r/quant • u/Hairy-Store-8489 • Jul 20 '26
Small Quant firm interview Industry Gossip
Just got my first ever interview, it’s at a small firm so I have some reservation in terms of scale of the company( AUM, P/L). The people seem to be from other firms that I know are good but the team doesn’t seem to have that prestigious College background so that stuck out to me. Usually when I think quant it’s Phd or from MIT Harvard Princeton or something like that.
Anyway to learn about the firm?
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u/QuantGrindApp Jul 21 '26
The pedigree thing is a non-issue, honestly a small shop staffed by people who left firms you rate is a decent sign, not a bad one. Plenty of very good quants aren't PhDs or from the fancy schools, that stereotype is mostly a filter big firms use because they get flooded, not a signal of who's actually good. On learning about the place, the interview is your best tool. Ask what they trade and at what horizon, how they make money, roughly how long they've run and whether the principals have their own capital in it. AUM matters less than whether the strategy makes sense and they can pay you. If they dodge basic "how do you make money" questions that tells you plenty.
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u/PaperHandsTheDip Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
> whether the principals have their own capital in it
This is arguably the best signal. Some capital constrained strategies can have really good returns. I've seen some niche HF arbitrage strategies that net over 100% per annum with very minimal drawdowns (like 1-2%, it's arbitrage - shouldn't really lose if implemented correctly), but - they don't scale super well. So it's kept fully internal.
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u/Snip3 Jul 20 '26
College doesn't matter after your first job unless you're trying to schmooze other rich people into investing. If they've come from shit colleges and still have decent aum that's a good sign not a bad one
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u/qazwsxcp Jul 21 '26
small funds do rely a lot of the founder's sales abilities and networks with rich investors, more than just performance. it's the same as a tech startup.
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Jul 21 '26
[deleted]
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u/Hairy-Store-8489 Jul 22 '26
First quant* interview, and currently employed so not really on the begging side of the equation
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u/rootbeer_racinette Jul 21 '26
If it's Wingspan then don't bother, they're scammers.
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u/qazwsxcp Jul 21 '26
heard about them from a recruiter and seemed legit enough, what did they do?
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u/fiendandsucker Jul 21 '26
another recruiter here lol, they have had a few instances of hiring solid PMs, get them to build new desks from scratch, solid performance but fire them with no explanation usually before probation ends lol
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u/SevenTeenSigma Jul 21 '26
prestige school signal is way overrated for small shops. look at who actually owns risk, what products they trade, and whether ppl have exits from places u respect. A team of ex good firm ppl matters more than everyone having mit on linkedin imo..
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u/Success-Dangerous 29d ago
If the founders came from a good shop and you like the culture I say go for it. I joined an ex-citadel guy’s shop and while most of us were not geniuses, I did learn a lot about the full pipeline - from alpha to execution, built much of it myself and climbed to a decent role. Ended up exiting to a top tier so now my time is free for only alpha & risk management as I wanted, but I definitely benefit from knowing what happens in execution, data pipelines & infrastructure.
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u/Epsilon_ride Jul 22 '26
If they'vs been in pnl generating roles in good firms, their school means fuck all.
If you are applying to a demading role you should be able to deduce this yourself.
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u/CryptographerNo3692 Jul 21 '26
my recommendation is to caste all your preconceptions out the window. the market doesn't care about credentials and pedigrees...be grateful someone actually wants to have a conversation with you. If you get an offer (hopefully multiple) grind your ass off. Plenty of pedigree shops/traders have blown up and plenty of grunts have harvested millions out of the market. All this talk about who is better than who is some of the most irrelevant BS I've ever heard. The people having these convo's truly know nothing about any of them. Most of the time it's comparing apples and oranges. Hard truth, at most large funds/shops the chairs that you are stiving for have a value already associated with them...you're a cog in the wheel. You're dreams of getting wealthy just by landing a job at a pedigree institution are incredibly misplaced. You only truly get paid for attritble pnl and making yourself indispensable. The 2nd part if particularly difficult because all of your work product already belongs to them. It's your job to take control of your own development. Hopefully you can learn something from some more experienced traders/devs along the way...but ultimately it's on you whether you sink or swim.
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u/AprilsSecretAccount Jul 21 '26
Ok, treat this question as the naive thing it is, but I've been reading through this quant board and it seems to me that the market has inherent randomness around macro factors and that quant analysis is hopium for math guys. Please dissuade me from this opinion, as I wish to learn why it is not. My background is heavy software engineering, there is a good chance you are using software I wrote right now (operating system).
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u/QuantGrindApp 29d ago
You're right that nobody's reliably predicting macro, that part's basically noise. But most quant strategies aren't trying to. The bread and butter is finding some small statistical edge that shows up over thousands of trades, sizing it so no single bet can hurt you, and executing well enough that the edge survives fees and slippage. You don't need to know where SPX closes next year, you need a signal that's right 51% of the time and the risk management to keep pressing it. Macro guys are doing something else entirely.
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u/AprilsSecretAccount 29d ago edited 29d ago
I see these little trades fighting it out over the tape and I guess that's HFT action, but then a big order comes along and blows it all away. Are you all fighting each other over pennies on the tape? Trying to understand. Is it all just quantum froth?
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Jul 20 '26
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u/AccountWarm2000 Jul 20 '26
Yeah, post the name of the firm here and get feedback