SORTS OF EMPLOYERS

We can roughly divide employers into

• Commercial banks, e.g., RBS, HSBC
• Investment banks, e.g.,Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers was one of these and died in spectacular fashion
• Hedge funds, e.g., the Citadel Group
• Accountancy firms
• Software companies

Commercial banks ask less of you, and pay less. Better job security.
Investment banks tend to demand long hours but pay well. Not so good job security.
Hedge funds tend to demand a lot of work. They are very volatile and a big growth industry currently. There is the potential to make a huge amount of money, but also the potential to be unemployed after a few
months.
In general, American banks pay better but demand longer hours than European banks.
The big accountancy firms have quant teams for consulting. Some places, particularly D-fine, send their employees on the Oxford Masters course. The main disadvantage is that you are far from the action, and
high quality individuals tend to work in banks so it may be hard to find someone to learn from. Related places are consultancies and insurance companies.

There is becoming more of a tendency to outsource quant modelling and buy in software models. One option is therefore to work for the software company instead. The issues are similar to those with working for
accountancy firms.