Quants bemoan nightmare of promotions and managing other quants
Top roles in quant finance are rarely achieved through technical work alone. You'll most likely need to take up a managerial role, which, according to former banking quants, can be problematic.
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Santander alumnus Dimitri Bianco, now head of quant risk and research at data vendor Agora Data, said in a YouTube video this week that 2024 has been "a rough year for me career-wise" due to his management responsibilities. He says the team is "running a lot of things with only a few people" and that time management has been one of his toughest challenges.
Bianco said that he will be "derailed" from his modelling work "three or four times" in a week. Examples of his distractions include mandatory compliance training, the completion of annual reviews, and working with the management and accounting team to organize raises and promotions for his team. Dimitri is planning to grow his team, which currently has just three people, but said "I don't have the time, I don't have the resources, I don't want to do the recruiting part."
It's easier doing pure quant work, where Dmitri says he's able to "shut the world out". That is rarely achievable when you're a manager, though. "You need to make sure you are managing the framework and environment around your team, because all these decisions company-wide impact your team."
Bianco isn't the only one struggling. Speaking on a roundtable at the Quant Strats 2024 conference in London earlier this year, a former proprietary trading MD at a US bank who now runs a quant fund said the promotion track for quants in banking is "f****** stupid." Because of the mandatory management responsibilities, banks create a "last man standing culture," where the most successful people are more likely to be good managers than good quants.
Communication is a key component of management, but the CEO said "not everyone who works for us can actually communicate properly... some of our partners are less gifted vocally." Banks are more averse to implementing quantitative strategies that cannot be easily explained to investors, so these quants would have a hard time finding success there.
The benefit of these struggles is that it can make you more employable. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, for example, previously highlighted Goldman Sachs people in particular as being desirable for their communication skills.
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