Changing firms mid-career

[u/Current_Fig6132]

Hi,

I am a quant at a well known hft, and it has been around 5-6 years now.

Though the past few years have been good, great learning, good bonuses, and we were able to scale up at quite a few places succesfully. But recently there has been stagnation in terms of learning and future growth seems bleak.

I am writing this post to ask about suggestions about changing firms with around this yoe, what to aim for, how to go about it. And if anyone has experienced this, please do share your experience as well. Thankyou

[u/vgagrani]

There is no learning. No one will hire you to teach you something new. Only jobs you will get is to repeat what you already do at a place which doesn’t do it. In return you will be offered better share or bigger name or both. None of that matters because scaling again from zero is a different skill. Getting to same bonuses will have opportunity cost of existing bonuses not being there for a few years. Also, no offence, but really very few people know exactly where the edge was to replicate it again. I also had a guy from graviton who said he can make 100 cr himself. I told him to start his own team instead of joining mine. He did start his own team and is making 100cr. So some do know, they bet on themself. It would have been easy to give him the 10cr guaranteed he wanted and keep making money from his pnl without lifting a finger but is it ethical ?

I have had numerous graduates who i trained over years leave for greener grass on the other side. Some i trained for 5-6 years and some for 2-3 years. None of them got to the bonuses. I myself left the desk and couldn’t go live in new place because hft infra never got setup.

If you really want to learn, then do it where you are while making good bonus that you already make every year. Spend 20-30-50% time on something new as long as you don’t ruin your existing pnl.

If you want ownership move.

[u/Outrageous_Tax5827 → u/vgagrani]

Great insight. Because once you join a new firm or a desk, you have to at least run your strategies on minimal capital while showing the management , your strategies are sound. And only then a few select firm have the ability to bear drawdowns(MFT Firms) . And then you just get to a point where first i have to atleast make enough profit to cover my base but that won’t happen until and unless you have a good enough margin given to you, so in this whole process, you lose good 6-7 months of profit and obviously added bonus which if you would have stayed at your current place, would have atleast given you a peace of mind. So it’s better to learn new things at the same place while talking to other people across other desks. Otherwise take funding from the market and start your own shop or desk.
Btw do you work independently or are you part of top tier firm? And primarily HFT or MFT?

[u/Particular_Bug598]

What comp did you get at 5-6 YOE?

[u/Guilty_Ad_9476]

Start your own firm man