Engineer looking for advice
I wanted to know if anybody had any general advice on my situation.... To summarize it, I’m an engineering major from a top engineering school that will graduating in a year or so with a masters degree. I have solid engineering intern experience in the energy industry, and I recently got an offer at a larger asset management firm as an investment analyst.
I know that I eventually want to open my own fund, but I’m not quite sure if I’m making the jump to finance too early on in my career. On top of that, I have multiple six figure engineering offers, and I aspire to get an MBA in the future... but my fear is that if I pursue engineering for a few years, I won’t be able to move back into buy-side finance (or it will be extremely difficult to do so).
With this being said, does anybody have any suggestions. Should I take the asset management offer or go into engineering?
Hi there, here are my two cents. I believe if you have strong engineering background, it's easier for you to do 1-2 years' investment analyst then go back to engineering field if you really want. After 1-2 years, you can recruit for engineering based on your credentials from undergrad/grad studies. The investment analyst is quite unique in this regard. If you work for a good large AM, words are that investment analysts ascend in rank/pay quite rapidly.
How unique is the investment analyst role? More of fundamental analysis or quantitative? If it is essentially quantitative research (QR), doing engineering first then jump to AM for such QR roles is definitely possible.
The decision will not be easy because you have to balance your long term goal with your current pay. Good luck.
I don’t quite understand your logic. Your long term goal is to work in finance (have your own fund), you have an offer to work in asset management (although useful if you describe your role) and you are worried about getting into finance “too early”?
Too early for what? I don’t quite understand how doing work that is not related (I.e. engineering, but I’ll give you marginally related if you are interested in certain parts of finance) is going to help you relative to getting direct and relevant experience. You want to work in asset management/hedge funds, go do that, don’t go work in engineering and sit around regretting that decision.
I could see the argument around job stability (long term) or if the asset manager is a small/unknown firm and the engineering firm is top notch, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’m a bit confused.
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