IB vs. SWE threads are mostly pointless
I recently switched from a tech SWE/researcher role to a quant researcher role in a prop trading firm. I found this forum while trying to learn more about the finance industry outside my immediate area, and I have been reading various topics here with great interest. Then I started noticing these IB vs. SWE career comparison topics that just seem to pop up like every week.
This exact same thing happens in most of these threads:
- Somebody tries to prove that one is better than the other in some objective way
- Some others call out the compensation levels of some arbitrary population (average folks, HYPSM graduates, MD vs. Google L8/L9, you name it).
- Then, things quickly go downhill from there and the comments end up with d*ck measurements of my MD daddy and your tech daddy, followed by wild, dystopian speculations of how the future industries will look like.
You can't make serious career choices without making big time commitments, so it's very natural for people to justify their decisions, and one of the easiest ways to do so is to make the other choices look bad. That's just human psychology, and I think there's nothing petty or embarrassing about it. However, I think this comparison is rather pointless because the IB and SWE career paths are very, very different. No matter which objective metric you picked, as soon as you factor yourself into the equation, it should be pretty clear which path is better for you.
In my case, it felt like an obvious choice to join a big tech company as an engineer/researcher. I loved math and programming as a student. I went to one of the HYPSM schools and continued studying math and computer science, all the way up to the PhD program. I was okay to be around people, but I always preferred smaller groups. I was too risk-averse to consider joining start-ups, let alone running it myself. My characteristics already decided the path for me.
On the other hand, I have a good buddy from the university, who studied economics before starting his career as an investment banker. He is very different from me. He is outgoing, energetic, great at networking, and has a much better sense of how businesses are run. Advanced math or programming was not his strength, and he didn't do PhD or MBA, but who cares? He contributed to a number of successful deals, and now has the Partner title.
My buddy and I both make millions now, and we both know that we wouldn't survive a month if we switched our roles. That's why I think the IB vs. SWE comparison is mostly pointless. Having said that, I can think of a few reasons why some people might feel that such comparison is useful.
- You might not know the roles well enough. You might be a student, for example. Despite having characteristics that make you a good fit for one role over the other, you can't make a meaningful decision (yet) about which path is better for you.
- Your skill set might be mediocre. Even after knowing your own characteristics and what each position entails, your skills aren't particularly amazing, so the "average experience" might be more representative. I'm more of an optimist, so I think it might just mean that you haven't found the right path for you where you're really going to shine in.
Even after making the career decision, you might still not know the other paths well enough and think about those paths not taken. But most likely, you didn't even have to know. Some final thoughts:
- If you want a more meaningful discussion (or just want to set up a d*ck measurement arena for fun), at least compare the roles that require similar skill sets in different industry. For example, tech SWE vs. quant dev, data scientist vs. quant researcher makes much more sense than IB vs. SWE.
- The biggest factor that decides your success is you, not someone else's success story or your MD's bonus size. Even those success stories are biased, because there are a bunch of other successful people who are just less likely to write about themselves.
- Good luck to all students and prospects. My opinion is that it's a white lie to say that every young person has an unlimited potential with many paths that'll lead to a happy and successful life. It's more like there are a handful of such paths for every person, and you just search for the door that is wide open for you. Searching for it can be a frustrating experience, and I personally found it helpful to talk to the people who really know me well.
I just find it weird that people feel qualified to talk about careers they have 0 experience in. Only on WSO will you find shitty incel hardos talk about the pros and cons of jobs they've never done before.
I broke into the HF scene as a college kid and have only ever worked at a HF in my entire life... I don't try talking about what it takes to make a run for a congressional seat.
Sounds like you would make a great run for a congressional seat.
It is incredibly stupid because they are both so different. I know I could never do the work some of my SWE friends do, my brain just doesn't work like that. Same with IB.
