Lessons for the Aspiring Quant
"Look at him, that's my quant"
"Your what?"
"My QUANTITATIVE. My math specialist. Look at him, you notice anything different about him? Look at his face."
"That's pretty racist"
"Look at his eyes, I'll give you a hint, his name is Yang. He won a national math competition, in CHINA! He doesn't even speak English! Yeah I'm sure of the math."
I've been getting a lot of questions recently from burnt-out grad students, STEM career switchers, and parents of precocious high schoolers on the best way to guarantee a spot in a top-tier quant firm.
Breaking into quant finance doesn't have to take winning a national math competition in China. Speaking English is fine, and in fact desirable! The only mandatory traits are thinking outside of the box and a healthy dose of grit.
Here are tips you can't read elsewhere, from someone who's seen the grind.
Find Edge in Life
Elite quant firms are looking for people who can spot Expected Value (EV) a mile away. Demonstrate that you've mastered the concept of Utility in your personal life.
Donate a proportion of your income to machine learning alignment research. If every human on earth dying from AI is the worst thing that can happen with negative infinity value, then reducing that probability by a non-zero amount is the only way to a Positive EV lifestyle. Show hiring managers that you will prepare for rare price events well ahead of time.
Want to know a secret? The road to Jane Street is paved with utilitarian fanfiction. Before becoming a trader at Jane Street, then a top executive at one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Caroline Ellison was a huge fan of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Be the type of reader who questions why wizards ever had societal problems despite access to a time machine. One-fifth of surveyed entry-level quants have read works by the author, Eliezer Yudkowsky. The market has rules, but riches are reserved for those who can see past them.
Sleep is a Skill
The quant capital of the world, New York, is the city that never sleeps. That's because markets don't sleep, so the people trading them are losing dollars for every snore.
Optiver, among the highest paying firms in trading, is legendary for consistently outperforming competitors in late night market moves. Their advantage? Completely soundproof lay-flat nap booths. Reservations can be made same day, but sleeping pills are strictly prohibited as they can cause a knock-on mental fog after waking.
Use polyphasic sleep to minimize your downtime as a percentage of total hours. Most firms are willing to accommodate the Everyman schedule (23% sleeping), which consists of four nighttime hours before early morning European trading in conjunction with three equally spaced half-hour naps. You might need to be more than an "Everyman" to succeed: I found that success in the industry is strongly correlated with the ability to sustain an Uberman schedule (eight 20 minute naps, 11%).
Be Resourceful in Recruiting
The warm intro is the first test. If you can't navigate your network to reach investors, you won't navigate the market to reach customers.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, said this about startups applying for venture capital funding. The same applies for creative hacks in quant recruiting. If you can't arbitrage the recruiting process, how will you arbitrage a market? Do whatever it takes to get in front of a hiring manager and make a good impression.
For example, at smaller elite firms, purchase orders for recruiting merchandise are often signed off on by senior partners instead of HR. Many specialty vendors have lax cybersecurity. One of the brightest researchers I know at Hudson River Trading first found his boss's mailing address on a unsecured receipt for branded Rubik's cubes. He skipped the first three rounds of interviews by following the partner out of his house to the neighborhood euchre club, where they started a conversation over cards.
Choose Your Friends Carefully
You are the weighted average of your five closest friends. Even if some of your friends aren't going into quant, teach them basic concepts so that you can discuss and self-improve while socializing. Drop every friend who can't learn how to price an option. Make sure you rebalance your friendship portfolio at least once a year, to cull everyone who's burned out and downshifted their lifestyle.
It can be rough cutting ties with non-STEM friends, especially if you've grown up together, or they've accompanied you through major life events like depression or cancer. We can learn from my college classmate who transitioned from a career in analytical philosophy to a job at Two Sigma. He devised a deeply beautiful solution: sending each ex-friend a handwritten note explaining why they couldn't speak anymore, and promising them 1% of his net worth when he retired.
I'm grateful to have the opportunity to mentor the quants of the future. If you're curious about any of these tips, please reach out.
Good luck making it to the big leagues.