[radikalus]

Pay is reasonably divided based on those 4 category breakdowns as well.

1) High guaranteed, little upside 2) Low guaranteed, high upside 3) Moderate guaranteed, little upside, better QoL? 4) Low, none..., excellent QoL

I'm not sure how I'd feel discussing kernels of an SVM with someone -- to me, that feels pedantic. I generally feel that the fundamental driver to 'models no longer working' is evolving covariance dynamics (changing linkages) -- this has very little to the mechanisms of most ML tools.

Perhaps the metaphor I'm looking for is that I wouldn't expect a carpenter to be able to build and explain the components of a power drill to use it to help my house.

QuantFi is a huge discipline -- you build teams with hopefully a mixed bag of skills. On the trading side, I'd rather have someone with experience w.r.t to the market + products than math-jutsu any day.

[Igglyboo]

How high is high and how low is low? I'd assume even the lowest payed quants are making high 5 or low 6 figures at a bank.

[radikalus]

All relative and the curve is certainly right tailed.

There are trader/quants who basically work for free for just upside at lots of prop shops + HFs. There's actually deals WORSE than that where people sacrifice a lot for upside participation in their strategy.

Trading at a bank is a mixed objective problem generally -- much of what you do is NOT about making $ so understanding how and why people make what they make is not trivial.

I can't imagine a world where any of these wouldn't be at least low 6 figure roles -- the banks/HFs/prop-shops have to pay to compete with the Googles/Facebooks of the world.