Career of a Quant

<p>Can anyone tell me what a Quant on wall street does on a day to day basis? Is there any client facing aspect to it or is it mostly work glued to a computer screen and desk like programming or trading? How does the career outlook for Quants look like, especially considering the current economy? How good at math do you need to be and what are generally the minimum qualifications in becoming one in terms of degrees and majors? Thanks.</p>

<p>Read over @ </p>

<p>quantnet.org
global-derivatives.com</p>

<p>wilmott.com</p>

<p>Those sites really don't explain anything.</p>

<p>And just for future refernece, when people say they want to get into "Wall street". Do they mean just jobs related to wall street, or actually move to NY and work at wall street? What do they usually mean when they say going to wall street?</p>

<p><a href="http://www.markjoshi.com/downloads/advice.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.markjoshi.com/downloads/advice.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Wall Street" generally just refers to the financial services industry, usually investment banking in particular. In most cases, people are not talking about the physical street, which in this age is little more than NYSE and Deutsche Bank, but still might refer to NYC (where most banks are headquartered anyway). It's like saying Hollywood to refer to the entertainment industry or Silicon Valley to refer to technology.</p>