QuoteOriginally posted by: traderjoe1976Dude, since you are so interested in five year plans, the link below provides the average salaries which the MBAs get (actual hard data) five years after graduation. Stanford MBAs average salary goes from $82 K to $225 KForbes MBA salary dataThese are guaranteed salaries and do not include bonuses or benefits.Thank you.

QuoteOriginally posted by: worldofvictorCurrently I am 29, and I am planning the following milestones1. By age 35, Quant development ( salary expectation : 120k+ bonus)2. By age 40 , Quant (salary expectation : 170k+ bonusIf you get a quant position then after about five years you can expect to make about 200K total comp. Above that it's a crap shoot. The reason for this is that the economy can support a lot of people making 200K. It can't support a lot of people making 1M, and so getting to 1M is something of a big lottery.Also I think it's better to think in terms of total comp. The ratio between salary and bonus is changing because of regulatory issues, but it's changing in a good way (more salary, less bonus).QuoteCurrently I am canadian citizen. I realise without substantial further education, my career goals in the Americas/UK is stalled. Maybe not. Making large amounts of money is more of a personality thing rather than a knowledge thing. Can you go up to someone and sweet talk them into giving you their wallet. I know people that can, and they make lots of money, by sweet talking people into giving them their wallet.QuoteIs my dream achievable? If not, how should my expectations be tailored to be realistic with my current situation?It's possible. It's not as if you are trying to built a perpetual motion machine.However, you have to face the fact that with the higher salary levels, there is something called "dumb luck."QuoteP.S.- the only plus side is that I am single and probably will remain so. So there is nothing holding me back on the personal side.Once you have money, you'll find women throwing themselves at you. It's the female version of sweet talking someone into giving you their wallet.

QuoteOriginally posted by: traderjoe1976If you want to make the really big bucks (over $500 K) you need to get an MBA from Top 5 Business School and then take a management career track. Quant and IT are both technical career tracks.Not necessarily. I know physics Ph.D.'s that make really big bucks.

QuoteOriginally posted by: worldofvictorCan you elaborate what you mean by :you'll have the same stagnation in finance,except that you won't have any bump at all.I thought a career in quant enabled you to progress continuously. Am I wrong?Yes. Once you've worked for about five to ten years, you tend to keep at the same salary level. The thing is that plateau is a lot higher than in IT (i.e. $200-300K versus $100K-$150K). Also $200K is a *lot* of money. The reason that people's salaries tend to plateau is that most people look at themselves and figure they make a enough money, and have no particular reason to go through the hassle of making more.

Why don't you use your Java/J2EE skills to come to wall street on the IT side in the first place. You will start gaining Wall Street experience and then you can start MFE or MBA while you collect finance experience. It still fits in your first 5 year plan although you could make 120k base in IT after a 2-3 years if you like and even a decent MFE could land you a quant dev job. Whatever else people tell you, there is a lot of java work on Wall Street. It may or may not be fun but it is still work and plenty of it.

QuoteOriginally posted by: twofishOnce you have money, you'll find women throwing themselves at you. It's the female version of sweet talking someone into giving you their wallet.I know quite a few people who make more than $200k/year but remain single, despite their best efforts to the contrary.

[qI know quite a few people who make more than $200k/year but remain single, despite their best efforts to the contrary.They need to re-watch 9 and half weeks and model the protagonist. But I understand what you are saying.

QuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2Why don't you use your Java/J2EE skills to come to wall street on the IT side in the first place. You will start gaining Wall Street experience and then you can start MFE or MBA while you collect finance experience. It still fits in your first 5 year plan although you could make 120k base in IT after a 2-3 years if you like and even a decent MFE could land you a quant dev job. Whatever else people tell you, there is a lot of java work on Wall Street. It may or may not be fun but it is still work and plenty of it.If that is really possible, that would be awesome. I looked at a few jobs and saw mostly C++ demand. Like someone pointed out...(C++, Advanced Math, Finance,Ms,PhD) ..all these put together would take substantial time to learn.But if J2EE option is available...then that is a great doorway. I will browse more jobs. The thing is I am not too sure about working in a dev project and 'collect finance experience' as you say. I worked for a bank for 3 years and now work for a hedge fund...and the app development really does not involve any finance/math knowledge. it involves architectural principles .like.how can you make the page laod faster? how can you support more users without buying more servers.....which is like a specialisation of its own.What does your exp say in this regard?

QuoteOriginally posted by: twofishQuoteOriginally posted by: worldofvictorCurrently I am 29, and I am planning the following milestones1. By age 35, Quant development ( salary expectation : 120k+ bonus)2. By age 40 , Quant (salary expectation : 170k+ bonusIf you get a quant position then after about five years you can expect to make about 200K total comp. Above that it's a crap shoot. The reason for this is that the economy can support a lot of people making 200K. It can't support a lot of people making 1M, and so getting to 1M is something of a big lottery.Also I think it's better to think in terms of total comp. The ratio between salary and bonus is changing because of regulatory issues, but it's changing in a good way (more salary, less bonus).QuoteCurrently I am canadian citizen. I realise without substantial further education, my career goals in the Americas/UK is stalled. Maybe not. Making large amounts of money is more of a personality thing rather than a knowledge thing. Can you go up to someone and sweet talk them into giving you their wallet. I know people that can, and they make lots of money, by sweet talking people into giving them their wallet.QuoteIs my dream achievable? If not, how should my expectations be tailored to be realistic with my current situation?It's possible. It's not as if you are trying to built a perpetual motion machine.However, you have to face the fact that with the higher salary levels, there is something called "dumb luck."QuoteP.S.- the only plus side is that I am single and probably will remain so. So there is nothing holding me back on the personal side.Once you have money, you'll find women throwing themselves at you. It's the female version of sweet talking someone into giving you their wallet.Thank you. I read many of your posts and saw you made a career shift quite late(37 if I read correctly). So that is a great lead to follow.

