Customer Reviews

Starting Your Career as a Wall Street Quant: A Practical, No-BS Guide to Getting a Job in Quantitative Finance and Launching a Lucrative Career

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book bills itself as the "first and only" career guide for Wall Street type quant wannabes. I did a quick search and found this to be the only book on the subject that covers the whole gamut of the job search process: from writing your resume to looking for open positions to interviewing. What's really nice here is the author gives you a list of books to read if you want to acquire the basic knowledge a quant should possess. (The books he recommends tend to be on the entry-level side, which is appropriate for the book's intended readers.) The last chapter is quite good, explaining in detail the compensation structure at Wall Street firms as well as what "vice president" and "director" titles are.

The book is light on sample interview questions. There are a few in the 2nd chapter, together with some hints, and the author gives a few concrete examples that are, well, entertaining and sort of funny. He emphasies on "knowing your stuff". That's pretty hard to do, so if you are looking for a "cheat book" on interview questions this is not for you. But if you want to know how to get a quant job, I think this book will give you some helpful and practical insights.

Other than a few typos, this book is pretty good and easy to read. Definitely recommended if you plan to get into quant finance and haven't got a clue where to start.

I have been in front office development for 10 years. The author should be more realistic about his assumptions about getting a quant job. 1) your chances of getting a role as a proper quant are slim to none without having a phd. 2) Add Ivy League school to that Phd. Trust me I have read all the books the author mentioned, I have a MSc in Fin Eng, worked with many traders and PM's. If your smart enough to understand stochastic calc and heavy stats, but don't have Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, NYU etc.. go learn C++ and go into business for yourself don't waste time. There's alot of nepotism on Wall Street which is why there are very few funds that have serial correlation in returns. Its not how smart you are rather its where you went to school and who you know.

For a starter like me, who were mystified and terrified by the prospect of competing and working in the financial sector when I first started looking for a job, this book told me everything I really needed to know. Unlike other self-help books of similar content, I never got a sense from the author that I was not being told the honest truth about Wall Street.

I strongly disagree with the previous reviewer who criticized the book as being "fluff" and "breezy". It's precisely the all-too-serious approach one sees so often in similar books that mystify a field which image is already being distorted in other media. The other books I have read seem to be "war stories" that're designed to glamourize the industry or the authors, or both. They left me dazzled with the prospect of becoming one of them, but confused with the question: now what? No one's path can be replicated exactly. It's one thing to hear about other's war story, it's another to prepare for your own. This book tells me how to stock up my own ammunition.

Now that I am working on Wall Street, the pointers given in this book helped me enormously, especially in the comprehensiveness of topics this book covers. The previous reviewer complained that not enough was written on what a quant do. I think he missed the point entirely. The books tells you exactly what a junior quant is expected to do, on a daily basis. Books with detailed history of financial engineering merely tell me what financial engineering is, but not what financial engineer actually does. The latter is what we readers really need to know.

One should keep in mind this book is about "how to launch a wall street career", in other word, getting your feet in, not "how to make millions as a wall street quant". Perhaps the author can save that for his second book. I'll be looking forward to it.

Who wrote all these five-star reviews? Friends of the author? The bulk of the book -- 140 pages -- is devoted to writing a resume and preparing for interviews: the kind of material one can find in umpteen other books. There is some light coverage of what a quant does and what a quant needs to know: proper coverage of these topics would have made the book worth its price.

Besides the fluff content, there are a distressing number of typographical mistakes. Was there no proofreader available? The English itself is often faulty, and the breezy style open to criticism.

I grudgingly give this book two stars because -- as far as I'm aware -- there is not yet any other book in the market that addresses would-be-quants.

Postscript: I recommend "Heard on the Street."

The book does deliver on the promise of the author; there is a quite detailed description of what a job in quantitative finance entails and what the day-to-day life on the job is like. There are very good references for where to find jobs and reading material in preparation for the interview/the job itself. Excellent advice is also being given on how to tailor one's resume and cover letters for that type of jobs. I enjoyed reading it.

As a fresh graduate with a science major, I got the book when I was half way in my job search. I found the book very useful 'cause it answered the practical questions from my own job search, such as "how to work with headhunters", "what questions to ask in quant interviews", "how to evaluate and negotiate offers" etc...I think it's particularly valuable to someone who has no job search experience and doesn't know the tricks in the whole process. I personally think this book is a good investment for one's quant career. Oh, did I mention the cost is really low?

The title says it all: this book helped me find a desk quant job at a New York hedge fund. I'm getting my PHD in biostats and didn't know where to start to look for a finance job, when I bought the book. I found the resume chapter and the interview chapter particularly helpful. The author has a blog on Windows Live, where he shares lots of sample interview problems which also helped me prepare. He's also active on the mitbbs quant forum. A nice chap and I recommend this book highly.

I received the book Friday and finished reading it over the weekend. It's quite good for what it covers. The materials in the resume writing and interviewing chapters are very substantial, and I found a lot of interesting advice "gems", like what kinds of hobbies you should not mention and where to put your feet. Real funny. I plan to re-read the chapters on interviews and switching careers from non-quant to quant. I think the author did a nice job covering most aspects of how to look for a quant job. He also has a quant career website although there isn't much on the site right now.

I personally never write review for any book I bought. This is the first time because Brett did a wonderful job and saved me a lot of time. I have read Mark Joshi's "On becoming a Quant" and Paul and Dominic's guide to getting a Quant job. This informative book clarify many concepts I learned from other resources. It's concise, easy to follow, and insightful. The author is a down-to-earth person. He will tell you what he really thinks. Highly recommended. Don't buy Emanuel Derman's "My Life as a Quant". Buy this one. You won't regret it!

Just got this book, finished two-thirds of book; This book is based
on author's own experience and current perspective of this field.
pros:
Practical guide leads you to go through the resume writing; may not
guarantee a fantastic one, but one with more and more thought.
Lots of advices from the experience as an interviewer;
And a comprehensive but still with priority reading list
cons:
It didn't address too much about the transition from non-finance major
to finance field, although quite a few quants undergo this transition.
Overall: excellent book practical and easy to follow.