Future of someone working as a GS strat
I might get an interview for a GS Strat position in Asia. I am wondering what options would remain open for me from there on. I am willing to get an MFin and then move to the US. I am worried that you dont really get to know what role you'll get as a GS strat. Maybe IBD, IMD, or securities division, and you never know if you'll get stuck with work related to market risk.
1) So if I get into GS strat and then decide to get into an MFin, does my previous role affect where I can land in future? Suppose my goal was to get into a HF, do I get interviews only with risk teams if my work at GS is in risk?
2) Where else can a strat go? I've heard that the strat role is very programming based and exposure to finance is not a lot. Is this bad, keeping in mind HF being the end goal?
2) I know this might sound as a stupid question but do strats go on to do an MBA ? Thinking of the worst case scenario where I might want to switch away from Finance or go HF through the MBA route.
Strats is a big division with many different types of strats, each with different options
Grains of salt because though I am a quant and have worked with a bunch of former gs strats I’ve never been a gs strat and the people I know were there like 8 years ago (from what I hear the level of talent/reputation isn’t quite what it was back then).
1.) strats are quants so they usually don’t get mfins and if you did the experience would probably be pretty useless, though i don’t think it would hurt. You’d probably still be better off than mfins with similar stats but no work experience, but you’d basically be paying money to lateral so the whole idea might look pretty different. You shouldn’t be too worried about being labeled as a risk person as the whole point of strats is that they’re quants with the right combination of ambition and intelligence to not end up in risk. Even if what you actually end up working on ends up being closer to risk you’ll have other opportunities as well.
2.) again strats are quants so you’ll be spending almost all your time programming. This means if you want to exit finance, depending on your skills, you’d probably be a reasonable candidate for data science type roles at any given company. It’s also a good stepping stone if your goal is to be a quant at a hedgefund but you don’t have the PhD from a top institution or IMO scores necessary to get a job as a quantitative researcher right off the bat (again though it’s a quant role so if you want to work at a hedgefund in a non quant capacity it’s useless).
3.) see mfin answer above, but with the extra caveat that it could help you when applying since I’ve heard things about programmers having a slightly easier time getting into mba programs (you’d have to verify this with someone else though since quants don’t usually go the mba route).
I know there's a lot of "talent", but don't you think the quality has gone down a lot?
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