Fired from QR exit opportunities

Hi everyone,

I’ve been a QR in the hedge fund industry for a couple of years at a large MM, and I recently found out I’m being let go. The issue isn’t related to politics or overall pod P&L, but rather a personal performance concern—my manager felt I wasn’t detail-oriented enough. This perception seems to stem from one or two silly mistakes I made in my research over the last year. 

While the role wasn’t terrible, the space I worked in as a QR wasn’t particularly quantitative or stimulating. It didn’t involve much problem-solving, coding, or creative thinking around alphas (at least from my perspective—I could be wrong).

I’m now questioning how to interpret this experience. Should I see it as a sign that I’m not well-suited for QR roles and pivot to something that better aligns with my strengths? Or should I stick it out, try to find a better environment, and continue pursuing the QR path with the goal of eventually becoming a PM—something I find far more exciting than data mining and number crunching?

5 Comments
 

Also any other suggestions on particular pivots in Finance I should target and/or different industries could be useful guys. 

 
Most Helpful

Just shake it off.
Eventually ppl don’t care about some random comments from your previous boss - screw him and carry on.

If there’s anything you can learn (the hard way) from those past mistakes, learn it. But it’s eventually about whether you have the passion in any career. If you feel like taking risk more than doing the quant stuff, open up a broker account yourself and take some risk using what you’ve learned so far - I’m pretty sure that will give you far more interesting stories to tell the HRs than your previous boss’s comments

 

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