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Topic Title: stable well living
Created On Fri May 16, 08 05:30 PM

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Broardview
Member

Posts: 159
Joined: Apr 2006

Fri May 16, 08 05:30 PM

How should we do to get a stable career and well living? Also we can enjoy our work

I look forward to hearing DCFC's suggestions.

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quantmeh
Senior Member

Posts: 5968
Joined: Apr 2007

Fri May 16, 08 05:38 PM

marry a billionaire, get divorce settlement. what other answer do u expect? unless u get a lot of money at some point, there's no stable life.

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KackToodles
Senior Member

Posts: 4093
Joined: Aug 2005

Fri May 16, 08 05:49 PM

be a dishwasher. your work is stable (14 hours/day) and people will need dishwashers as long as there are restaurants. just don't offend your boss.

Edited: Fri May 16, 08 at 05:50 PM by KackToodles

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muxControl
Member

Posts: 70
Joined: Jun 2006

Fri May 16, 08 07:25 PM

Escort work. Typically �500 per hour.

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farmer
Senior Member

Posts: 12449
Joined: Dec 2002

Fri May 16, 08 07:54 PM

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Originally posted by: muxControl
Escort work. Typically �500 per hour.

If you know a girl who gets that steady, tell her to PM me. I may go into the pimping business after all.

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Anthis
Senior Member

Posts: 4044
Joined: Oct 2001

Fri May 16, 08 08:37 PM

Cuchulainn
Senior Member

Posts: 29263
Joined: Jul 2004

Fri May 16, 08 08:39 PM

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Originally posted by: Anthis
LOL

Yeah, no rest for the wicked

Broardview,
What's your story?

-------------------------
www.datasimfinancial.com

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Anthis
Senior Member

Posts: 4044
Joined: Oct 2001

Fri May 16, 08 08:44 PM

Quote
Originally posted by: Cuchulainn
Quote
Originally posted by: Anthis
LOL

Yeah, no rest for the wicked

Broardview,
What's your story?

Given his obsession about russian girls, i think you can imagine a lot of hints...

Posts: 85
Joined: Feb 2007

Fri May 16, 08 09:18 PM

No such thing as a stable job anymore.

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StatGuy
Senior Member

Posts: 605
Joined: Nov 2007

Fri May 16, 08 10:28 PM

Become a statistician, in the public sector you can get paid over 60k pounds a year at the senior levels and a very good pension. Whilst the average quant will make around 80-100k pounds a year, IMO this doesn�t last forever and highly dependent on how well the markets are performing. So you could make this for say 10-15 years if you lucky then get made redundant - then what? If you are a senior statistician in the public service you can get paid over 60k pounds a year till you are very old and even into your late 60s. So over your career history you will earn probably as much as an average quant if not more. Also the added attraction is that you get a lot of holiday and some free time. So better work/life balance.

The work of a statistician can be just as tough as the quants in banking. So in the right role you can make a good living, good work/life balance and be mentally challenged as well.

Stats guy

Edited: Sat May 17, 08 at 08:34 AM by StatGuy

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Broardview
Member

Posts: 159
Joined: Apr 2006

Sat May 17, 08 05:04 AM

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Originally posted by: Cuchulainn
Quote
Originally posted by: Anthis
LOL

Yeah, no rest for the wicked

Broardview,
What's your story?

I do not have any stories to tell. I am just honest to say the words which everyone concerns but not dare to ask. Who can admit that his job/her job in buy side or sell can last longer enough? Who can admit he/she was fired or asked to leave? There are lots of F**K off politics in this business. Many peopple should feel shamed about themselves in terms of climbing the corporate ladder and kicking off other people. It sucks.

Edited: Sat May 17, 08 at 05:05 AM by Broardview

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Broardview
Member

Posts: 159
Joined: Apr 2006

Sat May 17, 08 05:07 AM

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Originally posted by: StatGuy
Become a statistician, in the public sector you can get paid over 60k pounds a year at the senior levels and a very good pension. Whilst the average quant will make around 80-100k pounds a year, IMO this doesn�t last forever and highly dependent on how well the markets are performing. So you could make this for say 10-15 years if you lucky then get made redundant - then what? If you are a senior statistician in the public service you can get paid over 60k pounds a year till you a very old and even into your late 60s. So over your career history you will earn probably as much as an average quant if not more. Also the added attraction is that you get a lot of holiday and some free time. So better work/life balance.

The work of a statistician can be just as tough as the quants working in bank. So in the right role you can make a good living, good work/life balance and be mentally challenged as well.

Stats guy

I quite agree with your points. Do you think having a Master degree in statistics is enough to be a statistician?

