Who is a good fit for (quant) finance
my simple model
Model
Few traits that in my observation many people successful/happy in the field share
Competitiveness/desire to win/”hate to lose”/”whatever it takes”
High priority on money/prestige
Love of intensity/fast pace (over say depth/”getting to the bottom of it”)
* Love of finance
** Ambitious but not too ambitious
Some things that militate against good finance fit:
Focus on internal vs external motivation (high propensity to want to do what’s cool/interesting vs what’s “needed”)
High focus on meaning/”want my work to matter”/”want to change the world”
Desire for visibility/wider influence
Desire for career flexibility (hours, location etc)
Let me know if you think something else should be on the lists!
Small font
Pro-2
Few words scream eliteness & money like “Jane Street” or “Citadel”, so it’s understandable insecure fresh grads from top places eager to prove they are the best gravitate to this career. Only to realize in a few years that there are always tradeoffs, that a lot of the work is more stressful than it is interesting, that there are plenty of easier and more meaningful ways to earn few hundred K.
Pro-4
Honestly think that’s derivative not primary, but still a useful check, if (again in a non-systematic context) a few years in you still care more about fancy mathy proofs than market color, then chances are you came for a wrong reasons, mislead as many into thinking math and technical stuff really rule this world, which they don’t.
Pro-5
Upper-right tail of most non-systematic roles is limited. Skillset is quite different from a sys quant, so you’re not really getting any closer to that and quant pm opportunities that that might entail. And in the non-systematic realm it’s traders and portfolio managers that run the show, and quants very very rarely manage to transition to that side. So, while the money can be good, and being good and surviving long enough you might get to a mil or a few a year, you’ll always be a bit of a second-class citizen with no realistic path to the actual top. Non-sys quant role is ultimately a supporting role, role of an advisor. While in some careers one might start doing something relatively narrow and technical but then move on towards more leadership and management and strategy and such as they get more senior. In non-systematic quantdom, given the niche nature of the role and it being a somewhat separate vertical from the core business, opportunities for that kind of stuff are quite limited. They are actually better at very big orgs like banks or asset managers that might have hundreds of quants in the same vertical and some large scale modeling infra needs. Whereas even at big non-sys hedge funds quant groups are usually not connected and scattered across businesses, and getting to be a quant head of a group of 10 is about as high as it can get.
Disclaimer
as mentioned in others posts, I’ve worked as a bank desk quant and then as a “desk quant” and “alpha research qr” at a non-systematic fund - market-makers or fancy academic sys funds a la DE Shaw reality might be different (though I doubt it’s that much different, option MMs closer to what I’ve seen than Shaw from what I can tell)