Tech vs FinTech vs Risk Quant
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- Опубліковано 18 кві 2022
- As my journey unfolds I am at a cross road of firms in tech, fintech, and banking (risk quant). All of the opportunities have their pros and cons however making this decision is really challenging. Should I leave banking for another industry? Will the other industries have the rigor of banking? Maybe I can bring an academic rigor that would would really help these firms grow? Or maybe I am delusional and these firms just want to make models over and over again.
Tech is very free and exploration is encouraged. Working remote full time is a real option and the name of a FAANG might really boost my resume. The skills in both tech and fintech are similar enough to quant finance that I could make a great contribution while learning new skills or enhancing ones I don't get to use as often as a quant. The fintech offer is local and it would be nice to meet real people face to face. Free lunches and snacks would be a great perk as well as working with nice and motivated people.
I am still trying to figure out what would really make me happy. I know that sounds cliché however why spend your life working on something that you don't find meaningful.
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I currently work in Model Validation at a big bank and commute 1.5 hours each way, 2-3 days per week. When I go in person, I leave at 6:15am and arrive home close to 8:00pm. I leave before my 2.5 year old son wakes up and sometimes, I get home after he falls asleep for the night. When he is still awake, I get home exhausted. I also live in a more rural area but I am moving closer to work because of this. The cost of living is higher but it is worth having more time with my family. Considering you are not willing to relocate, if I were you, I would take a fully remote position. You will not get this time back with your daughter. If I was in a more senior position with more experience, I would take the fully remote position.
I come to believe that we have quite the same taste as far as job is concerned. Happiness first! And from your range of experiences, I tend to think that a journey in the Fintech won't be a boring one!, Dimitri
You'll Figure It Out My Brother
It would be nice if you could some videos on coding in SAS.
This has been on my to-do list for a while. I'm trying to get the basic R videos done and then I'll move to teaching SAS.
As someone who studied philosophy & sociology in undergrad, I never thought I would end up glued to a channel like this, but it's all so interesting to me. I'll be doing a data science and artificial intelligence masters in the fall. You should be proud of yourself -- such an array of opportunities. Wish you the best.
Hey man I’m considering doing data science even though im super interested in philosophy and sociology. Would you be down to answer a couple of questions about your experience at college and how you got interested in data science?
@@adgagaegfy345 any updates ?
Regional bank analytics manager here. Don’t fall back into standard commercial banking. It will always be there if the others fail. Take the risk on something new is my 2 cents
Consider just starting a consulting business. Allows you to work for c amount of time on a project and then move on. Plus you can build a team if you choose to based on your desired culture.
I agree. Ask any company that really wants you if they would contract you as an independent consultant. Take the job for less money than their offer in return for being able to maintain IP ownership of any apps you develop. Then sell the apps to other companies.
This crossed my mind. I have worked on contract before. The real downside is trying to find companies and doing all the sales/marketing of the services.
@@DimitriBianco Downside/Hurdles when going from zero to one (a book to read).
Which is why the upside can be so big.
This is based on you stating that you get a number of request to apply for roles. You can always try the bains/mckinseys/deloittes of the world.
there is still that hedge fund i mentioned before. or what about one of the hft firms or market makers?
also it's super funny how different our politics are, because i have all of the same concerns about tech for the exact opposite reasons.
p.s. see how much better things are when you don't have to commute in traffic, this is why we like the cities.
personally when I hear fintech I think of square or venmo so it makes sense why there's less quants
Hey Dimitri, I love your content and think it provides a good mix between technical deep dives and career advice.
I currently work as a first year quantitative analyst at a Big4 company in Europe, working on topics such as valuation, market and credit risk. I previously received both a master in Economics and in Finance, both of which were fairly quantitative. My long term goal is to relocate to the US or Canada (Toronto Area) and find a job as a quant there. I have the option of pursuing another Finance degree at Fordham (NY) which would take me 1 month and set me back a couple grands (through an affiliated programme with my previous finance degree). While content-wise it won't bring me much value, I would love to hear your opinion on whether it would be a good stepping stone for breaking into US/CAN quant roles, or whether it is a waste of time.
Alternatively, I wonder if pursuing a financial engineering degree would be worth it in the long run, given the high financial and experience-related opportunity cost it will bring?
Good luck with your own search, and thanks for bringing us along on the journeyç
Thank You!
If you are wanting to work in quant finance I would get a quant masters in the US or Canada. There are a lot more quant jobs in the US though so I would try and get into a school in the US.
The Fordham finance degree would help get you here however job wise you would most likely end up in a traditional finance job.
Hi Dmitri, you spoke about model selection for a bit and I'm really intrigued. Is there some place I can read up on this? I want to confidently be able to answer the question of "Why this model?" whenever it does come up
I'm not sure where you would find a nice laid out discussion of selecting the right model. The easiest two are accuracy, precision, and robustness (out of sample/time). The other main consideration is the seriousness of any statistical violations. A great example of this was discussed about multicollinearity in decision trees ( ua-cam.com/video/tHahe36ISjA/v-deo.html ). Often you can't find a model that meets all the statistical properties one would desire and understanding the consequences of that failure is important.
Another consideration is model feasibility in practice. For example, some problems are modeled as if they are independent of anything else. However in practice other decisions that are at a corporate strategy level could impact how the model performs. As an example, a model might perform great on Group A and just okay on Group B. If the population is 95% Group and and 5% Group B then the model would have great metrics like accuracy. Now if management now decides they want to grow Group B, the model will not continue to perform as well overall.
@@DimitriBianco thanks for such a thought out reply. Lately I've decided to pay a lot more attention to the assumptions models make. Just yesterday I was performing a one-way ANOVA test and decided to check for differences in the standard deviation between my treatment groups!
heart this.
What do you recommend to learn model building and validation in SAS?
I unfortunately have not found any great resources besides the SAS website. I would like to create a video series on this however I have had a lot of time constraints.
How about buy side?
That is an option. I am hesitant to go that route though because of my seniority. Often firms just hire people with a perfect fit of skills or you have to start at the bottom. There are some firms I would be interested in but the ones I have seen do not have remote working as an option.