I find these things a bit tricky because when I project my 20-year-old self onto them all I’m thinking is “I wanna high-paying job so I can be rich…what do I do old man?”
To be fair, I find all young folks who reach out to me to be incredibly mature and thoughtful. Majorly.
The inter-generational condescension olds have for the youngs is bizarre. The kids are impressive. Like the young man from UNC who reached out to me in the first place to see if I’d give the presentation. I just never would have done anything like that at his age. I was skipping class to make sure when my roommates got home I had the top score in the house in Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s so dumb when I recount it. Maybe my bar for what kids should be able to do is so low because I didn’t care about anything but how am I gonna do the least work for the most money so I can just screw off.
(I wonder if this is a class thing. Where I grew up, ambition just wasn’t in the water. I remember a kid in our town who got hurt in an accident on purpose so he could get a settlement. And then he bought a 90s Mustang and drove around with “Fear Me” vanity plates on it. Peaking in HS is bad enough, but for THAT to be the peak…ouch.)
When I graduated, options trading was a relative backwater compared to banking. It wasn’t high status. SIG wasn’t even SIG. They were called Susquehanna and nobody knew what the heck a “Susquehanna” was. I made $37,500 for my starting pay.
Today, new hires make like 10x that. That’s 10% inflation per year. I talk about the forces that drove that. But the larger point is that trading and market-making are now high-status. There are trading competitions, interview brainteaser forums, and legible stages to getting hired. The competition is claws-out. In other words, all the conditions for massive disappointment. It’s hard to have the experience I had — getting into an industry that sounds pretty cool and needed bodies because it was quietly on the cusp of roofing. It was not in vogue. Susq’s recruiter asked me to come over as I wandered the career fair. “Hey kid, you like games?”
Today, the kids show up knowing the interview questions.
They all want career advice. What do I need to do to get hired? Because the show has moved from the 1pm side stage to the Sunday night headliner I don’t have great advice for getting hired beyond “crush the IMOs”.
But that feels a bit harsh and defeatist. So I crowdsourced:
Some help from the hive please. College students will reach out asking how to get into the investment or trading industry. I don’t have an answer other than on-campus recruiting.
The answers rolled in. Thread of advice for breaking into the industry.
Related topics
🌙Career Advice (moontowerquant.com)
🌙My advice to practitioners who ask how to handle stressful days — have other places in your life to get a W. Oil futures blew through a short strike on expo? Go get a new PR in the gym or prune a topiary. This short piece by David Epstein affirms the strategy: Why Hobbies Are An Advantage, Not a Distraction (2 min read)
🌙Ricki Heicklen is hosting a condensed version of her Quant Bootcamp. I’ve discussed this bootcamp many times so from now on I’ll just remind you that it’s so good it shouldn’t exist. It’s subsidized by Ricki’s joy of teaching.
🚀She is hosting another one April 25-27 in SF🚀
➡️Register at trading.camp
Moontower readers have been to prior bootcamps. It was heart-warming when she messaged me earlier this year to say:
I came here because I wanted to tell you how genuinely wholesome and kind your fanbase is. you have led to a ton of bootcamp signups and they are across the board…”
such high quality people. genuinely earnest, smart, dedicated thinkers who have also clearly learned a ton from reading your stuff
when I see that a bootcamp signup found me via moontower it’s an extremely positive signal about how much they’ll add for the cohort
This is a massive testament to YOU. I’ve said it before…attending Ricki’s bootcamp in Nov reminded me how lazy my own thinking can be. I literally feel dumb around her and the other instructors…
Not because they’re pompous, it’s just the rigor around details, logic, etc. It feels similar to being at SIG. Not surprising bc of the SIG/JS lineage. Anyway that’s all to say, Ricki isn’t easily impressed and then y’all go and her impress her.
This bootcamp is special because it also marks the launch of her company Arbor. In celebration, it kicks off with a Friday night gala.
➡️See the schedule at arbor.day