Leaving FAANG dev job for serious finance (Yes, you read that right)

1. 这whole industry is basically a bunch of male chinese and indian nerds. Eg on my current team of ~30, other than 1 russian, everybody else is a highly introverted male chinese/indian, with English so poor that communication is seriously impeded

这是多么的修饰，在技术/SF中真的很喜欢吗？我会怀疑nycis like the opposite.

i think everyone that glorifies tech jobs should read this post. Sure, CS101 is fun/ez/interesting in undergrad, but the actual job is nothing like it. lot of mundane work like OP stated, JIRA updatingBS，Scrum会议和冲刺。所有愚蠢的IMO。

will comeback with a proper answer. but OP I'd say to hit the pavement with your networking. Demonstrate that you can talk about the sector/industry, and come off as someone they'd want to work with.

you arent too old to break in. I was about your age when i broke in, and many of my colleagues are older than me.

Why not be a Dev who actively manages his portfolio? Not everything is so one dimensional...

Hate coding? Be a product owner

Like Entrepreneurship? Develop a product in your spare time. Devs have it easier than bankers in that regard...

当我还是孩子的时候,我就花口袋里的钱买的Financial Times. When picking up pizza, I'd mentally start estimating revenue/profit based on customers, staff, etc. I recently found an old notebook and my 2 stock picks of 2008 were F and GOOG (what a weird kid).

Honestly, being interested in business/finance at a young age isn't really a weird thing (people on this site make it seem like it is) . How come people who obsess over sports cards and players aren't seen as weird? The only weird thing is if you obsessed over it and didn't have other hobbies.

"I don't really need the money, but it's a bonus."

If this really is your situation start with asking your current employer if you can go part-time. My roommate in SF worked at Google. He was super burnt out so he asked if he could work in the Switzerland office for a year. They approved, he moved to Switzerland, he staved off the "burnout-ness" for another year. Once that year abroad was up, he asked if he could work part-time. They approved, he used the extra time to study and network. After a year of part-time, studying, and networking he put in a month's notice to Google. Now he's at a quant fund. I know you specifically mentioned this in unlikely for you but is probably best suited for your skills and just my opinion but I think you will enjoy it the most. Definitely don't goER。

这MSFroute is probably the best route for someone like you. Your UG GPA is horrible and you have no finance experience so you really need a reset. Going to a top school and STEM helps but it helps within a margin of error of maybe 0.3-0.4. 2.95 is too far from most other applicants who will be 3.8+. Get into a goodMSF程序（您的STEM背景可能是一个加号），压碎您的课程，一两个实习，这将使您成为一个很好的地方，可以随心所欲。

Also just to address the tech centric points for visibility (at least my $0.02) for anyone who might read this:

1。Yes, those parts suck. I hate unit testing and diving deep into some obscure bug you see in your logs when the browser crashes. Recreating it, putting in break points.. hell running the damn thing locally sucks. But there's a lot of specialties- if you're visual then focus on Frontend or Mobile where you can see you work and sometimes influence the design. Like challenging problems with making systems scale? Do infra work. Like making business logic make money? API development (aka product engineering). Like any of the above but wanna throw in market data? Go to a growth team. Lots of options.

2。depends on where you work. I've dealt with that, I've also not. Depends on the company and even specific team within a company. It's a bit like saying finance is all soulless hardo sociopaths. Maybe in some teams, but I doubt that's the majority.

3。I think this depends on the company and team as well. I interact with product, marketing, sales, customer success, and engineering every day (not all in the same day, but at least 2 of the groups any given day). I enjoy it a lot, I think I'm getting better at scoping projects, setting expectations, and coming up with ideas to get quick wins while we design better solutions to be released later. I've also been at companies where I sit alone all day, so YMMV.

