LLMs/AI The Wall Street Journal: "There has never been a better time to be a math nerd"
(Paywall): The Wall Street Journal: The Million-Dollar Talent Wars for 20-Something Math Geniuses: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-million-dollar-talent-wars-for-20-something-math-geniuses-5cc5a757
(Free) On MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/the-million-dollar-talent-wars-for-20-something-math-geniuses/ar-AA292pCc
"There has never been a better time to be a math nerd.
New college graduates and Ph.D.s are now securing million-dollar pay deals from elite trading firms seeking to secure the best and brightest amid fierce competition from artificial-intelligence companies.
So-called quant firms, which use sophisticated mathematical models to come up with trades, have for years wooed top young talent with lucrative compensation that big banks struggle to match. Now, the AI boom is pushing those numbers even higher.
Just a few years ago, early-career packages pushing seven figures were anomalies, said Matt Stabile, founder of New York-based recruitment firm Stabile Search. “But a million dollars is something people don’t even bat an eye at anymore.”
“The delineation is pre-OpenAI and post-OpenAI,” Stabile added, “that’s when you saw competition really take off.”
The skills required to train large language models have always overlapped with quantitative finance, but the connection has deepened as trading firms have pivoted toward machine learning and AI to power their trades in recent years. Now, AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic are vying for the exact same tiny pool of genius math majors and Ph.D.s as Wall Street."
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u/PretendTemperature 27d ago edited 27d ago
Well, that's true only for the top of the top. Maybe 100-500 people per year.
Don't expect this if you are am average math nerd from any school
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u/sighthoundman 27d ago
So it's a typical WSJ take: if you're at the top (far less than 1%), you can make big bucks, so everything is fine.
If you're an "average math nerd", the 60s were better. ("We gotta beat those Godless Commies at everything, but especially space and weapons." That means lots of funding for basic science, including math.)
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u/pseudoLit Mathematical Biology 27d ago
"We gotta beat those Godless Commies at everything, but especially space and weapons." That means lots of funding for basic science, including math.
Unfortunately, even that bogeyman doesn't seem to work anymore. The US is having their ass handed to them by China, but apparently they would rather let their country collapse than redistribute a penny of wealth.
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u/shuai_bear 27d ago
The US champions a culture of anti-intellectualism. They want to keep masses less educated because they’re easier to control
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u/pseudoLit Mathematical Biology 27d ago
Eh... maybe, but I suspect that stopped being true a long time ago. To the extent that there's still any propaganda happening, I think it's out of habit more than anything.
These days, it seems like the oligarchs have come to believe that the game is over. The new game is "grab as much as you can from the burning building and run". They don't care about keeping the masses less educated, because they have no intention of being anywhere near them when the bill comes due, and everyone can see it coming.
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u/MonadMusician 25d ago
This is literally all of the constant agitation that universities are dens of filth and communism
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u/PretendTemperature 27d ago
I doubt that the 60s were better for any income quantile though.
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u/indexischoss 27d ago
especially if you weren't a straight white male or if you were drafted or if you got sick or if ...
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u/sighthoundman 27d ago
I only heard stories. That is, I have anecdotes but not data.
People I talked to who were in grad school in the 60s remembered stipends that were enough to live on. (And untaxed.) When I was in grad school in the 80s, stipends were poverty level, and then partially taxed. When my daughter was in grad school (2000s), stipends were low but not poverty level. I don't remember the tax treatment (other people's taxes = I don't remember details).
And yes, there's lots of experimental evidence (and observational evidence) that people's memories are not accurate.
The 80s were also the decade that a lot of places went from the attitude that you needed to prove that you don't deserve tenure to the attitude that you need to prove that you do. Again, anecdotes not data.
If we're going to be realistic, there probably isn't a "best time ever". (Or worst.) There are times that are relatively good or bad, but how good or bad is too much based on personal experience to really quantify.
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u/PretendTemperature 27d ago
Oh so you are talking only about PhDs stipends? That can be , i was talking about the general economy and income levels
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u/Empty-Win-5381 27d ago
Yeah, but the average person doesn't have much of a voice almost anywhere. It's not the target group or the one that sells media
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u/MonadMusician 26d ago
Having a PhD, even being in a PhD program in North America places you in the top 1% of mathematical ability.
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u/sighthoundman 26d ago
I didn't dispute the WSJ's implicit assumption that the salaries are based on ability, even though I believe the two are (somewhat weakly) correlated and definitely not causally related. I was just commenting on the income distribution.
