i used to be a math postdoc in uk. i left academia for the bright lights of the city a couple of months ago. i started working as a front office quant in a BB ib. i find the work really boring, currently 40% math (elementary+straightforward), programming is another 40%, and 20% various meetings (quite tedious). my question is does it get better? will i get used to it?the only thing keeping me in the job is the salary really (x3 my academic one)how did other people find the transtion to a quant? i dont find the projects other people in my team are working intresting either...

QuoteOriginally posted by: sedgei used to be a math postdoc in uk. i left academia for the bright lights of the city a couple of months ago. i started working as a front office quant in a BB ib. i find the work really boring, currently 40% math (elementary+straightforward), programming is another 40%, and 20% various meetings (quite tedious). my question is does it get better? will i get used to it?the only thing keeping me in the job is the salary really (x3 my academic one)how did other people find the transtion to a quant? i dont find the projects other people in my team are working intresting either...your feeling is not rare based on my knowledge of others with similar experience as yours.just forget about the intellectual interests. since you've made a decision to leave academia, the paradise for people pursuing intellectual interests, you should focus on money-generation or strategic growth (copy from a famous fund.

or you may enjoy writing fantasy books over weekends..

Would academia really have been that much better? You might have found that you were spending 50% preparing/teaching/grading "math for lower primates", 35% of your time rewriting papers about work you've already done, 15% of your time in meetings. Your milage may vary, but most of my friends in academia seem to spend a large chunk of their time NOT doing interesting research until they get out of the pre-tenure, junior faculty ghetto.You could:1) Spend 10% of your time (weekends??) thinking about how to use interesting math in your new job and convincing bosses to let you try it.2) look for another job in another company that really wants someone who can do interesting math.

Hey raises a valid question for fresh people like us though, all recommendations you see around are for quite an advanced level of knowledge in stochastics etc, however I have often wondered how often an academic recearch level knowledge is used in the large proportion of quant jobs. It seems to me that in general, most of a quants time is spent understanding/tweaking others models and then being on top of their numerical implementation. Are the jobs where you are actually doing OR implementing your own work quite rare?? Or is it just a case of, like you say, convincing your boss to let you have a go with your own, original work?

QuoteOriginally posted by: sedgei used to be a math postdoc in uk. i left academia for the bright lights of the city a couple of months ago. i started working as a front office quant in a BB ib. i find the work really boring, currently 40% math (elementary+straightforward), programming is another 40%, and 20% various meetings (quite tedious). my question is does it get better? will i get used to it?the only thing keeping me in the job is the salary really (x3 my academic one)how did other people find the transtion to a quant? i dont find the projects other people in my team are working intresting either...You can always return to academia my friend. Mark it up to experience .