What career to chose?

Hi,

I recently graduated with a MSc in applied math and I am thinking about doing a PhD. However, I am not sure if this would pay off because effectively this would cost me at least 3 years of income. So the choice I am facing right now is to either do a PhD and go into QR or start work right away in a non-quant field. Apart from "intellectual fullfillment", expected cumulative income is a very important factor for me to decide what path career I will chose. I would be interested in a relative comparison of earing potential in the following areas:

  1. Investment banking in BB
  2. Trading in BB
  3. Sales in BB
  4. Structuring in BB
  5. QR in BB
  6. Risk in BB
  7. Private Equity
  8. Large hedge fund

Are there big differences in base/bonus in the beginning, after a couple of years etc? How about exit opportunities and hours? Maybe it would be best to start somewhere and later switch to something else? How would you go about chosing your career path if your main goal was to maximize expected cumulative income and income variance didn't matter.

Thanks guys

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