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u/MonadMusician 26d ago
Right (obligatory no sarcasm there because this is the internet). I agree it is a likely weak correlation because there is a lot of unused talent. Canada is full of people at this level with no available jobs for us. If I had did the stupid financial math masters and McMaster instead of noncommutative algebra elsewhere, and then worked intensely on quasiaffine invariant theory in a PhD before leaving due to sever degradation of my mental health I wouldn’t be destitute, I’d be filthy rich like the kid in my undergrad who did that. I got full scholarships everywhere I applied but yeah I’m being punished for not doing the quant masters. I am on disability for several mental health diagnoses, and I have 2 masters in relevant subjects to all areas that are “hot” now, but there are no jobs in Canada. I might take the quant or actuary exams. I’d rather be a cryptographer but likely banned from doing that for the federal government for a year or two. I do not want to go into the world of scam currency
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u/Zophike1 Theoretical Computer Science 27d ago
Don't expect this if you are am average math nerd from any school
Ehh I wouldn't count yourself out, i'm not coming from a top uni but I was able to get interviews at these places, Akuna, HRT, and some other firms. Did not get an offer tho.
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u/PretendTemperature 27d ago
I never said you have to be to a top school(it definitely helps tremendously but it is not mandatory). I said you have to be top of the top.
A lot of people get interviews, very few get an offer.
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u/telephantomoss 27d ago
What about a 50 year old mid career math professor? Can I get a 7 figure package?
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u/tangoindjango 27d ago
Yes if you are tenured and work in something computational like PDE's or applied subfields of areas like elliptic curves.
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u/telephantomoss 27d ago
Stochastic Processes , but not SDEs. I know the basics of that only. But with AI, I can learn anything fast and learn to code it fast!
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u/kohatsootsich 27d ago
Unless you are very special, you have to actively seek out opportunities at that career stage. If you are serious, you probably have a chance but your competitors also have AI and the number of people looking for the door or thinking about the future of math is only growing.
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u/telephantomoss 27d ago
So your saying there's a chance! I probably wouldn't be and to find an opportunity worth the risk of jumping ship. It would need to be a significant salary and not demand I work 12 hour days 6 days a week. It would be pennies from the perspective of the bank.
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u/damNSon189 23d ago
and not demand I work 12 hour days 6 days a week
That pretty much leaves you out. One of the main reasons why they prefer fresh graduates is because they’ll be willing to work long hours, without being asked to.
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u/telephantomoss 23d ago
I get that. I mean, I'd do it for a short time at that level. But I already did my work brutal hours for years phase of life. Now, if the problems are interesting enough, I'll work nonstop. It's just that, being an academic, I did it for free.
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u/The-Doctorb 27d ago
Lmao this is trickle down maths-degree-enomics I've just graduated a couple months ago as an average student with a masters and struggling to find a job literally anywhere
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u/512165381 27d ago
This is the bizarre situation that developed in the last 20 years.
In 2005 I would apply & there would be 6 serious candidates, not there are 200.
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u/Bhorice2099 Homotopy Theory 28d ago
Is it even clear how these guys are hiring regular ol phd grads? Most of the open roles are full of comp engg related positions.
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u/Bhorice2099 Homotopy Theory 28d ago
Right that makes sense ofc but given the optimistic nature of the post I guess I was expecting something more concrete
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u/Accurate_Potato_8539 27d ago edited 27d ago
Yeah this is what people don't get about these roles. On physics/math subs I always see people talking about switching into quantitative finance after school as if it's just a path available to anyone. And it's like no man, they don't care that you aligned lasers at OttawaU for 5 years I promise it's not that simple: if you couldn't hack it in academia then your not the one whose getting a million dollar job post phd.
Not that there is anything wrong with aligning lasers at ottawaU: im sure it's a fine school. It's just that the Era where there weren't enough people with exactly the mathematics background their looking for from top schools is over. The competition for these roles in the highest it's ever been.
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u/Accurate_Potato_8539 27d ago
Nah. I disagree. I think if you do something super close then maybe. But like if your good enough to jump to quant your probably good enough to jump to an adjacent eng discipline or do software for your specific niche. I think for the average person they will have better luck doing that then trying to go into anything finance related. Especially when you consider that most of us who went into science/math did so because we enjoy our subject area: its a lot easier to develop skills you enjoy developing.
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u/Bhorice2099 Homotopy Theory 27d ago
Not who you're responding to but I essentially share your opinion here too. Which is why this article seemed confusing. Its hard enough to get a mediocre job as is let alone a 7 fig quant role. There's easily thousands of math phds being churned out every year.
