career outlook / feeling stuck

I’m a quant/researcher on a small team at a pod shop, and I’m the only one doing data ETL and writing production code. My role was initially meant to focus on developing strategies, but over time it’s shifted heavily toward supporting my boss’s ideas. 

Most of his ideas are fundamentally sound, but statistically hard to prove out because there's a small sample set. When I do come up with ideas, his modifications usually make them unworkable. For a hypothetical - I have a statarb strategy that works in backtest (including slippage and borrow costs) at a Sharpe ratio 50% higher than our existing book with low correlation. He doesn't want to use it though because there's no fundamental catalyst

A few challenges I’m struggling with:

  • Priorities change frequently, and I often have to abandon work midstream
  • My boss doesn’t provide feedback or code review, but still expects fast, accurate results
  • I’m juggling infra/ETL and research, often under tight constraints
  • I’ve been told I need to catch errors faster, but it’s hard to fully QA everything alone
  • There’s no plan to hire help, and I'm stretched pretty thin as is

I’m starting to feel like I’m underperforming, has anyone navigated a situation like this?

  • How do you push back or protect your time when priorities keep shifting?
  • Is it worth asking for more ownership or risk capital in this kind of setup?
  • How do you manage when your manager doesn’t really manage?

Appreciate any perspective—feeling pretty worn out and not sure how to course-correct.

1 Comments
 

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