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by numbers_guy 1053 days ago
Both machine learning and quant. finance are extremely extremely competitive. Having a math Ph.d does not cut it. It is mostly irrelevant actually. For quant. finance, if you have top grades from a highly respected university, that might get you an interview, but I think to do well, you'd have to do months of preparation.

Machine learning is my field and I can tell you, nobody is desperate to hire some math Ph.d who never did anything with ML.
2 comments
antegamisou 1053 days ago
> Having a math Ph.d does not cut it. It is mostly irrelevant actually.

Maybe this applies to the lower paying quant roles (Trader/Dev).

No chance of getting hired for a Quant Research position without grad school education though.

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returningfory2 1053 days ago
I fully agree. A math PhD without any practical skills (programming, ML, etc.) isn't that useful for the jobs market. When I mentioned hubris is my parent comment, I was kind of referring to this: the sense among PhD students was that we could easily jump into industry because a math PhD is so valuable. But this was very, very wrong.
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