So does everyone feel like this at the start?

I’ve started at a new quant fund and everyone is so insanely smart. I’m a few months in and I feel like an absolute idiot in comparison. They’re all talking about the markets and statistics like they’ve known it for years.

I feel like I lucked in by being reasonably smart and very personable but that only gets you so far. I feel like I’m going to get fired every day. Every time I take longer than an hour on a task I feel like everyone thinks I’m an idiot. Is this normal? This job has destroyed my confidence in my own ability which isn’t very nice

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Yes it’s like that for everybody.  You don’t have to sound right about everything on day one.  Just learn from what you are doing and talk intelligently about that.  Don’t talk about things you don’t know anything about.  Gradually build up the range of topics until you start sounding casually knowledgeable just like them (who have a head start on you on all this). 

 

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