Switching from Quant Research to Quant Dev?

Question

Currently a quant researcher at a hedgefund who has done some coding infrastructure work for our trading strategies.

As a math guy, I'm happy to be working with math everyday, but recently gotten burnt out over constantly reading research papers and the research grind has been eating at me. Since doing some quant dev work, I find it actually more commercial than quant research. I can see myself doing more quant dev work and possibly heading to a tech company later on.

Issue is that with quant dev, I feel that you are less valued and earn less comp in general. Any thoughts on this?

mlroxx · Accepted Answer

"Associate 2 in HF - Other"
so I don't want to make the wrong decision here, and in the covid job market no less

Tech can be really political and full of BS. Friend at FB was harassed by crazy marxists for disagreeing with some of their views when they always bring up politics in the office ( crazy idiots).

Furthermore, most tech roles are either c++ focused on one feature while having very little math. 
It has to be the right team for me to consider joining, which is dependent on the manager and which feature of the platform I'm considering working on.

qwantum70 · Answer

Issue is that with quant dev, I feel that you are less valued and earn less comp in general. Any thoughts on this?

In my experience, the farther you're from P&L producers, the less potential for greater comp. If you'll be transitioning to a group that focuses on infrastructure, that'll likely put a lower ceiling on your total comp..The actual effect on the comp will depend on the company, your managers, and your performance.

That said, if you see yourself heading into tech, it definitely makes sense to concentrate on the technology side of the business.

sicilian · Answer

Hmmm, that's a constrained optimization problem that's hard to solve.

the highest paying dev roles in finance are the ones optimizing C++ code for market makers (so yeah, very little math)

FO dev in probability  pure quant role for hedge funds

By the way, even if you go FAANG the roles you are thinking of that have comparable pay are lvl4+ assuming your stock appreciates- those roles don't have much math either. Maybe some stats for A/B testing.

If you are burnt out I suggest helping with infra for a bit more and then make a decision in next 6 mths.

powerforward1 · Answer

so I don't want to make the wrong decision here, and in the covid job market no less

Tech can be really political and full of BS. Friend at FB was harassed by crazy marxists for disagreeing with some of their views when they always bring up politics in the office ( crazy idiots).

Furthermore, most tech roles are either c++ focused on one feature while having very little math. 
It has to be the right team for me to consider joining, which is dependent on the manager and which feature of the platform I'm considering working on.

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Switching from Quant Research to Quant Dev?

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Switching from Quant Research to Quant Dev?

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