4。That's like any career. Most people stagnate in middle management in most industries, tech just doesn't perpetually stagnate in management (it can) but more commonly as an individual contribute (IC) aka senior engineer. Versioning doesn't really change stuff that dramatically either. It's not that different than keeping up with other industries, the changes happen an inch at a time. However- if you hate Python programming it's painful to learn more. That's normal, try to find something else that interests you (it very may well be finance and not tech related at all.. you've got one life so do what's best for you)

5。Good dev with good attitude and good communication > genius dev with shit attitude and or shit communication (YMMV between companies though)

6。I don't subscribe to the doomsday belief that SWEs will be paid like manual labors or random white collar jobs. Leverage and impact are too high for good devs. There WILL be stratification though, which were already seeing. Top devs get fat with all the cake, okay devs are in limbo, bad devs get left behind with minimal pay. Not different from law (pay at BigLaw is multiples of random public defender) or finance (PE vs local shop accounting). So for some, yeah doomsday. For those who put in the work, not so much.

7. Yeah spot on there. Europe seems to be catching up to the US though. Although absolute dollars are lower, they basically afford the same lifestyle as US (not looking at outliers like the 7 figure Netflix folks). But if you're happy being low level rich or upper middle class (in line with most doctors- not top neurosurgeons) then it's pretty similar. Also Canada is underrated. I have a few Canadian coworkers and they're living quite well.

IB/PEprobably wouldn't be for you given your background, dislike of menial tasks, and passion for markets IMO. I don't think you'd be a tough sell for a quant-oriented role at aHFthough. You can start as a full-on dev or quant and start moving more towards a hybrid role as you get experience and learn how to manage risk.

Keep learning, following markets, making real (or paper) trades, and networking so that when you get in front of somebody you have the chance to impress them. IMO theHF世界(至少从基本的经理Tiger), hardly cares about arbitrary GPA cutoffs and I would definitely be interested enough to interview someone with your type of background if we were looking.

Edit: Wanted to make sure that I didn't downplay the quantum leap of risk you'll be taking though. There are no easy days in public markets and your job/the existence of your fund is constantly at risk. It can be extremely intellectually (as well as financially) rewarding, but also harrowing during bad times and there's a chance you'll get booted out after 6-12 months.

Another option that might be appealing, if you're not overly opposed to it, would be to go into something crypto-related. There's a huge exodus of talent from TradFi and Big Tech moving into crypto and success in that field requires a combination of financial savvy as well as developer experience for optimal chances of success.

Why don't you considerventure capital? Imagine it you've built product and stuff, you'd be of some value there? Another long way to get there could be starting something of your own and then going theVCway? This involves taking some financial risk though

I'm in a top FAANG, have a background in pure stats and did two banking internships prior. Currently working as a technical analyst. Have you considered looking at some of the middle-technical roles? Product Analyst, or even some of the more technical reporting roles in Finance/Strategy can be quite a good blend where it's moretechnical thanIBDbut you still sit with people that are social.

Hmm... reading this post, a lot comes to mind:

1。You sound like a younger version of my dad. He was burnt out with engineering so switched into teaching. Turns out he didn't enjoy babysitting high schoolers all day and the lower pay was more frustrating than he expected. He's back in engineering and has been enjoying it ever since he found a maintenance gig for a defense company where he pretty much doesn't have any responsibilities.

2。If I were you, I'd take some time off then try to make some small changes and see how much they help out your situation. As others are saying, if you're tired of coding you could jump on the product or management side of things.

3。Whatever pain you were feeling that pushed you towards writing this post yesterday will only show itself once in awhile. You can choose to ignore it or make real progress towards a better life with gradual improvements during the moments when you can't feel the suffering very much. Don't be too brash - especially during the times this hurts the most. That'll only make things worse.

4。I'm currently at a mid-tier prop shop (think Akuna, DRW, IMC, ...) and can confirm that many of the things you're frustrated about in SWE still exist in PT. The silver lining is that, imo, the work is much more interesting. If you're really going to switch into finance, you'll probably want to go all the way to some sort of banking.

Idk... feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions. I feel like I understand your situation pretty well because of what my dad went through and the fact that I've done internships at mid-tier FAANG and am nowftin PT. I'm still pretty young though and enjoy my job so maybe not.

