Tech vs Finance? 2020 edition thread #4

Hey don't stress my friend! If you are super interested in finance and have the brainpower to do CS (no offense to my finance fellow monkeys here), why don't you consider becoming a quant? Comp is great and the hours is awsome. PM me if you want to hear about my story!

Just do what ever you want to do.  So often people get so caught up in a short term thinking.  

Do CS + Econ/Finance! It'll be a grind but surely worth it imo. Having programming skills has helped immensely in my economics courses. Assuming your GPA won't take a major hit doing both, you have nothing to lose double majoring. At the very least you should take some CS classes to see if you like programming

You're far better off studying something technical in college, be it CS, pure or applied math, stats etc.. This leaves you quite flexible in terms of career path. In particular, since you're at a target, you'll have your pick of top BBs/EBs, FAANG, and quant roles (if you're really good) come junior year.

Also, this is obviously completely subjective, but I found studying CS and math more worthwhile in an academic sense than finance and econ. Might not be the same for you, but since you're going to be at college for 4 years you should at least think about this angle. The hard skills necessary for banking can all be learned on the job anyway.

Following

following

So how is this discussion different than the other hundred times it has been talked about on wso

Hopefully my answer is helpful since I was very much in your shoes. Similar profile - target school, always been a top math student, definitely could have been a great CS major. I definitely considered, and let me tell you why I chose finance (and why I'm happy I did):

• There seems to be this idea that CS work is more interesting than finance - while this might be true in an academic setting, I personally find the actual work in finance way more interesting, and I think you're able to have a higher impact much earlier on. In my SA I was able to work on teams of 4/5 people on several billion dollar transactions. Meanwhile, my friends at tech firms mostly worked on extremely inconsequential aspects of these huge websites/services (e.g. spending the whole internship working on UI changes for snapchat filters). 
• Culture. I know tech is known for its "culture", but it really isn't for everyone - and it's definitely not for me. I find the tech culture far too casual, and I actually found people to be far more condescending in the CS scene than the finance scene. Aside from the occasional aggressive personality, people in finance I've worked with so far have been very well-rounded, nice, outgoing people that I mesh much better with.
• Size - compare the size of an IB analyst class at even the largest banks to the SWE class at Google or the like. Finance runs way leaner and that has an impact on your experience.
• Hours - CS has indisputably better hours. That said, I honestly enjoy working with people I like who are my age, getting dinner with them, going out after work, etc. so I don't mind the hours at all. 

That was my thought process, but the most helpful advice I can give you is - do what interests you most long-term. They both can lead to very meaningful (and well-compensated) careers. It comes down to personal preference, so I wouldn't look at minor differences in comp or anything else like that when making your decision.

If truly depressed about your major choice as a freshman based on DCF of earnings progression, I would honestly recommend you pursue a career outside of both CS and IB.

Not trying to be a dick, but neither of the paths youre evaluating are easy, and you're going to have to overcome bigger obstacles than this.