff done.A common pattern is to work "in" Risk, but "for" Trading, Compliance or even IT.I perceive that this is increasing, I don't have numbers but from what people tell me they are less in Quant silos. I suspect this would have happened even without the recession.Many Quants aren't as good at communicating as their "clients" would like them to be and the fault is on both sides, I was once required to document some quite harsh risk C++ code "so that a non programmer could modify it". Also there is good news in this.When you do a purely functional job, even a highly skilled one, the % of your value that involves other people is usually quite low.Some quanty types go whole weeks without speaking to someone outside their teams, that can even be months...But as you move up the food chain you need to work with (and again in spite of) more people of more different types.On top of all this there is a perception that "if only quants had talked to X, this mess would never happened", yes that is bollocks and stated that clearly very few people would agree, but below their superficial rationality many people believe this.

QuoteOriginally posted by: DominicConnor...or are you being cynical enough ?As you've spotted, job spec go through fashions, but there is an underlying reality here.Many quants work in (or in spite of ) "Matrix Management", ie having a daycare boss as well as a business user who wants stuff done.A common pattern is to work "in" Risk, but "for" Trading, Compliance or even IT.I perceive that this is increasing, I don't have numbers but from what people tell me they are less in Quant silos. I suspect this would have happened even without the recession.Many Quants aren't as good at communicating as their "clients" would like them to be and the fault is on both sides, I was once required to document some quite harsh risk C++ code "so that a non programmer could modify it". Also there is good news in this.When you do a purely functional job, even a highly skilled one, the % of your value that involves other people is usually quite low.Some quanty types go whole weeks without speaking to someone outside their teams, that can even be months...But as you move up the food chain you need to work with (and again in spite of) more people of more different types.On top of all this there is a perception that "if only quants had talked to X, this mess would never happened", yes that is bollocks and stated that clearly very few people would agree, but below their superficial rationality many people believe this.Interesting. I would add that people have generally become a bit sceptical of the whole 'this is a good idea because 10 PhDs thought it up' type of argument. So arguably there is a greater need for communication of ideas to 'stakeholders'. Obviously this heavily depends on the shop, but anywhere that is multi-service is likely to have it apply. I would argue however that buzzwords and HR aside, there is great value in having someone who has technical skills but can also get people behind them/execute a project. Unless you are truly exceptional, there are always other savants to replace you. But a little bit of 'people skills' makes people perceive you as less fungible (which is probably not true, but nevertheless advantageous).Or maybe not. But its an interesting point of discussion.

Suggest you look up what 'stakeholder management' means.Most quants have the organizational skills of a door knob, and would fail miserabley at this.All jobs involve politics. Do you think that quant jobs don't? Do you think rising in an organization doesn't require this skill?Stakeholder management was never a fad. Was always there, but now being highlighted more and more. The idea that you might just hole yourself up in an office or cubicle and just focus on your models and coding can be fatal to your career.Org skills do count.

A stakeholder is not necessarily a person.

QuoteIs this a particularly cynical view of the world, or am I missing something big here ? Maybe, yes. QuoteMy understanding is that this essentially means the ability to play the politics game within an organisation while someone else actually does the work of getting the required job done.Depends what the 'job' is. A project manager, for example is needed to get funds for the job that you execute.