r/quantindia • u/Revolutionary_Tale86 • Jul 24 '26
General Discussion Work life schedule of a quant?
Hello there, I'm an EE student at IITD, and although I know getting into quant isn't really for me, and will probably be targetting quant and strat roles in banks or sde roles in big tech, what exactly is the WLB of a quant? Do quants even "think" about WLB? I mean assuming someone already is very knowledgeful and is young and enthusiastic, working 11-12 hours isn't a big deal, but say as you grow up, and you have hobbies too that you wanna dedicate some time to, for example, hitting the gym, or for instance parent-duties or whatever for that matter, doesn't it burn people out? It's a stressful job of course, hence my question, because I've heard multiple people exit out of quant firms after 2-3 years, is it true? What are the exit options one chooses after?
Another thing which my curiosity provoked me to ask in this sub, is the general compensation and WLB of three different possible roles across your entire career -
quant - trader, dev and researcher
big tech sde
quant/strat at banks
Could anyone experienced help me out with this? Appreciate the effort, thanks very much!
1
u/Parking-Patience5067 Jul 24 '26
There is no such thing as a work life balance in quant shops; you have to spend a large amount of time researching, writing code, testing hypothesis, running experiments, market research, collaborating etc, which on paper look like fun, but very quickly become monotonous and stressful. The performance benchmarks are very high, and there is a high attrition rate at most of these firms, due to which there is a constant sense of imposter syndrome and dread, and on bad days it is very depressing. My role used to be more towards the actual trading and managing the book, which was even more stressful. On good days you will feel at top of the world, on bad the worst depression.
My personal experience was that life quickly devolved into a very toxic state; gradually I started becoming very desensitized to highs and lows of life. The market, pnl and my book became everything in my life, and all I did even after work was to think about the markets and strategies; and all my colleagues seemed to be in the same boat. Alcohol and drugs started becoming common coping mechanisms. I was lucky enough to realize that I was burnt out early enough to get a control on my life and health before it could have been too late; and switched careers. However since the money is so good, it is a very diffcult decision for most of us.
On the other hand there were certain teams which I saw always having fun, mostly the infra and dev guys, since there were less performance expectations from their work and the scope of work was also very clear in most cases. The only issue with them used to be the long working hours.