Hi All,Here's an unusual situation for you.With great relief, I'll be submitting my PhD in theoretical/mathematical physics in the coming months. It fits roughly into the pidgeonhole of condensed matter, i.e. nothing to do with financial math. I'm not at an Ivy League uni, and my undergrad grades are not flash, but one of my examiners will be a certain Nobel Prize winner in physics, and I've come up with a fairly important paper on a topic in applied mathematics --- meaning that a paragraph or three will have to be added to 3rd year applied math textbooks that treat the topic if they're going to remain relevant. The thesis will be good.I'm thinking of working as a quant. Why should I do this if I have math prowess?Here's the fun part. I'm an extremely old man, all of 40. Work experience? Tons of physics lecturing and course administration -- mainly on contract. So I've tried academia and am sick of it -- no faculty jobs available in the forseeable future, and the pay is appalling. And time's a goin' by... I don't mind working 12 hour days -- as long as there's reward in it. I've been doing this anyway for months at a time, for peanuts... I've lived in Japan, speak Japanese fluently, have no problems getting around Tokyo or anywhere in Japan. I know what life for a gaijin is like over there. I'd be looking to start in London, though. (Or anywhere that would have me -- if the price is right.)Am I deluded in thinking that I could start off a quant career now? I don't mind having smart kids as my boss for a while to start off with -- but I'd be looking to learn quick and progress fast. I'd be a good leader -- but I'd have to learn the ropes first for a while.How might the career proceed, assuming I'd do well at each stage (average at some things, very good at others) ? Where would I start? How would I start? Suggestions appreciated.

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Can you program ?

12 hours a day is nothing. If you start behind smart "kids" you will only fall further behind them.Without a finance background (you're competing against PhD's in SDE's remember) your work will mean very little in today's quant market which has moved on considerably since "My Life as a Quant". You'll get eaten alive in The City/Wall Street. TJ.

Infidel: 40 is a bit old and people will be worried about whether you can take the work pressure which can run into all-nighters sometimes in the front office. You will mainly have to assure them on this account and provide solid reasons why you decided to wait this long, how strong is your interest in quant finance. If that is taken care of, with a PhD in physics theory and a few pubs you should be able to get a job. Of course you have to learn the relevant mathematics first from the usual books.Last, I would strongly recommend you try for a risk management / middle office role.

QuoteOriginally posted by: energydudeInfidel: 40 is a bit old and people will be worried about whether you can take the work pressure which can run into all-nighters sometimes in the front office. You will mainly have to assure them on this account and provide solid reasons why you decided to wait this long, how strong is your interest in quant finance. .Everyone needs a life!!!

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCCan you program ?Yes -- computers have been part of my life for decades (I'm so old, I remember the first PCs ). While I'm no way an "expert" in any language, I'm competent in c++. Excel formulas and some VB programming I picked up in administrating courses (usual labour for an academic). I did some sophisticated programming a long while ago in Pascal (a serious combinatorial optimization app using complex tree structures). I find computer languages a breeze to learn and could easily specialize to deepen my knowledge and skill. It's quite common that working with professors in a research team, I'd be asked to do some task or other which needed a crash course in Perl or some aspect of Mathematica programming or even Fortran. So my knowledge is pretty potted. As I said, though, I could easily specialize and deepen the skill base.

I wonder if for you the path is consultancy...The large firms have problems attracting the best young maths guys, and are looking for things in personality that many younger quants do not exhibit.But any plausible path I can think requires you to learn some new stuff. You say you can learn IT stuff, and I accept you can knock up code adequately in a new language.But you will need polish, because at interview harder & different questions will be asked, in this they are just like exams.You will of course need some finance, because although newbies aren't expected to be experts the bank wants some reason to believe that you are committed and have some aptitude for this stuff.There is also IT for a bank. A few months solid work and a numerate background would probably get you in a bank at a slightly higher wage with better longer term earnings.Would feel bad if I didn't say all this will require an investment of a lot of your time over the next year, with (about) <50% chance of you getting what you ragrd as a better position.

QuoteOriginally posted by: energydudeInfidel: 40 is a bit old and people will be worried about whether you can take the work pressure which can run into all-nighters sometimes in the front office. All nighters are a standard part of the administrating job (academic work) around start of semester if you've got big courses to take care of (at least, it is where I work!). Workload's not a problem for workaholics like me. QuoteOriginally posted by: energydudeYou will mainly have to assure them on this account and provide solid reasons why you decided to wait this long, how strong is your interest in quant finance. I wanted to contribute something reasonably non-trivial -- fairly important, even -- in physics and mathematics. I've done that now. Time to move on. QuoteOriginally posted by: energydudeLast, I would strongly recommend you try for a risk management / middle office role.Thanks for the tip. What's the basis for this? i.e. why risk management / middle office role?

