Choosing between two jobs

So now that my internship is almost over I got a return offer from the company I worked in, for two roles:

  • Software Engineer: Pay is around 95-105K without bonuses being included (maybe around 10K of bonus). The SWE entry-level requires a 2-year rotation throughout the company to see the various SWE departments and work on their code (each rotation is around 6 months)
  • Quant Analyst: Pay is around 75-80K without any bonus. Mainly running regressions or some simple ML algos in R and working on credit risk models. I guess I would still be writing code here but more like a data science kind of thing. Also most people in the group are Ph.D.'s with one or two being MFE and maybe being the only undergrad could be looked down upon by the rest.

The company itself is a financial advisory kind of place (Big 4, or the big 3 rating agencies kinda place) and obviously not a tech company but the difference in pay and exposure to various SWE groups is very attractive for an entry-level dude like me,that being said I still want to somehow miraculously jump ship to a quant asset manager or hedge fund and the “Quant Analyst” role may be a better fit (although there are SWE groups who deal with big data relating to mortgages/loans and whatnot),so what do y’all think?

What’s SWE? All Google comes up with is Society of Women Engineers.

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Fixed it.

On the surface, the pay differential probably suggests that the first job better reflects demand for your specific background. However, if you are really attached to the work in the second job, then you’ll just have to mold yourself into that role over time. Whether the $30k pay difference is meaningful at this point depends on your circumstances I guess.

It will probably be hard to grow in this group of PhDs if you don’t have any higher degrees. If you choose this job, I suspect that you will eventually transition into a different position, in the same company or another one, or perhaps pursue more education yourself.

You should obviously also sit down with some people in those groups who you trust, and talk about likely 5y career progress.

I can’t really offer any good advice here, this is too far beyond my area of familiarity. Might have to go with your gut on this one.

+1

Which one do you like more?

And OOC - how old are you? When I was younger, I was more willing to take a job I didn’t like for an extra $20k. Now that I’m pushing 40, I’d rather do what I want to do (within reason). 20% isn’t enough to make me switch.

go with higher hourly rate!

There is no way I can grow in my current group without at least an MFE. Furthermore, most of these people have Math/Stat/Econ PhDs and know enough programming to get the job done, so over the summer, they expected me to deliver miracles or something with regards to their code base and projects.I’m the only CS person in the group and sometimes convincing these people that something cannot be done is not easy.

But my question is assuming I go work on SWE roles where you deal with financial data and not the company website or their infrastructure is there any ways to transition to a more finance heavy role?

I don’t wanna get too philosophical here but liking roles is so complicated. I may get a role that I initially didn’t like but find the team and environment great and thus like the role or vice versa. Also, I would be doing more or less the same thing (coding) in both groups, one is more stat heavy and the other (for the next two years at least) is getting a taste of whatever technology the company is working on and transitioning from team to team in two years.

The only reason I may want to do the SWE role is after two years I feel I would be a better engineer than a quant (getting more exposure and having better learning opportunities). The only reason I’m thinking about the quant role is the possible doors it may open in the future in finance.

anyways it seems like if you go for quant, you are going for an underpaid job that is very competitive with the hopes of something in the future. thats like hooking up with a thicc chick hoping she loses weight in the future, also how old are you haha. ur an l1 candidate. quit while ur ahead. just go to tech.

Why?

Whichever group views you as a long-term employee and commits to supporting the immediate filing of a permanent resident application on your behalf, rookie

I have a green card so that is not an issue.

Salaries are inflated in the post. More like 60k.

Not all of us get to sell suits and shirts at retail stores for a better salary.

Update:

I just met my current manager (the quant analyst role) and he told me that he’ll match whatever offer I got, so now they offer the same pay.

Everything else being equal which job is better?

Also in “Everything else being equal” I also mean liking the jobs equally too.

Very Tank

Oh geez yeah I don’t know. This is turning into a really personal decision and I’m not really familiar with this space. If you believed you would succeed in each, which would you rather do for an entire career? If the quant role might require going back to school later, would you be open to that? If not, maybe this makes the decision for you since that will probably be necessary at some point. It does say a lot that your current boss is willing to go to bat for you to up your offer. Regardless, congratulations this is good news, just don’t overplay your hand and burn bridges.

Have you considered a career as an FA at Merrill Lynch? Or opening your own business as a professional cuddler?

What degree/program did you take btw? Did you go back to school after finance?