Are middle/back office quants at bulge brackets undesirable jobs?

[Three_LIttle_Pigs]

I don't work in the industry so I don't claim to know this by experience but by asking around from those who work in the industry and looking at compensation reports of mfe graduates, I believe that being a middle and back office quant at a bulgebracket does not seem like a great career. I have heard common sentiments such as "sellside is dead" or "it's better to work at a midtier hedge fund as a quant than in Risk bulgebracket. If you look at Baruch's 5th year career development report which shows the outcomes of graduates 5-6 years after graduation, those working model validation and risk management only make around 200k in total compensation. Job satisfaction is also the lowest for those making money within this range.

If one's goal is to have an intellectually stimulating job, while making a lot of money and having a good work life balance, there are many jobs out there that one can pursue instead of being a quant. For instance, working in tech is the most obvious example. If you work at a big tech company as a developer, you can make just as much or more than risk and model validation quants with the same years of experience. There are more tech jobs to begin with than back/middle office jobs at bulge brackets, so I also think it's less competitive to work in Tech because of the number of available jobs. It is not like I'm comparing apples to oranges since the skills for being quant, developer or data scientist generally overlap.

 

[fkingloser]

If you want intellectual job, quant at sellside is still valid and reasonable. But you need to keep in mind that they are not the front office guys who directly generate profit. So tbh, their bonuses are capped as if you are utilizing bull call spread option strategy. I worked at BBs front office, and got a feeling that quants contribute a lot, but they don't get enough appreciation as they should be considering the input.
But that being said, their base pay is still high compared to other average jobs. It's just that bonus is not high compared to front office. And if you like the stable lifestyle with not hardcore work hour, I think that is still a decent job to get. In addition, you need to know that front office guys having stress to generate profit gets more significant as you progress, and that is another thing to consider.


In addition, "If one's goal is to have an intellectually stimulating job, while making a lot of money and having a good work life balance" - > tbh I'm not trying to degrade the quality of the MFE graduates(Actually I respect them a lot), but thinking of going to FAANG and actually securing a job there as sde is quite a different story though... and going to FAANG doesn't always guarantee excellent & superior WLB compared to quants at IB.