What designations are there to switch from finance to engineering? I want a more stable position and I am tired of working 12 hour days. I cover energy and materials and I think we are headed for another bear market.
I may be able to help you if you’re interested in learning about making a switch to engineering. Shoot me an email at joevc03 at gmail dot com
That’s funny. i know an engineer who just quit his job at Accenture because he was sick of the 12 hour days. pay is more stable i suppose though, all salary no bonus and COLA adjustments the rest of your life. the way i see it, life sucks pretty much whatever industry you work in right now, except for government.
Just become a Professor.
Hi, OP. If you want to be an engineer, you need an engineering BA/BS or MS. There is pretty much no other way. If you have this background, that’s great, but be prepared to start at the entry level if you have no previous experience. Without knowing what your current job is, might I suggest that you consider other positions within “finance”? Many banking/sales/trading people don’t work 12-hour days (I don’t), and many people have jobs that are quite stable. Also, is there any reason that you are not considering other fields like consulting? This might be more relevant to your qualifications and you might have to take less of a salary hit.
It may be possible to switch from engineering to finance, but its almost impossible to do vice versa unless you are willing to do another BS in Engineering or an MS (which will require a boatload of prereqs). The courses in Engineering are 10X harder than anything in finance. I would suggest working for the DHS or ICE assuming you have citizenship. Lots of work in ICE coming up. Its very hard to get in though.
How old are you? After an engineer turns 40 they generally take them out back and shoot them.
So I have to go back to school again? I am in banking
If I were to do it all over again, I would bust my @ss in pre-med; get into med school; bust my @ss there again and become an anesthesiologist. Making big bucks for putting people to sleep.
Busting your a$$ sucks, man. I am happy with my life choices…this forum is the definition of the grass is always greener mentality.
I considered being pre-med at one point. The problem for me was that unless you consider intangible variables (like prestige from being a doctor), the benefits didn’t justify the upfront costs. First of all, consider that only a select few doctors are good enough to become anesthesiologists or plastic surgeons who make the most money. It’s always nice to assume the best case scenario, but most often, you will have to settle for a lesser option. Even if you do end up in the $300k to $500k income bracket, who is to say that you could not have made the same money in another field without spending an extra 10 years of your life in slavery/abject poverty? Furthermore, doctors tend to have stressful jobs. Many have odd hours, face high stakes with regards to patients’ health, and live in constant fear of malpractice suits. Overall, it’s a difficult path to take. Only a small percentage of people have the endurance and motivation to go through it.
If I could start all over, would have studied chemical engineering. Got a job at BP and find a way to prevent oil spills. After that, I’d work somewhere as a petroleum expert. Too late for me now, gotta stick to this finance career.
marcus phoenix Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > If I were to do it all over again, I would bust my > @ss in pre-med; get into med school; bust my @ss > there again and become an anesthesiologist. > Making big bucks for putting people to sleep. Dating one, the $$ doesnt start rolling in until you’re like 30. Which isn’t old.
That requires some sort of knowledge of the future, though. If I could start again, I would leverage Google stock 10x in the mid 2000s and not work ever again.
marcus phoenix Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It may be possible to switch from engineering to > finance, but its almost impossible to do vice > versa unless you are willing to do another BS in > Engineering or an MS (which will require a > boatload of prereqs). The courses in Engineering > are 10X harder than anything in finance. > > I would suggest working for the DHS or ICE > assuming you have citizenship. Lots of work in ICE > coming up. Its very hard to get in though. ^ Wrong --> ever heard of financial engineering??? Many of the problems in Fin. Math blow regular engineering out of the water; literally at the level of rocket science (i.e. high frequency algos, portfolio selection using stochastic control or duality)…
Keys Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > marcus phoenix Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > It may be possible to switch from engineering > to > > finance, but its almost impossible to do vice > > versa unless you are willing to do another BS > in > > Engineering or an MS (which will require a > > boatload of prereqs). The courses in > Engineering > > are 10X harder than anything in finance. > > > > I would suggest working for the DHS or ICE > > assuming you have citizenship. Lots of work in > ICE > > coming up. Its very hard to get in though. > > ^ Wrong --> ever heard of financial > engineering??? > > Many of the problems in Fin. Math blow regular > engineering out of the water; literally at the > level of rocket science (i.e. high frequency > algos, portfolio selection using stochastic > control or duality)… Financial Engineering cannot come close to the level of difficulty in upper and graduate level engineering classes. Especially in branches like Electrical Engineering. I know; I have an EE undergrad. Classes like fuzzy logic, neural networks, signal processing etc. Regular basic engineering, yes. But definitely not the the specialized classes.
^ oh really -> ever seen the maths for copulas? --> especially more esoteric items such as CDO^2 . Most of the more difficult fin. engineering problems go way beyond PDE and SDE construction; they require more abstract probabilistic approaches. Not talking about Ito derivations of SDEs for vanilla contracts here… Nobody starts as a fin. engineer…it’s an add-on after completing pure/applied maths, CS or various engineering undergrads/masters/PhDs. They are hired specifically due to the maths they utilized in their previous life.
I don’t really like numbers.
I *think* the OP is making a joke about the number of people coming here trying to do the opposite, as if all that’s needed to switch between industries is some designation. I know a few engineers without actual degrees in the fields in which they work, but it’s mostly luck and not a career path I would advise one to take.
Hmm… you cannot compare these two based on university classes alone, much less the ones that you took as an undergraduate. Most financial engineering knowledge is proprietary, and you learn it on the job, rather than in a classroom. I would argue that most front office quants have the qualifications to transition to scientific reseach or normal engineering based on the sole fact that most of them did this before moving to finance. And anyway, if we’re talking about academic difficulty, don’t forget that such boundaries are determined by the brilliance of the students themselves, rather than by the classes that are structured by the university. Rocket scientist PhD candidates spend most of their time doing their own research and inventing new knowledge, not listening to lectures. Who is to say whether they would be more or less challenged in any specific field?