了解该网站上的许多人真的不喜欢MBA，，，，but there are specific programs - Value Investing Program at Columbia comes to mind - that place really well in the public equities side of things. I went to CBS, VIP accepts something like a dozen or 2 people (out of 700) every year (it's only the 2nd year I believe). It's super rigorous but you get 1 on 1 interaction with topHFsand PMs, as well as targeted VIP job listings. UsuallyMBAis not great forHFplacement but certain programs do act as accelerators (I'm sure there are others among top schools).

You might ask - why doesn't everyone go for it? - many do, but VIP requires intense amount of rigor and classwork during your 2ndMBA年。成绩实际上很重要，因为您需要保持高平均水平（CBS具有不披露级别的级别，因此大多数学生只是专注于获得您所谓的B），而课程工作非常困难。结果，当大多数同学在大洲之间花费时间和生活时，您的第二年就非常努力。

无论如何，有了您的凭据，我的2美分是您可以将BSCHOOL用作对冲基金世界中的完整重置和加速器。

EDIT: Re-reading your post, the finance areas you list are, frankly, all over the map. Rx, structuring and Asset management are 3 different worlds. It's not a bad thing to not know what you want to do, but to make this leap you need to be super targeted in your approach and have a very good sense of where you want to land. Would look to leverage your top alma mater to do some coffee chats with those in the industry to learn more

A lot of your observations regarding life at a FAANG and software engineering in general are correct. For me, software engineering itself is enjoyable, but software engineering as part of a team at a company much less so, primarily for the reasons you mentioned.

That said, I'm not sure the grass is that much greener on the finance side. Finance has its own drudgeries, and the future is not particularly rosy for many of the fields in which you expressed interest. The people in finance are much more sociable and will feel much less foreign though, I will give you that.

Have you considered Product Management? It would allow you to move beyond the code and focus more on the business and financial impact of the products you're building while still leveraging your technical expertise.

No offense man but you are the typical highly paid tech guy who has golden handcuffs…"everything needs a paycut, the work is dull, its just a job, im smart but not too smart, my classmates were math gurus, everyone is math gurus with accents, im too old to back to school …"

Lets be real here everyone knows the option you have and the path you have to take. You have quant skills and enjoy finance. You already said you interviewed at the shops. You need to just take the risk and stop worrying. Goto citadel/js/mmfunds and do your 1-3 years, stop with this crap my friends were math gurus how do I keep up the same damn way you kept up in SWE there is math gurus in your firm and past firms too. You do not need to be a math god to excel at those places just sometimes math gods do better than others some like your current career burn out and never evolve. Just do it man. Yes a place like Citadel fires people in 6 months and most dont last 2 years but guess what they dont exit to being garbage men either they come out with a strong resume and tons of options available to them. Its very similar toBBbanking for analysts.

For those wondering how someone with a low GPA could get interviews at such shops. You have to remember funds looks at STEM resumes much different than any other background. There is a finite level of STEM talent out there. Plus OP has work experience. So many people will just look at his major and work experience in FANG/startup as almost same as someone who went to a topMBA使用高GPA来抵消他低的GPA。

从SF技术到顶部BBhere with a terrible undergrad GPA.

Worked in tech for about 2.5 years in both SF and remote as a software engineer in a startup but never really enjoyed it. It was way too passive for me and people around me were just so uninspiring it became depressing and far from the silicon valley ideal that I had.

所以我退出,回到欧洲,开始了桅杆er's in a french target school despite my shitty GPA in undergrad (like 60% and failed a bunch of classes). I did a couple of internships to get a foot in finance, the first one in the finance department of a F500 company (told them I would code stuff for them in return for putting something finance in my resume) and the second one in a EuropeanMMbank inIB。

Now I'm about to graduate from that master's and will join the financing group of a topBB（（GS/MS) next month in London. It was a long journey but I have finally found my path.