QuoteOriginally posted by: INFIDELQuoteOriginally posted by: energydudeInfidel: 40 is a bit old and people will be worried about whether you can take the work pressure which can run into all-nighters sometimes in the front office. All nighters are a standard part of the administrating job (academic work) around start of semester if you've got big courses to take care of (at least, it is where I work!). Workload's not a problem for workaholics like me. I guess you are a single so you can work as long as you can. Just curious about what fun can you have as a workaholic? Rather than facing hard to get a faculty position, why not take the fact you could make more $ by spending the amount of time as you work at a university, even though the job security is low than academia (compared with the situation if you could get a tenure professor)

QuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoe If you start behind smart "kids" you will only fall further behind them.Without a finance background (you're competing against PhD's in SDE's remember) your work will mean very little in today's quant market which has moved on considerably since "My Life as a Quant". You'll get eaten alive in The City/Wall Street. TJ.Thanks TJ. I suspect something like this. I've read a few papers on financial math -- the group at Oxford Uni seems to me to be doing some very nice math, fluid mechanics (moving boundary problems etc.) as well as SDEs; and I've read the recent papers in the SIAM Journals -- and I could pick this up if given the task. I've done quite a bit of fluid mechanics, and I've noticed that some approaches in financial math borrow heavily from the field. I haven't formally played with any SDEs though. But I agree, people who've researched SDEs would have a huge advantage in the time they've spent getting their hands dirty at an intimate level. Theoretical physics is a lot like this -- no matter how good you are (and I've worked with some of the best), when you first read a paper, often it is totally impenetrable and you have to work through it carefully before you understand it at all. This takes tons of effort and pain, and you know nothing compared to people who've been working in the area for years. You pick things up on the fly then learn to find a niche that you can master and produce new work. Getting new results is a huge buzz, possibly because of this masochism factor. This can take anything from a few weeks to months to years. This is how theoretical physics is done. There's no smooth sailing -- at least, not until you get to the point where you've opened up a problem enough and developed your niche enough so that progress comes quickly. Otherwise you're chipping away at a rock quarry, often without any perceivable progress. It's completely uncommercial! And it's the opposite of working to deadlines and making money...If placed in a situation where somebody told me, "Here's a problem, make sense of it," I'd be at the "nutcracking" stage that one is often at with theoretical physics, rather than just going straight for a solution, which only happens in physics textbook problems and sometimes when you're lucky. (Once I spotted a pattern a few weeks after I started the problem -- i.e. "immediately" -- and came up with a very useful formula that made certain types of computations an order of magnitude faster; but it took 7 months to prove the formula and another 4 to write up the papers!)Maybe there are IBs out there that recognize potential to think and contribute deep insights rather than the ability to work in an assembly line.

QuoteOriginally posted by: CarolynTI guess you are a single so you can work as long as you can. Just curious about what fun can you have as a workaholic? I'm a workaholic when there's a job to be done; a playaholic when the time is right. I hate the feeling of doing a crap job and putting my name to it.And I very much like tropical islands and travelling in SE Asia. QuoteOriginally posted by: CarolynTRather than facing hard to get a faculty position, why not take the fact you could make more $ by spending the amount of time as you work at a university, even though the job security is low than academia (compared with the situation if you could get a tenure professor)Right. The question is what sort of job would suit me best -- and what sort of job would companies be willing to give me? The corporate world is enticing. I like the feeling of being part of a major organisation, as well as interacting with big shot clients. I did this on a small scale as a sort of company trainer (part-time), training individuals and groups to speak and read English. I had company directors as one-on-one clients, as well as the securities division of a major bank. I seem to get along with management types OK. A certain air of authority, I guess.Quant work would keep my brain occupied with a range of technical and computational issues, which I'd like, rather than going into some job that guarantees prompt brain death.(This is despite my suspicion that the beauty of mathematical models and mathematical subtlety gets trashed in quant jobs. The IB's only interested in $. At some point, though, the quality of models has to be understood -- and new ideas have to be encourage and tested -- if the bank's going to get its $. )

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCI wonder if for you the path is consultancy...The large firms have problems attracting the best young maths guys, and are looking for things in personality that many younger quants do not exhibit.I'm glad you brought this up. I've actually been seriously considering the consultancy path. But don't companies like McKinseys just take young guys -- or old guys with an MBA and a ton of experience in business? Do you have any personal experience or acquaintances in this situation?QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCBut any plausible path I can think requires you to learn some new stuff. You will of course need some finance, because although newbies aren't expected to be experts the bank wants some reason to believe that you are committed and have some aptitude for this stuff. [...]Would feel bad if I didn't say all this will require an investment of a lot of your time over the next year, with (about) <50% chance of you getting what you ragrd as a better position.Thanks for the tips. Learning new stuff isn't a problem, in the sense that my brain hasn't atrophied too much, though there's the issue of income while I'm picking up new tricks. I heard that the big consulting firms (McKinsey etc.) actually encourage you to expand your horizons -- as long as they're confident enough with your potential to let you in in the first place.Odds of 50-50 don't sound too bad...

QuoteOriginally posted by: INFIDELWith great relief, I'll be submitting my PhD in theoretical/mathematical physics in the coming months.....I'm an extremely old man, all of 40. Work experience? Tons of physics lecturing and course administration -- mainly on contract.Question: what else have you done ?Unless you got held back a dozen plus years in highschool or been in prison, there's an obvious gap in your resume....

QuoteOriginally posted by: INFIDEL QuoteOriginally posted by: energydudeI would strongly recommend you try for a risk management / middle office role.Thanks for the tip. What's the basis for this? i.e. why risk management / middle office role?I'm not ED but if you read other threads, you'll see that it is often easier to get such a position (and they typically involve shorter hours and less stress but less money) than front office positionsQuoteMaybe there are IBs out there that recognize potential to think and contribute deep insights rather than the ability to work in an assembly line. but on that metric, risk management comes up short -- you'd be doing things like model validation (front office codes up an option, you do a reality check to see if the code captures the real world price) and daily VaR (value at risk, basically running codes everyday based on the closing prices to calculate something like the 95th percentile of potential daily losses for the next day).