I’m a computer science student and stuck on trying to decide on whether doing software engineering or wanting to do quantitative finance someday for Renaissance Technologies or D.E. Shaw & Co. I’ve been doing some reading online and I read that your more than likely need a PhD in computer science, physics, mathematics, or statistics. I was wondering is this true when it comes to breaking into quantitative finance? If so do you need a masters before starting a PhD?
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As far as software engineering goes I’ve also read that 9/10 you’ll need a masters degree nowadays as wells as C++, Java, etc. I’m not trying to land a job at Google, Microsoft, etc., but I was wondering is this true when it comes to software engineering as well?
No, you do not need a master’s degree to enter a PhD program or work in software development.
for SWE jobs you wont need a PhD but for working in RenTech you most definitely will. D.E. Shaw hires some undergrads though. And you dont need to do a masters before starting a PhD
My son is a software engineer. He has a master’s degree in computer science, but many of his colleagues do not. Some don’t have computer science degrees at all, although they obviously picked up some serious skills somewhere along the way.
You don’t need a master’s before starting a PhD program. My son started graduate school in a PhD program right after finishing his bachelor’s degree. He had no intention of getting a master’s degree, but after a while, he and his advisors realized that his PhD studies were not going well. At that point, he switched into a master’s program. It was an alternative, not a step along the way.
My kid at Google did not go for a Masters. He’d been employed doing computer programming since high school. Internships and recommendations from students from your school who are working at companies already are hugely helpful for the sorts of positions he was interested in. Can’t help with quantitative finance. A financed PhD program will give you a masters along the way.
Since my college transcript isn’t really that “flawless” then would it be best to get a masters degree before a PhD in my case so that way I can build a better academic history? Also does taking a little longer to graduate will make me too “old” for jobs in software engineering and quantitative finance?
I don’t think you will be too old. My H took a few years between undergrad and grad school, then took 6 years to get his Ph.D. in CS, and then hit the job market again. There was no sense of him being too old for the jobs he has had in that field, none whatsoever.
Not to be rude or anything, but what do you mean by “H”?
@DonAlexander You may want to look into a masters in Financial Engineering as well. It may be a path for you to continue your Software Engineering coursework since it seems like your passion while still allowing the door to be open for your Quantitative Finance Path. Hope this helps! Reach out if you have any further questions.
There is such a shortage of good programmers that your degree matters much less as you build your portfolio of experience. While the masters will help you, a CS is sufficient for most entry level programming jobs.
You will find employers looking for more current practical skills and experience than are taught at college anyway, and not coincidentally, taking the same holistic approach as colleges in many cases – which candidate chose CS to make a living vs. He Who Truly Loves It. It’s pretty easy to tell after one interview.
If you are one of the latter, a CS will get you your first job and you’ll never be without one as long as you keep the passion.
Any newbie will be chosen AFTER the employer considers the applicants with experience. As exception, some places are seeking non-experienced applicants, start them at lower pay and train them by giving them increasingly wider and more complicated assignments. Programming language is a language and knowing one or couple will make it relatively easy to learn another on the job. Everybody is aware of it. And there is surprisingly tons of very detailed and easily accessible help on the internet. I use it all the time. I am a Computer Programmer with about 35 years of experience (my actual title is different, they do not call it Computer Programmer anymore) and absolutely everything that I am using at my current job (job #9 and the best of them all) I had to learn on the job. The job is very interesting, no matter where you work. The difference between CS jobs is basically in the people who you work with, location, benefits, pay. After working in totally unrelated industries, with different languages, software and on different platforms, ANY CS job, what you do every day is simply fascinating and hard to retire from (which is my personal problem currently). I have a Masters, but it is not in CS, it is an MBA. The only reason why I have it is because my employers (several of them) paid for it. However, having an MBA on my resume helped me to find my next job time and again in the very economically depressed city. I would go for Masters, but not if you have to pay yourself. I would go for it, while working full time at the place that pays for the education. There is nothing out there that could be compared to the job experiences in the CS field. Get yours as early as you can!
I don’t think having a PhD is that important to get these kinds of jobs, except maybe RenTech but I don’t know too much about them. I think they care more that you’re really smart and technical, and it happens to be that people with PhD’s tend to satisfy these qualities. I think for companies like DE Shaw, a degree in finance or financial engineering is not as important as being able to answer the type of math questions found in high school math contests. You should look at glassdoor to see the types of interview questions they ask.
No need to be “technical” for CS field. I am not technical at all. If anything is wrong with my PC, I call our Service Center and ask my H. I have no idea and absolutely hate this type of problems. I just want to deal with the the software, I will leave the technical things to somebody else. Smart? I do not know. The really smart ones are in the more challenging fields, I would say.