A few comments on the recent PZ story
What's the price of math talent
0. Intro
This came up on CST discord
Which triggered me a bit and stirred some memories, see below.
Big picture: “this is where math geniuses come to succeed” is a standard quant firm marketing trick, and little more. Plenty of other stories and facts point to the price of math talent in the industry being limited, and while of course some high level of math ability is table stakes for entry, honest PZ “performance attribution” should be nothing like “math wiz goes quant and so is golden”.
I. Remarks and stories
For me this
“Zhao developed a competitive streak. And at 12, he discovered his calling while reading a newspaper on the Beijing subway.
An article described how physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists were developing systems to beat Wall Street professionals in predicting market moves. He was enthralled by the high stakes and potentially massive rewards.”
is the interesting part. Says something about both Peng's own ambitions/interests, but maybe more importantly Chinese culture (or his parents?) commercial/money focus (presuming the seed doesn't flower on unprepared soil kinda stuff).
On a personal note, I spent my last years of highschool and early years of college studying math/interacting pretty closely/competing in studies with folks including an I think serial absolute IMO winner, and a few who just brought back gold medals.
One I think almost succumbed to mental health issues at one point (they rly don't know the word autism out there in Russia), now somewhat recovered and has something of a normal life as some kinda math professor somewhere in Germany.
The serial absolute top guy did build a quite impressive math career from a very early very stellar start - likely smarter than PZ.. guess me having seen him get drunk and awkwardly hit on the "weird goods" girls available in that tiny niche math community is an interesting memory.
A girl imo gold winner one year younger than me that I knew quite well did end up a quant pm at a good sys shop (with just an undergrad) at one point, before eventually moving to tech.
Point is: for me the PZ story is anything but "be a math genius and your path is guaranteed". In my world math genius wasn't exactly a scarce resource!
Having cultural programming to pursue something like quant fin, especially in those years, is huge.
Being normie enough and being sufficiently issues free to not let mental health or emotional immaturity derail you is huge (lovingly looking at all of you brilliant and messed up rats out there (mirror included;) ) ).
Having had a chance to impress Ken directly with something mathy also huge and amazing luck.
If your world model is "be better at math than your colleagues, work hard and you're golden" then ugh, not in my experience.
Generally nowadays there is too much math talent around, not much math is that relevant for most business critical things, even if you're better than peers it's not really something that would usually be an important differentiator, at least where I was.
Arguably pre-GFC times of industry's excessive lean into math were a good time for that stuff: but that got corrected.
Not sure how it is at Jane Street or other more academic culture places like D.E. Shaw,
but my general strong prior is "math will take me far in this industry" is a recipe for disillusionment.
I guess it's hard to distinguish between the hypotheses "I failed to capitalize well on my math talents [due to all my issues]" and "math talent price in the industry is not that high and PZ story is just misleadingly written" from just my own experience.
Still I mostly lean latter. Stats PhDs generally are not even viewed as that great at math. I knew a Stanford math PhD guy, maybe 5-10 yrs ahead of me, very sharp, was just a top bank VP in exotic derivs (which is the most mathy part) for a bunch of years until finally transitioning to a director at a lesser bank.
II. Conclusions
PZ probably was very driven and commercial for a mathy guy, Stats is a pretty smart choice for a quant.
If the story is really him targeting Wall Street quant career from early in life, but still committing to a Stats PhD, that's kinda unusual and potential big hidden advantage.
Given many folks just get disillusioned with academia and flip to the quant "default alternative".
He was lucky to have a passion that brought him into some really good places at the right time, and quite a bit more luck helping pave his way to the top. Great for him. No doubt a very talented and ambitious guy.
But let’s not conclude that many other more talented and ambitious guys would rise as high. And certainly let’s not conclude that quant finance is necessarily the best place for you, in this day and age, if all you have to go on is math talent and ambition.
I remember reading that article, thought it was an marketing pitch from the quant recruitment departments. What is the CST discord?
Another thought: if not quant finance, where else for mathy people to succeed? You've been talking about ML/AI/tech on your blog, but it seems like the same problem. The math phds I know are reasonably successful in those careers, like VP of exotic derivs at a bank, but to get to the very top like PZ you still need much more than just math talent.