How prestigious is to work big asset management firm or mutual funds?
If you can get an offer from PIMCO…take it.
Prestige is hard to define. “Pure” mutual fund work - say, for Vanguard - seems dull. Not that I ever worked at one. Active asset mangement is a different animal.
joemontana Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Prestige is hard to define. “Pure” mutual fund > work - say, for Vanguard - seems dull. Not that I > ever worked at one. I take that back. I mean working for an indexed mutual fund company would be dull. I consider work for any actively managed fun prestigious.
what about BlackRock? is it considered a big one?
Yes, yes it is a big one. cart10 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > what about BlackRock? is it considered a big one?
consider checking Vault guides for information like this.
It’s not just working for these funds. I think job description is even more important in terms of prestige. You know somebody has to clean the bathrooms at De Shaw, Fidelity, and other top places… I’ve only worked at 1 passive managed fund, but that place was even more fun to work for than the active manager I’m at now. In some cases, the passive managers are more “quant oriented” than the active managers. And these days, most people are not hard-core passive managers, so you’ll get a great mix of “quant” and “active” work with these so called “passive managers.”
I live near newport beach, which is the headquarters for Pimco. Once the L1 results come out i’ll update my resume and start applying…
don’t forget to bold your address in resume 
PIMCO is pretty tough to get into. One of the guys from our group transferred over, but he took a step back, responsibility-wise, and has his CFA and MBA.
Pimco is very tough to get into…in my opinion. Im not sure if it was AF…but we discussed PIMCO a while back. We also touched upon Google and how tough it is to get in there as well. Was a good convo. Ill try to find it.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard from a several ex-pimco people that pimco is a horrible place to work. The place is apparently full of jerks. They are also extremely snobby in their hiring practices which is either a cause or an effect of the bad culture there depending on how you look at it.
I think pimco also just won the fixed income manager of the year, right? They were one of the few that were smart enough not to get involved in subprimes. Probably will be surviving this mess while other west coast managers will have egg on their face. Thankfully I’m in the equity field, but if you’re going fixed, I’d go pimco!
The reason Bill Gross performed well this year is because he was running cash. He ran huge underweights in all the plus sectors. It was a hugely risky move that paid off this year but was the cause of severe under performance in 2006. Most of his competition outperformed him in 06 and underperformed him in 07. It’s mostly a wash. His 3 and 5 year numbers aren’t that impressive.
I don’t know to much about Gross, but do know that he has been in the game for 25+ years, and many of my senior colleagues respect his opinion and performance over this time-frame. Further, I many companies and hedge funds did well in 06 because that was the top of the credit bubble - all you had to do is buy some shady paper and mark them on your books. Now we will get to see what asset managers, hedge funds, etc are really made of.