QuoteOriginally posted by: worldofvictorQuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2Why don't you use your Java/J2EE skills to come to wall street on the IT side in the first place. You will start gaining Wall Street experience and then you can start MFE or MBA while you collect finance experience. It still fits in your first 5 year plan although you could make 120k base in IT after a 2-3 years if you like and even a decent MFE could land you a quant dev job. Whatever else people tell you, there is a lot of java work on Wall Street. It may or may not be fun but it is still work and plenty of it.If that is really possible, that would be awesome. I looked at a few jobs and saw mostly C++ demand. Like someone pointed out...(C++, Advanced Math, Finance,Ms,PhD) ..all these put together would take substantial time to learn.But if J2EE option is available...then that is a great doorway. I will browse more jobs. The thing is I am not too sure about working in a dev project and 'collect finance experience' as you say. I worked for a bank for 3 years and now work for a hedge fund...and the app development really does not involve any finance/math knowledge. it involves architectural principles .like.how can you make the page laod faster? how can you support more users without buying more servers.....which is like a specialisation of its own.What does your exp say in this regard?It will be housekeeing IT work most of the time. Frontoffice IT on reporting side will enable you to learn finance more. However if you can get into risk IT it would be best. They use java hadoop map\reduce mc simulations for var calc. My take is risk IT is more interesting than frontoffice IT from a math perspective. And in IT the salary caps around200k

QuoteOriginally posted by: worldofvictorQuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2Why don't you use your Java/J2EE skills to come to wall street on the IT side in the first place. You will start gaining Wall Street experience and then you can start MFE or MBA while you collect finance experience. It still fits in your first 5 year plan although you could make 120k base in IT after a 2-3 years if you like and even a decent MFE could land you a quant dev job. Whatever else people tell you, there is a lot of java work on Wall Street. It may or may not be fun but it is still work and plenty of it.If that is really possible, that would be awesome. I looked at a few jobs and saw mostly C++ demand. Like someone pointed out...(C++, Advanced Math, Finance,Ms,PhD) ..all these put together would take substantial time to learn.But if J2EE option is available...then that is a great doorway. I will browse more jobs. The thing is I am not too sure about working in a dev project and 'collect finance experience' as you say. I worked for a bank for 3 years and now work for a hedge fund...and the app development really does not involve any finance/math knowledge. it involves architectural principles .like.how can you make the page laod faster? how can you support more users without buying more servers.....which is like a specialisation of its own.What does your exp say in this regard?It will be housekeeing IT work most of the time. Frontoffice IT on reporting side will enable you to learn finance more. However if you can get into risk IT it would be best. They use java hadoop map\reduce mc simulations for var calc. My take is risk IT is more interesting than frontoffice IT from a math perspective. And in IT the salary caps around200k

QuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2However if you can get into risk IT it would be best. They use java hadoop map\reduce mc simulations for var calc. My take is risk IT is more interesting than frontoffice IT from a math perspective. And in IT the salary caps around200k+1

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehQuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2However if you can get into risk IT it would be best. They use java hadoop map\reduce mc simulations for var calc. My take is risk IT is more interesting than frontoffice IT from a math perspective. And in IT the salary caps around200k+1I agree, in the front office you don't just do math and programming (which is what the MFE trains you for). in FO, you are given all the resources and freedom, you can do IT to math to algo trading to fundamentals/economics to finance to whatever combination skill set you want and you have a lot of free time. And you get to work with risk to argue on your marks for your derivatives that are being traded by your shop and see their approach and your approach for calculating VAR based on your intuition for market conditions. At least thats what some of us get to do .

QuoteOriginally posted by: capafan2QuoteOriginally posted by: worldofvictorIt will be housekeeing IT work most of the time. Frontoffice IT on reporting side will enable you to learn finance more. However if you can get into risk IT it would be best. They use java hadoop map\reduce mc simulations for var calc. My take is risk IT is more interesting than frontoffice IT from a math perspective. And in IT the salary caps around200kSo while job searching, the search needs to be for a j2ee developer job in risk IT? You mentioned map reduce...so I am guessing you followed a J2EE path into wall stret too.Thank you for the info..

QuoteOriginally posted by: worldofvictorSo while job searching, the search needs to be for a j2ee developer job in risk IT? what are you trying to do?if you want to maximize your future income, then you should not limit your search to any particular field, such as finance. why finance? because someone told you that they make a lot of money there? they lied.