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coffeetable
Feb 5, 2006

TELL ME AGAIN HOW GREAT BRITAIN WOULD BE IF IT WAS RULED BY THE MERCILESS JACKBOOT OF PRINCE CHARLES

YES I DO TALK TO PLANTS ACTUALLY

Josh Lyman posted:

I spent 5 years in a finance PhD program and my dissertation was on high frequency asset pricing but I left before finishing.

I'm afraid firms won't hire me because they could hire actual PhDs for quant work and MBAs for the other stuff. Is this fear justified?

FWIW, I also have a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Some places are snobby about it, but other places think of dropouts as a 'good deal'. As a (admittedly new) quant at a well-regarded fund, if I see a PhD on a resume then I'm gonna judge them on the work they did. Whether they actually finished is almost irrelevant.

If you've done quantitative work you're proud of, if you're a strong mathematician and if you're a decent software dev, then you should have no trouble finding somewhere. If you're missing one of those three things, then for quant work at least things might be trickier.

e: is there a buy-side thread around here

coffeetable fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Mar 14, 2016

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coffeetable
Feb 5, 2006

TELL ME AGAIN HOW GREAT BRITAIN WOULD BE IF IT WAS RULED BY THE MERCILESS JACKBOOT OF PRINCE CHARLES

YES I DO TALK TO PLANTS ACTUALLY

Are you getting into finance because you have a particular interest in finance, or are you just looking to stack cash?

Because if it's the latter, then as a software dev there are easier and cheaper ways for you to do that than an MBA.

coffeetable
Feb 5, 2006

TELL ME AGAIN HOW GREAT BRITAIN WOULD BE IF IT WAS RULED BY THE MERCILESS JACKBOOT OF PRINCE CHARLES

YES I DO TALK TO PLANTS ACTUALLY
Well then, the next question is: are you any good at
  • probability
  • statistics
  • multivariable calculus
  • linear algebra
  • optimization
?

coffeetable
Feb 5, 2006

TELL ME AGAIN HOW GREAT BRITAIN WOULD BE IF IT WAS RULED BY THE MERCILESS JACKBOOT OF PRINCE CHARLES

YES I DO TALK TO PLANTS ACTUALLY
^^ Yeah the follow up to that follow up was gonna be 'well an MBA ain't gonna help'

mike- posted:

Honestly, You don't have to be good at any of these things to work in investment banking. Especially on the m&a side.


You're right, pardon me. I read 'quant-focused' as meaning 'I want to be a quant', but she might not have meant it that way.

coffeetable
Feb 5, 2006

TELL ME AGAIN HOW GREAT BRITAIN WOULD BE IF IT WAS RULED BY THE MERCILESS JACKBOOT OF PRINCE CHARLES

YES I DO TALK TO PLANTS ACTUALLY

Gay Horney posted:

I'm a broker at a big discount brokerage and I really hate it a lot. I thought it would be a good stepping stone to maybe working at a boutique financial services company but I'm worried my current job won't be as good as I thought for making the move. I need to get out of this glorified call center, what're my best options

what's your education

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