The joys of working as a quant at Goldman Sachs
Quants with aspirations of working for Goldman Sachs may wish to read this account of a man who moved swiftly in the opposite direction.
Eagerly floating around the Twittersphere is this blog entry from quant-turned-entrepreneur, Antonio Garcia-Martinez, who claims to have worked at Goldman before rolling out new tech start-up Adgrok.
It's quite long (and possibly legally questionable), so we'll let you check out the majority of the article yourself. Here are some of the tamer parts to whet your appetite.
On the job role:
And the quants (strategists in Goldman speak)? Mostly failed scientists (like me) who had sold out to the man and suddenly found themselves, after making it through two years of graduate quantum mechanics, with a bat-wielding gorilla peering over their shoulder (that would be the trader) asking them where their risk report was.
On compensation:
"Come mid-December, everyone on the desk lines up outside the partner's office, like the communion line at Christmas Mass, and awaits their little crumb off the big Wall Street table. An entire year's worth of blood, sweat, and tears comes down to that one moment. And the entire New York economy marches to the beat of that bonus drum.
On loyalty to the firm:
Former employees who had left Goldman were rarely mentioned. The unanimous phrase for it was 'no longer with the firm,' said in the same tone used to describe the passing of a family member.
