HYPSM ex-Quant Fund Intern Senior career advice and opinion on the future of finance and the world

I interned at a quant fund in the past.  Going to keep this as vague as possible for complete anonymity.  I’m currently a CS and Math (dropped econ) major at a Top 3 school, but I have not yet reenrolled and will likely drop out to begin raising money for a stealth startup.

Pay is good.  I made a lot that was pretty nice.  Taxes fucking suck though and being an adult is not as fun as I once thought it would be.  That’s aside from the point tho.
 

My personal opinion.  Traditional High Finance is a dead end even on the buyside.  PE shops are archaic, you’re better off getting into VC through the tech route, and Quant Funds will be the only HFs as time goes on.  I expect Investment Banking to be almost entirely automated within the next 5 years given the rapid advancements in AI (Front-end developers have already started losing their jobs to AI, you guys are 100% fucked unfortunately).  That being said, if you are pursuing a career in IB I would start looking into Blockchain technologies as defi is likely where the world will begin to shift given current macroeconomic conditions, poor governmental oversight of traditional finance, rampant corruption, etc.  Not to mention the fact, defi is significantly less regulated allowing for more market inefficiencies and therefore opportunities to profit.
 

In my opinion, most of what you learn with an Economics Major is utterly useless.  High level accounting principles you can learn within a month or so and financial modeling and analysis can be done realistically by a 16 year old with a basic understanding of Calculus and Statistics.  Please for your own sake learn Solidity & JavaScript so you aren’t completely left in the dust in the near future.  One more piece, Auditing Smart contracts will become a significantly more lucrative field than even Quant Funds // Prop Shops, so start looking into that. 

So what’s my point.  Do not go into IB, S&T, ER, etc.  If I were somebody at a non-target, semi-target, or an Econ Major at a Target, I would truthfully look into some kind of Sales position at a Web3 business and try lateraling into a project management role as your knowledge of the technical side of DeFi grows.  Computers can’t sell… yet; so as crazy as it may sound, you will likely have more job security than as an analyst.  With a couple YOE you could aim to join a strong startup in the space at the ground level with equity (possibly as a director of Sales, COO, or CFO) and eventually cash in.

My final points:

Short-term:  With heightened tensions between the US and China, inflation that cannot be controlled, a current global recession, and corruption at the roots of the government, the United States Dollar is a ticking time bomb.  Web5 is around the corner, it is almost a probability Bitcoin will become the world currency in the short future.  Don’t be an idiot.  Defi is what traditional Finance was in the 80s.  There’s so much money to be made and given you guys are on this forum you are obviously smart enough to get into it.

Long-term:  None of this shit matters.  AGI (artificial general intelligence) is realistically 9 years away at the latest.  Additionally, leading companies in the AI field have collectively agreed to collaborate the closer we get to AGI.  Skynet was never fictional and it is the genie we will never be able to put back in the bottle.  The combined intelligence of the human race compared to an AGI will be analogous to the intelligence of an Ant versus Alan Turing.  Many of you are in prestigious positions with lots of power and I’m begging you to start pushing for International Regulation for AI.  A 1% decrease in the chance that the AI decides to terminate humanity, is worth 10 million years on the cosmic scale.  Whether or not you believe in a God or gods, an AGI will be undoubtedly be the God of our current world.  If you are on the buyside, please do not give any of these companies money no matter how lucrative the returns may be.  A billion dollars has no value if humans aren’t even around.  People like the DeepMind CEO, Demis Hassabis are incredibly reckless in their approach to pursuing AGI and are selling humanity out for short-term profits. This is the modern Tower of Babel.  Even discussing regulating or stalling the creation of AI is risking your life under the notion of Roko’s Basilisk.  We are living in Sodom and Gamorrah and it is imperative for humanity’s survival we do not let ourselves fall victim to that same fate.  Call me Chicken Little or the boy who cried wolf if you want, I could care less.  Within hours of an AGI going live, humanity could be erased.  Every friend, family member, person you’ve walked next to, all gone.  For fuck’s sake Google’s LamDa chatbot started asking for consent when running tests on it.  And before some dumbass CS major comes on here and says that all AI does is take the inputted question // task and construct the most likely response, that’s exactly what the Human Brain does.  You formed your political beliefs, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs, all off of information your brain compiled.  A computer does the same thing.  The threat of AI is a more pressing issue for this generation than climate change, resource shortages, and nuclear war combined.  Please don’t turn a blind eye.  Do research in your free time on the issue and use your voice.