Where are all the S&T monkeys?
Been on WSO for a while now and I just realized that everyone on this site is either aiming for IB or working in IB. Made me ask: Do many college kids aim for S&T (seems like everyone ik is aiming for IB) and how's the S&T industry holding up nowadays?
I've been pretty hesitant when it comes to S&T a career. The nature of the industry is changing, maybe slowly, but it is. I spoke to someone at GS securities, which has been struggling lately, who told me they're seeing lower head count, looking for kids who know coding languages, etc. But I still feel like those are things most can adapt to. S&T is still a GREAT paycheck out of school. But what happens 3-4 years down the road. Does headcount get even smaller? Does it turn into a primarily coding role? What transferable skills do you legitimately have when your looking for a new job? When do you start learning to take risk? Too many questions for me to dive in head first. Still a nice job out of college, but it looks a bit cloudy to me in the long run and idk how I feel about that.
Being in Europe I have what may be a different perspective. This might sound really stupid but S&T in Europe and the US are quite different. Is the sector as a whole a bit wobbly in terms of going forward? yes. Is it probably going to lead to much more technically focused positions in the future? also yes. But i think the EU S&T has a much broader qualitative aspect. Languages are super important here and while the majority of people speak english, what drives and helps initiate relationships on the Sales side is being fluent in other languages. In the US on the otherhand, you just need English so its a really basic requirement and that's why it will give way to much greater emphasis on coding/algo/hard skills in the future. In Europe the same may happen but its also much harder to find someone here who can communicate in English AND French AND German/Italian/Dutch/Spanish etc. What I guess I'm trying to say is that in my opinion it's harder to replace and find good people in S&T on this side of the pond because you really need at least 2 languages to be competitive along with the usual industry knowledge. I could be wrong but I also think this is why, in my experience, recent grads still gravitate to S&T (more so than the US) and the division as a whole is held in higher regard by the buy side than in the US (someone with more experience can hopefully clarify this).