Risk Quant is paradise

Well champ, you finally made it. You clawed your way out of your hella non-target engineering college and you're about to get your MSc Finance from a top London school.

Well, not quite. Your MSc isn't exactly called Finance (but it has Finance in the name, close enough) and your heart skips a beat every time you remember that it's listed under the Computer Science department. You also weren't able to land any good internships and had to settle for your school's matching programme, which assigned you to a no-name hedge fund that closed two weeks ago.

Your train of dark thoughts is interrupted by your friend Daniel passing you the fourth watered-down vodka redbull of the night. Daniel fared better than you in school and was able to land an internship with a non-BB, even though he wasn't offered a full time spot at the end of it. He is also hotter than you and regularly fucks better girls. You down your inferiority complex with your drink of choice and you get back to the party - you're graduating tomorrow and you won't let your sadness hold you back.

Fast-forward four months, and your career options have dried up. Your "holiday trip" to your barely-first-world European home country has turned into moving back in with your parents and you have an increasingly larger stack of rejections in the "Jobs applications" folder of your 2016 MacBook. You find it harder and harder to maintain a positive outlook on things and your parents are starting to wonder if dropping their life savings on your education was actually a good choice.

Then, all of a sudden, the miracle happens. You're finally called for a first round interview. It's for a quant job and it's for a top-tier BB. Everything you've always wanted! You ace your non-technical first round and you're called for a technical round the day after. This is even easier than you thought, and you get an offer the following day. "Weird," you think to yourself. "They haven't asked a single question about finance." But you drown these malevolent thoughts. You're back in the game! You're finally gonna be a banker!

You hurriedly move back to London and reconnect with Daniel, who now works as a hedge fund analyst and lives on a strict diet of Deliveroo and Adderall. He's super impressed by your job offer - that is, until you mention that your desk is going to be Market Risk. You ignore his perplexed face and go back to your shared apartment, full of excitement for you first day.

The first day on the job comes. You walk through a trading floor for the first time and you're in awe at all the cool people doing cool stuff. Then, you find out that you won't be sitting there. Your desk is in a separate room, a small and dusty windowless office. The VP who's giving you the tour is quick to assuage your fears. "This is Private Side," he explains. "We work in a separate room because we handle critical, non-public information. We are the real experts here!"

Time flies by and you've been in the job for six months. You spend your days fixing an archaic piece of software that generates regulatory reports. You haven't done anything even closely related to maths or finance. But it's fine. It's better than fine. You work 8 hours a day on a hard day. Your desk has a WFH policy of 2 days a week, though most of the team does at least 3. No one really cares if you arrive late. You're always well-rested and you haven't touched your Adderall in almost a year. Sure, a lot of your friends are now doing trading or structuring and they make your base salary in six months, but you're happy with your work-life balance. You've even started dating a nice girl who works at SCB, even though you're pretty sure she's only using you to get a referral.

Friday comes, and your MD decides to take the team out for drinks. You talk to a couple of guys while stacking as much Serrano ham and olives as you can on your plate. They were both previously working as software engineers for close to minimum wage and are glad for the many opprtunities given by banking. Your MD comes to the table with two bottles of the same wine you can buy in your home country's convenience store for two pounds a litre. He drunkenly pours you a glass while snickering: "Here's your bonus, enjoy it!"

You sip it and smile. You made it. You might not be the top dog on the street, but your life is fine. It's better than fine. Your life is paradise. Middle Office is paradise. Risk Quant is paradise.