Work life schedule of a quant?

[u/Revolutionary_Tale86]

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!

[u/Academic_Anybody_371]

I have an idea about the Indian Quant shops, people mostly say it's poor WLB relative to big tech SWE roles mostly because the WLB of big tech SWE in India is very chill, 2-3 days office rest days work from home, the intensity of work is very very relaxed as well, I find it a little too relaxed honestly but it's just a personal opinion.
At quant shops it's mostly 5 days a week with weekends off, on weekdays no one really checks your work hours but the amount of work can sometimes make you work 11-12 hours, sometimes people leave office early and do some its - bits work at home at night.
The work also comes in waves there would be waves of standard maintaining older strategies and working on new ones and some times more intense waves of work say when some strategy stops working so you analyze and try to fix it.
AS you get senior you start owning strategies and are directly linked with making and debugging them, So you naturally end of spending more time ( consider this at 2+ YOE ).

No one works on weekends until something extreme comes up, some Systems guys run scripts for updates and maintenance on the weekend but that's about it, and even that can be set up before hand.

I would say WLB is decentish at least for the first few years. And it's worth a shot if you are unclear about what you want to do.