At a well known agency that provides insight to other agencies (think Bloomberg,Rating Agencies,…) for their “Quant intern” role which is essentially doing R,Python on messy data and the like. I think I got this because the interviewer didn’t know much programming (Stat PhD) and thought I did some amazing things as a programmer.
At a start up that got 100M funding a few weeks ago but is very much in the early stages for a SWE engineer role.
Role 1 is in Chicago and role 2 is in NYC.
As for the long run I am not having any specific goals as long as it can help me in working in VC or some other funding role that has less technical requirements and more of jack of all trades kind of thing. Which one should I pick ?
I have no idea about the startup job. However, the job at the Bloomberg-like company is probably just a stable, long term constant sort of opportunity. I don’t think it will get you close to the business side of a financial firm, if that is your goal. The indirect route would be to move to a financial firm in a similar programming sort of role, and then network within the company. I’ve seen some people accomplish this, although they were pretty exceptional people in general.
In terms of location, NY is generally more promising than Chicago. However, the cost of living is pretty unreasonable, and you will have a better standard of living overall in Chicago. It’s up to your priorities I guess. If you plan to move around a lot in your early career, NY probably offers more opportunities.
Startup likely has lower NPV over any time period, given low probability of success and lower pay. Don’t be fooled by lottery ticket mentality.
Bigger companies will give you more formalized training. You can bring large company knowledge as value to small companies, like most people probably do.
I mean, it might be a good opportunity, it might not be. However, I’m surprised people are like yeah, go do the startup, with essentially zero knowledge of what it is.
I mean they’re both internships so I’m not really worried about either one as a long term viable company. My thought is just that if you go to a back office finance route you might get tagged as that whereas a startup you can spin however you want. Presumably the company with $100M in funding (while not a lot of money) is still enough to insinuate that someone there knows what they’re doing and is talented so given that it’s small you’ll have some decent exposure vs being tucked away with minions.
Purely on a Chicago vs NYC scale, I would stay the hell out of NYC. It’s too friggen crazy there. There’s too many people per square inch. And there are tons of hot chicks in Chicago still.
Chicago’s cold af during the winter and the traffic is really bad. I’m pretty sure everyone gets fat there! Yuck! Only good thing there is shameless! I’ve been to New York during the summer and it was intensely hot. Anyways Los Angeles has the best weather and the hottest chicks!
AF Magic 8-Ball says: you seem young, since you are applying for internships, therefore, you have an above average ability to take risks, so go for NYC opportunity. But the fact you are uncertain and looking for advice here means you have a below average willingness to take risk. Therefore, take the Chicago job and make the most of it.
Agree with start-up. Especially since it is an internship, the NYC location may also potentially signal your willingness to work in that market which offers significantly more opportunities than Chi-town. Also, $100M is actually quite a bit of money for an early stage start-up to have at its disposal. What’s their burn rate, I wonder.
Last time I was in NY I went to Snafu with some clients. They claimed it was owned and operated by the Russian mob and that the women there are high-priced escorts. There were a lot of great looking Russian chicks. Is this true?
Edit: Should I move this to Careers or the Feedback Forum?