In existential crisis and need advice
Ok so I happened to stumble upon S&T by accident. I’m math major at a well known stemmy school and was pushed by one of my teachers to do quant trading/ BB options/vol trading a couple years ago. Ended up frantically applying last min for a sophomore trading internship at a BB and accepted the offer a week later. Now I’m a senior who has just realized I don’t like the financial industry and would’ve rather applied for a phD or masters in ML or engineering. I want to do heavy and creative quantitative work but it seems like all I’ll be doing is inputing numbers into an already built model and playing office politics. I accepted my FT offer in Global markets because the job market is bad and I needed a cushion but now I don’t know if I should’ve rerecruited or applied for grad program. But the question is, can I work for a year and then switch to something more quantitative, whether it’s a different career or a grad program? I’m worried that my resume/ coursework has been too trading/compfi oriented to the point where I couldn’t exit into something else. Or maybe there’s an area of trading/structuring that I would like after thugging out the first 1-2 years of grunt work?
Okay but hear me out - it sounds like you're scared of office politics and finance and that's outside of your comfort zone. You can always do the academia scam later if you want, but what you should do right now is get some good experience on your resume, up your social skills, and level up. I know so many gigabrain PhDs who make peanuts at like Oak Ridge or studying particles and shit because they think that's their highest calling and science is beautiful or whatever. Fuck that, do some trading and stack some Benjamins.
No offense, but u and this other poster talking about not taking their Vol trading offer to do more school just makes it sound like there's a lot of hiring of learned idiots on those desks.
No don’t get me wrong, I accepted my offer and am not planning to reneg. I’m giving this a fair shot for at least a year, and am not necessarily set on leaving to do a masters as I’d also be interested in a career change depending on what it is. If u told me a career in vol is going to be quantitatively challenging and interesting after a year or two of grunt work I would stick to it, but that’s what I’m trying to figure out. If it’s not, I’d rather not stick through the grunt work just to end up doing more work that I don’t find fulfilling.
look at the hf commenter on my post. Has some valid points. Ultimately, I am reneging so I can do what’s best for me in terms of optionality and learning more skills. I want to re recruit for quant trading and hfs directly. People see only one path and don’t want to see other people win. Do what you think is ultimately best.
And to the poster above, you quite literally know nothing about me or my hard work or ethic. Wish you the best in your career because unlike you I’m not salty and negative towards other ppl.
I’m ubermensch and you are poo poo /s
If I was in your shoes i’d do the same or pursue a PhD in math right off the bat but tbh if I end up doing grad school I’d most likely switch careers and do work in robotics, applied physics or graphics generation.
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