Need Some Advice - Current Working Professional Looking to Break In

[Desert_Mouse]

Hey Everyone,

Hope you are doing good. I need some advice on the quant education route. I have an undergrad in STEM (life sciences), and an MS in Finance. I have about 7 years of work experience split up between two bulge bracket banks and a consulting firm. My current seat at the bank is in a front office, revenue-generating role, and the seat itself is fairly quantitative (options research). Despite these attributes, I'm finding that breaking into a pure quant trading or PM role is still difficult for me.

I haven't had much trouble getting interviews, but every time, the issue is that Leetcode or Hackerrank always manage to snub my progress. I've found that the methods that are tested are wildly different than the ones I (or any of my peers) actually use in practice. I chalk up this lack of knowledge on my part to being "self-taught" and not having a formal education in computer science. To combat this hurdle, I've considered a few routes--namely, sucking it up and:

1) Spending a year on pre-reqs and then doing an M.S. in Comp Sci
2) Spending a year on pre-reqs and then doing an M.S. in Statistics or Data Science
3) Spending a year on pre-reqs and then doing an MFE

Which (if any) of these routes would you recommend? If none, how can I tackle the Hackerrank issue? Would it be better to simply grind out problems/use YouTube for lessons for a year and then try again?

Any advice much appreciated!

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Take Quantnet C++ course.

 

[Paul Lopez]

Take Quantnet C++ course.

I'd take both C++ courses and the python course as well. I'd also sign up for Leetcode and just go through the programs they have to take you through the top X most common questions, including the theory behind them. Going for an MS in comp sci can be helpful, but in the end you still need to do these Leetcode or Hackerrank courses to practice to get good at those type of questions.

I'd say these are like the comp sci version of our mathy brainteasers.

Similar to the quant/math side of things, get into the habit of doing one or two problems every day or every other day. You need to keep it sharp, especially since it is not your original educational background. Depending on how much time you have, you can get into a solid position for interview taking in about 3-6 months. If you are real bad with comp sci concepts, it might take just a bit longer.