Lean into what you're good at and fk the rest :)
god who fucking cares. how insecure do you have to be to argue anonymously over whether one job is better than another
Honestly, it's kind of understandable that some people want to make such arguments, after having been in the competitive education system for pretty much their entire lifetime. They surround themselves with tier list this, tier list that, rank everyone by GPA, etc., not really knowing that almost nothing after the school life is conveniently measurable like that. Income and net worth is like the only such measurements, so they just default to talking about who makes more money, even though most people couldn't have taken the other paths anyway.
Arguing the superiority of one over another is stupid. That said, honest discussions and comparisons are helpful. There's a lot of people who don't fall neatly into the buckets you've outlined in your post who could excel at either.
I have a lot of respect towards high achievers in any field, because they knew themselves and the world around them well, chose the right battles to fight, and played the winning hands. I think it's disrespectful to them to think that "a lot of people" could have flipped their coins differently when choosing their career and achieved the same thing.
Maybe you and I have different ideas about what it means to excel at something. If you think the general comparison between two very different positions are meaningful to many people because they could make $300k instead of $200k, then I disagree, because there enough variance in the individual performance for that additional $100k to be any meaningful.
Throughout my career, I've known exactly one person whom I thought could have been very successful as an SWE and IB. (He didn't even bother doing either. He founded a tech company instead, and it went IPO.) There aren't certainly "a lot of people" like that.
Completely disagree. Plenty of the top CS and math students at good schools are outgoing and hard working and have what it would take to reach top levels in finance. In fact, many of the people at MBB or top finance firms were high GPA STEM students from Ivys. Find it odd to assert these people couldn't have had top tier SWE careers.
Your experience of only knowing one person who could have done well at both isn’t universal.
Op - question: I am still in Ugrad studying math with a CS minor. I’m set to join an EB in July and am definitely excited. With that, as I’ve gone through my CS classes, I have really enjoyed them and has me shooting some MS in CS apps out to a few strong schools with the intention of getting accepted, deferring a year, and possibly going after a year in banking.
What are your thoughts on someone who has already cultivated a finance skill set (and likely has a higher ceiling in finance), who is just more interested in CS? Is there something to be said for going down a more interesting path, even if it’s not where you may have a competitive advantage?
First of all, congratulations on your offer! Generally speaking, I think playing one's strength is a better idea. That way, (very generally speaking) you will be more productive than your peers and will be able to save that time to pursue your interests. In particular, your interest in computer science can help you to become directly and indirectly more productive at your work. While your peers might be struggling with finding the right Excel function to do something, you might know enough about programming to write a short Python script and massage the same data to finish the job much faster. You might also do a better job overall when working on tech-related deals using any knowledge you might have about the tech industry. I don't know enough about your future position, so I apologize if I'm misrepresenting the job responsibility, but you get the message.
You'll hear people saying things like "follow your passion," but personally I find this message a bit irresponsible. When you utilize your strength to build a strong footing beneath you, it becomes easier to follow that passion with the extra time and money you earned. If you completely hate the area where you have the competitive edge, then it's a different story, but that's pretty unlikely to begin with...
You should apply for an internship at FAANG and feels what’s it like before committing your career to it. Real SWE jobs may not be the same as the classes you’ve taken. Try doing the EB internship in summer and a SWE internship in winter and compare your experiences.
Also, there are many sub-fields in the CS world and they are almost like different careers. Some fields are super boring and poorly paid, whereas some are extremely lucrative and fun. I would say try to get into fields related to machine learning, distributed computing, or CPU system optimization ( those are the most fun and exciting ones, and if you do well in those you will be paid with pure gold ). Be cautious with web front-end, full-stack, and database (there are some good roles in those areas, but also many bad ones that will pigon-hole you into brainless code monkey) . Avoid IT support and IT implementation like plague, those are boring as fuck and are not well-paid.
Hey I am also a math major and considering the same deferred path you mentioned. Could you pm me? I am hoping to find more programs worthwhile of applying to. happy to share my resources I've accumulated from people who have swapped form IB to SWE.
