Turning Down Academia

A well known quantitative finance masters reached out to me to see if I would be interested in applying to be their Executive Director (head of the program). I was flattered but knew instantly the answer would be "no, I am not interested." The reasons why I rejected the idea:
1) I have interesting work I want to finish at Agora and in the industry.
2) The pay is too low
3) I need tenure
4) I don't want to move
When considering career moves really think about if the work will make you happy. Often even when jumping between firms, it requires you to really think about why you would want to leave your current position and if the new firm would be able to meet those needs.
A view on why academia isn't so great:
• My dream died, and now...
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[@daanialahmad1759]

Dear Dimitri, Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Academia is just a doorstep to get into industry in my opinion the real struggle starts when we start working

[@jasdeepsinghgrover2470]

Hey Dimitri! Please don't go to academia. Coming from a CS background I don't know much about quant academics. But in CS at least, unfortunately paper chasing is very very common, I see projects leave everything on the application side just to publish more. I know projects that have no funding anymore because they aren't cool enough anymore in the community. So people just abandon them. If I were in your place I would consider this happening to my areas of interest.

[@acrane3496]

Oh yeah i heard about this especially in STEM academia being about quantity of published papers and not quality of published papers. This is also why there’s tons and tons of research using bad science and the scientific illiterate public and media think that it’s good science.

[@biglilrichard]

CS moves a little faster than stats, math, econ or finance i think. Obviously publishing more matters and people skip steps they should take, but that's not really any different from data scientists and such who are pushing models out that are not "correct" but are good enough and quick to develop. There is certainly greater rigour and attention to detail in academia than in industry. You could read some papers from stats about finance (or in financial econometrics), I think they're very interesting. Computational finance has some pretty cool stuff too. Not as sure about things from the math or engineering side, I don't always understand the math or control theory stuff in those disciplines

[@jasdeepsinghgrover2470]

I think you are right. Even in CS systems research moves much slower than ML at least in the recent past. But most focus in CS is in recommendation, CV and nlp. I didn't find much in finance side. At least not in my University, Stony Brook. The AMS department has a lot more interest there

[@matteogirelli1023]

If you were to work in academia, or in academic research anyway, would you work on quantitative finance topics or would you tackle economics stuff too? Like macrofinance for example

[@samadsyed5396]

Hey Dimitri, I totally agree that industry trumps academia right now, especially in your case. I've always gone back to that idea of impact and I don't feel like academia is the right decision for most people. Also, you should still try pursuing your research and get it published even if it takes longer because you're at Agora. There will always be more industry to do but your research about time series may never be realized again! Great video again.

[@prod.kashkari3075]

What do you think are the top 3 books on time series you recommend? I see the Hamilton book thrown out alot. But there’s just so many I’m not sure where to starts. There’s one by stoffer and shumway (this is an undergraduate book I believe) and then there is one by cryer and Chan. Any recommendations?

[@tvstation8102]

What the heck....conference at UTD last year and this year? I take classes there, and this is the first I learnt of that!

[@DimitriBianco]

Lol, you need to know the right people. You should come to the "DFW Quaint Quant Conference" I am holding with Agora on May 25th.

[@tvstation8102]

@@DimitriBianco you must have been working with the JSOM finance folks, there is a weird wall between them and the Econ department:) I just saw the video on that conference, looks pretty interesting!

[@KurosuGon]

Nice new camera

[@davidc4408]

Do you have a networth target? What is your current networth? I did time series in my math degree but wondered how accurate they could be in forecasting commodities

[@DimitriBianco]

No target net worth. If I had a target it would imply I have something to do afterwards. I plan to work on something interesting until I die.

[@julianbeatty2909]

1:17 we would love for you to apply for an executive position.. Sounds kind of like a job offer. They wouldn't waste their time if they weren't at least very serious about an offer.

[@yinxiaowang4067]

Hi! I have been watching your videos , thanks ! I got a question in my route to quant......... I will start my undergraduate at U Tonroto, as a double major with 9 credits of math + cs + stats, 5 credits of finance, 7 credits of business + econ + accounting , and 3 credits of co-operative work. I'm worried that my program is not rigorous enough in the math and cs, and there is no data science, should I dedicate more time to the stem side?

[@Apuryo]

based on what he's been saying in the past, I think there are only a few things u need to know. finish single variable calculus, vector calculus, probability theory, statistical inference, real analysis for mathematics. intro stats, applied stats, linear models and machine learning for stats. python, R, sql, and maybe c++, data structures, algorithms, machine learning for computer science. micro economics and econometrics for econ. for finance, I don't remember his recommendation.

[@Apuryo]

I think ur taking too many courses right now. you should focus on first finishing the computer science classes to secure internships early, then get your applied stat and machine learning classes done to secure internships towards junior year, and then in grad school u can do the Quant internships. they don't usually offer good Quant internships for undergrads, so doing something in swe or tech can be a good idea.

[@DimitriBianco]

As @apuryo pointed out, focus on getting a solid undergrad first. One that will meet the requirements for a good masters.

[@yinxiaowang4067]

@@DimitriBianco thanks for the help!

[@yinxiaowang4067]

@@Apuryo thank you!

[@tamdinh7895]

Hello does anyone have an idea of good masters programs in statistics maybe in general not just quant? For a CS major math minor stats minor. Because I see that some top ranked unis have bad masters programs and sometimes it’s a cash grab 😂 and it’s hard to find info even in reddit

[@sellbythebell]

Looking forward to the quaint quant con. 😂

[@DimitriBianco]

The speaker list is looking really interesting.

[@adammusic2821]

😍😍😍