When you say "quant", is it applied to buy side and sell side?

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KackToodles
Senior Member

Posts: 4093
Joined: Aug 2005

Sat May 17, 08 05:17 AM

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Originally posted by: farmer
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Originally posted by: muxControl
Escort work. Typically �500 per hour.

If you know a girl who gets that steady, tell her to PM me. I may go into the pimping business after all.

you'd have more luck with a guy.

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StatGuy
Senior Member

Posts: 605
Joined: Nov 2007

Sat May 17, 08 08:56 AM

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I quite agree with your points. Do you think having a Master degree in statistics is enough to be a statistician?

Usually having a masters in statistics is the minimum requirement for most of the *genuine* statistician roles. You could, of course do a PhD in statistics as well if you want to gear your career more towards a research based area like medical research, etc.

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When you say "quant", is it applied to buy side and sell side?

rough average based on both.

Stats Guy

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DominicConnor
Senior Member

Posts: 11300
Joined: Jul 2002

Sat May 17, 08 11:01 AM

WannaArb is of course entirely and perfectly right.
No given job is stable, and that applies from the head of Merrill Lynch to the person who who cleans his floor.

To misquote Woody Allen, "dying doesn't scare me, it's staying dead, that gives me the shits".

Static stability is not only unattainable, it is often unpleasant in the long term, since you may feel trapped and/or stale.
The single biggest clump I know of such people is Britain's witless semi-monopoly Telco, British Telecom.
It pays these jokers more than they are worth, so they can't get proper jobs since it would hurt financially.

Imagine a truly huge firm staffed 100% by people with no interest other than keeping their jobs, it's not pretty.
Those unfortunate enough to fly British Airways will see the same thing.
Every BT/BA employee I have encountered has struck me as in borderline clinical depression. Not always dumb, but always wasted.

Whay you need is dynamic stability.
The ability to get another job when this one dies.

This not only will improve your risk adjusted return, but will actually make you happier.
I rarely say "X will make you happier", because my job as a headhunter is to find out what you want, and try to get it.
It's not my place to tell you what to like.

But in this case I observe that optionality has profound value in your morale, even if you don't really want to leave.
A good analogy is that you you pick up a very attractive person of a compatible sex and go back to their room.
As you are getting undressed, you hear the door being locked.
Your utility may droop noticeably at this point.

One way you can extract utility from the pestering calls of headhunters is to ask them about what variants on your skills would make you more marketable.
This is a tragically noisy signal, but is usually honest since HHs want people they can sell.
You should not panic the first time you hear "there's not so much call for pricing Nigerian options in Delphi these days", but if the signal repeats, time to think about diversification.

In the Guide, I make a big thing of using your financial maths skills to manage your career.
There is an inherent trade off between risk and return.
Specialisation helps you get a better return, but when that niche goes bad, it can hurt. I know this from personal experience, indeed one major reason I feel qualified to offer career advice is that I can help people
avoid making the mistakes I have made. Some are so bad, I don't put them on this forum so I can use them in after dinner speeches, and my forthcoming novel.

However, risk is not a monotonic function of specialisation, at any point in time for a given person there is an optimum.
This is because someone who is generally average across a broad front risks coming 2nd in lots of interviews, but first in none.
You need a few sexy specialist skills to get any given decent job.

Networking is also useful, but at more levels than one might at first think.

Yes, some people have good good jobs through the people they know, but more critically you can model how the market for your skills is evolving.
You can identify "low hanging fruit", skills you don't have that are congruent with those you already have.

It's often necessary to incur debt to buy into this line of work, and that's usually rational.
I counsel you however to keep your debts down, because it reduces the set of options you can choose between.

It was a huge jump for me to become a headhunter, and I could take that risk because I had no debt at all. That's bigger than is rational for most people most of the timed, but recall your Real option theory when looking
at the effect of debt you incur.

There are also "insurance skills". These are things people will at least pay you something if it all goes tits up. These are of course the equivalent of low risk/low return assets in your personal portfolio.
Excel/VBA is one of these, but you should ensure you have a couple. There is always work somewhere for an Excel jockey, and it may be your way back into banking if you fall out.

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StatGuy
Senior Member

Posts: 605
Joined: Nov 2007

Sat May 17, 08 11:24 AM

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I rarely say "X will make you happier", because my job as a headhunter is to find out what you want, and try to get it.

It is often hard to know what someone wants. It may well be that they are not suited to be a quant in the first place. Also, some people enjoy being unhappy and having something to moan about, so for this group of people being happy will make them unhappy.