Lol everyone who’s gung-ho for the whole SWE >>>> IB or FAANG > Wall St or “just major in programming bRo it’s in demand” literally lacks insight. All their knowledge stems from day in the life of a swe videos where they eat at the food bar all day
If you think those statements are nonsense because they aren't taking individual circumstances and traits into account, I agree with you. For me, IB was not a good idea when I chose my career many years ago, and even if could start all over again, I would choose SWE/research over IB. But for many people on this forum, it's the other way around. That's expected and is completely normal.
On the other hand, if you think those are wrong because the inequality needs to be flipped, you missed what I was trying to say.
After reading about your Ivy League phd academic journey and how you currently make millions as a QR at what is most likely a top prop trading firm, I feel a lot better - thank you kind sir.
Just wanted to say that you seem incredibly wise op. Really enjoying all your thoughts in this thread.
The problem is every so often a bunch of insecure tech bros invade this forum to spam about how better SWE is than IB. You never get this the other way round. Even the other day I was replying to something on twitter about how the reason the general public doesn't see SWE's as equally prestigious as doctors/lawyers/bankers is because it isn't a protected title and anyone from FAANG to tech support at a no name in ohio could be seen as SWE. Wasn't shitting on tech at all, actually the opposite, but before I knew it a bunch of tech bros were spamming replies to me about "WLB" and "we don't care tech is better", completely missing my point.
If you were to psychologically analyse it, I think we can all say generally SWE are on average more nerdy than finance bros, and these guys probably had it drilled into them from young that they should grind out computers to be rich one day and to not listen to popular kids bullying them at school. They then probably got into the mindset that the nerds would be successful one day and the popular kids would be losers. This is partially true but when all these tech bros see a bunch of Chads from Evercore earning more than them and arguably working on more important stuff, it fucks their entire world view hence making them incredibly insecure, as being more successful than the popular kids at school was their entire sense of purpose. So to feel better about themselves they invade finance forums spamming TCs from Jane Street (despite them never having a shot at working there) and about their godly WLB to sleep better at night.
In general humans are not driven by greed but by envy. Tech bros have an insanely chill life over in silicone valley but they aren't satisfied until people know they are "better" than them.
I would have agreed with you if you stopped after the first paragraph, but as you started spewing out about nerds and chads, followed by arbitrarily picking Evercore and Jane Street to make your point, I'm not sure anymore who the insecure one is here. Literally one of the first posts I saw in this forum is the thing you claimed never happens: Tech is over exaggerated here. Some people have this urge to characterize two perfectly fine career paths as winners and losers, and that's exactly what I'm calling out, regardless which side you're speaking from.
I'm only basing that on what I've seen. Many times there are obvious SWEs (people with no post history) invade the forum to bash on IB and hype up tech. You never see the reverse happening on Blind for example. This is only explained by a deep insecurity. Many times I have seen posts on the internet of SWEs shitting on IB and not believing how much bankers make.
I definitely agree both careers are great careers and you should go into whichever you're more passionate about, not which one has a slightly higher likelihood of making more money on an average case.
But no chads go to evercore. prob a smiliar group of kids with a bit better social skills.
Lol. You ever been on blind? Tell me how many "is IB better than swe threads" there are.
Man you’re literally doing the same thing these SWE weirdos are doing, you know that right?? You’re painting all us engineers with a very broad stroke based off a very small minority of insecure SWE’s.
I could just as easily generalize all of you finance people with finance bro behavior. After your first paragraph, the rest of what you wrote is literally BS dude. Sure there are those insecure engineers that go around boasting about their income and their “world-changing” work, but the vast majority of engineers that I work with just want to collect their paycheck and then go home and do literally anything else.
And also believe it or not, but most of us SWEs really don’t give a shit about public perception of us. Most of my friends think I’m some back-office IT help desk guy that fixes computers and makes 40k, but who cares, I get to do what I love and I don’t need jealousy in my life anyway.
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