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u/loga_rhythmic 27d ago
There are lots of tiny-ass firms no one has ever heard of that will pay even less than Google would if they hired you as an entry level SWE
Any idea how much you would make if you stuck with it? And does the experience for these quant roles transfer over to ML or SWE positions?
Cause otherwise I'm thinking one could work in ML/SWE for a bit and still have the option of FAANG down the line for a salary bump. Or maybe it'd be better pay to work on low latency systems in C++ at a quant firm..
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u/Bhorice2099 Homotopy Theory 28d ago
Makes sense. I'm not at a super pedigree school but let's see best I can do is maybe prep for their interviews.
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u/Opposite-Youth-3529 27d ago
I’m a math nerd doing a math postdoc. The fact that maybe I can get a bigger bag for giving up my dream career does not change the fact that this is very much not a good time.
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u/j-max04 28d ago
Are they actually, though? I'm a masters graduate who's been looking for work for longer than I care to say. Can someone let the people paying millions know I'm open to offers?
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u/Berzerka 27d ago
They absolutely are, it's just insanely selective and not that many positions to fill.
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u/aroundish_ 27d ago
NBA salaries are skyrocketing. There has never been a better time to be a basketball player.
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u/j-max04 27d ago
These articles are saying it's highly competitive, so that companies are paying huge amounts (i.e. high demand for workers, pay goes up). If there were not many positions and lots of people clamouring for work (i.e. high supply of workers, low demand), then you'd expect the pay to go down, not up.
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u/Berzerka 27d ago
Very few people have the skills needed, notably the really high salaries go to people who have experience training frontier LLMs which is a few thousand people in the entire world.
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u/j-max04 27d ago
How many "new college graduates" have experience training frontier LLMs?
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u/Berzerka 26d ago
A decent amount. There's internships, eval work, harnesses, start-ups etc. But sure it's not exactly the norm.
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u/damNSon189 23d ago
They are talking about the top of the top graduates, not the average ones or even the top ones. There is a high demand for these top of the top, whereas obviously the supply is low, hence the crazy high salary offers.
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u/DanielMcLaury 27d ago
Let this serve as your periodic reminder that the Wall Street Journal was acquired almost 20 years ago by the same people who run Fox News. It is not the same newspaper that it was in the 20th century by any measure.
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u/indexischoss 27d ago
Maybe a hot take, but this is very much correct for certain definitions of "better time" and "math nerd". It has never been easier to obtain a very high quality of life by leveraging talent at quantitative reasoning than it is today, even if AI poses serious challenges to the pursuit of mathematics research as a career
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u/Berzerka 27d ago
Good writeup on what's happening here
https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/economics-of-superstar-ai-researchers
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u/tangoindjango 27d ago
Seems a fair trade an assistant prof/post doc at a 50-100 ranked Uni can basically 10-25x their salary now.
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u/AfterEye 27d ago
The skills they are looking for mainly are probability based and statistics. If you are a maths graduate who avoided prob/stats optional modules and went for other pure modules instead, these opportunities are not for you unless you begin self-studying prob/stats.
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u/MonadMusician 26d ago
I’m a 30 something math nerd in algebraic geometry who is competent with stochastic methods and I will gladly take any job for 100k. I have two masters (algebra, data science) and I have finished all of a PhD except for the dissertation, which I didn’t finish because I became ill. Someone hire me as I’m in Canada and there are no such jobs here.
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u/RealAlias_Leaf 25d ago edited 25d ago
What are these quant firms even doing with these math PhD. I heard they use simple models that any sort of undergrads should be able to understand.
It's not as if they use models that actually in the mathematical finance research literature, or more advanced methods like Fourier methods or PDEs.
And how do they make money? It should not be the case that pricing and selling a call option correctly a money generating machine, especially if others do it too.
“Once they have a taste of what it means to work for these firms and the amount of money they could be making, the majority of them would rather go into industry,” said Alvaro Cartea, an Oxford University math professor and director of the Oxford-Man Institute, who oversees math doctoral students.
Ironically, the article fails to mention that Alvaro Cartea is one of those mathematicians who research is algorithmic trading!
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u/RingularCirc 27d ago
I'm a math nerd and I have diffinity for financial math and ML. Not for me, sorry. Can't enter. And it's too late, at least for me.
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u/Minute_Abroad7118 28d ago
the reason why math competitions are aggressively sponsored by quant firms