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Excel/VBA is one of these, but you should ensure you have a couple. There is always work somewhere for an Excel jockey, and it may be your way back into banking if you fall out.

This is very true, but what are the chances of being an excel jokey when you are like 50 plus after redundancy over someone fresh out of university? I don�t know the statistics on the number of 50+ VBA contractors in a bank, but I would imagine this is a very small pool?

Stats Guy

Posts: 53
Joined: Apr 2008

Sat May 17, 08 12:41 PM

Quote
Originally posted by: Broardview
How should we do to get a stable career and well living? Also we can enjoy our work

I look forward to hearing DCFC's suggestions.

there is a good reason why people don't dare (as you put it) to ask this question: it's dumb. you won't find the answer on wilmott, you have to find it yourself.

Edited: Sat May 17, 08 at 12:44 PM by skh

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StatGuy
Senior Member

Posts: 605
Joined: Nov 2007

Sat May 17, 08 12:51 PM

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there is a good reason why people don't dare (as you put it) to ask this fundamental question: it's dumb. you won't find the answer on wilmott, you have to find it yourself.

Getting the right kind of role for you is a difficult task, especially early in your career as a fair number don't really have a good idea of where they want to get to. Sure there are a few who know they want to be CEO, doctor etc. at a very young age, but not everyone is in this small pool. So it is only through gaining experiencing with working with a few employers that someone will gain a better appreciation of where they see themselves in the long run. There are a lot of people who give advice on career, but they have to remember that it�s not them they giving the advise to sometimes. We all different in our own way, some may be useless in quant work, but excel in other areas where they could end up earning a lot more than a quant.

Stats guy

Edited: Sat May 17, 08 at 12:54 PM by StatGuy

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DominicConnor
Senior Member

Posts: 11300
Joined: Jul 2002

Sat May 17, 08 01:32 PM

This is very true, but what are the chances of being an excel jokey when you are like 50 plus after redundancy over someone fresh out of university?
I'd like to answer that in very specific terms...

You can't do much about your age, except wait for it to increase.
So the question is if you are 50, what will people pay you to do ?
Excel/VBA fits that nicely. It allows you to bring in your mix of business/maths and programming skills directly to a business environment.
There is no aspect of banking which does not have huge piles of Excel that needs sorting out or building.

I don�t know the statistics on the number of 50+ VBA contractors in a bank, but I would imagine this is a very small pool?
50+ contractors is a small pool, but contracting is something that can work for you if age is getting in the way.
Contractors are typically hired to do X, where X is some set of tasks. As such, managers are more indifferent as to any factor other than the ability to bang the right keys.
An ageist hiring manager may actually prefer older contractors.

A big thing for contracting, is that it's much easier to get past a period of unemployment, again because more focus is on the skill and the job than the person.

Also, to answer the question properly, I would say that Excel is the single biggest type of contractor in any bank.
It would not shock me if I were to see a firm where it was bigger than the next two put together.

Of course there are piles of network/C++,Java,SQL, contractors but they are nearly all in IT.
There is a truly huge number of people for whom Excel is their "place of work" more than the bank they happen to be in this week.

Thus one may count reconciliation, risk reporting, settlements, data ingest, tactical development, accountancy, and even some bits of algorithmic trading as Excel.
Not just Excel of course, but superior ability in Excel acts as an amplifier to your other skills.

I need here to convey the sense of context in which I'm recommending Excel/VBA as insurance.
Insurance pays off when something goes wrong.

Thus when I commend Excel/VBA to you as insurance I am assuming that jobs using your headline skill set are not coming your way.

Posts: 53
Joined: Apr 2008

Sat May 17, 08 01:49 PM

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Originally posted by: StatGuy
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there is a good reason why people don't dare (as you put it) to ask this fundamental question: it's dumb. you won't find the answer on wilmott, you have to find it yourself.

Getting the right kind of role for you is a difficult task, especially early in your career as a fair number don't really have a good idea of where they want to get to. Sure there are a few who know they want to be CEO, doctor etc. at a very young age, but not everyone is in this small pool. So it is only through gaining experiencing with working with a few employers that someone will gain a better appreciation of where they see themselves in the long run. There are a lot of people who give advice on career, but they have to remember that it�s not them they giving the advise to sometimes. We all different in our own way, some may be useless in quant work, but excel in other areas where they could end up earning a lot more than a quant.

Stats guy

agreed. finding out what is right for you and makes you happy is a process, not an event. but you won't make any progress by asking a generic question � la "what's the recipe for being happy" on an internet forum. on the other hand, there is an abundance of threads here where people describe their specific situation and background and ask specific questions which help.

Edited: Sat May 17, 08 at 01:54 PM by skh

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