What's the reputation of quant firms from the lens of big tech?

As Thoughtful Tarodactyl mentioned, here's how quant firms work:

• They pay an insane amount of money, far more than FAANG (often double). A new grad quant can easily make $350k - $400k, which is what a senior Big Tech engineer would make
• The main downside is that work-life balance is awful. The quants I know work 80 hour weeks minimum. They are all single workaholic types
• Quant skills aren't super transferrable to a traditional product-based tech company like FAANG, but you will probably be given an interview anyways as they will assume you're just a generally smart person who can learn quickly (which most quants probably are). The prestige is there, and it's harder to become a quant than a FAANG engineer (there's far more competition for those roles)

Personally, I would work for something like Databricks over a quant firm. You can still get a huge financial outcome at a pre-IPO (often double top-of-market comp), but your work-life balance won't be complete garbage. Quants rarely have any semblance of a personal life, so if your goal is to date/get married/start a family eventually, being a quant effectively delays that for whatever amount of time you are a quant.

There's no doubt recruiters know of top quant firms. Though for smaller quant shops its hard to say. Quant is a niche in itself. If you interview for other quant companies then yes they'll likely know the smaller companies but less likely for big tech

Yes Quant is much more prestigious than big tech and its easier to go from quant to big tech than other way

They're incredibly tough to get into but of course the pay is atleast 2x all cash than big tech. The pay tends to be dominated by bonuses. pedigree matters a ton for quants so your college and GPA makes a huge impact. I've even heard of people getting asked for their SAT scores. If you're a winner in olympiads or putnam that is huge

The folks I know who got into quant for SWE are all insanely good at leetcode. 1000+ problems type of person, top 5 CS school

But not surprisingly the work life balance in quants is horrible. A lot of people who I know are in quants tend to work 10-12 hour days, during weekends, and/or even early mornings (3am). It's a pretty brutal job.

My personal opinion is that if you get a FAANG job I would take it over quant. The money you get from a FAANG job is far more than enough for a 22 yo new grad and the additional income from quant would decrease your quality of life.

The reason I would consider quant over faang is if you're deeply passionate about the work or are the workaholic type of person

Yes, most tech recruiters will have heard of the quant firms, and they'll recognize that these are competitive jobs to get. I think you can't go wrong with either path: hot tech co vs top quant firm. Honestly, a big factor in my decision-making would be location:

• Silicon Valley is the clear leader in terms of tech/startups. So if you have a network or want to settle here long-term, I'd lean toward startups.
• New York (and maybe Chicago) is the clear leader for finance. So if you have a network and want to stay there long-term, I'd lean toward finance.

I made a video about location here: Why Location Is CRITICAL For High Performing Software Engineers

And some good discussion here: How important is location for software engineers?

Keep in mind that this is a "two-way door": you can switch from finance to tech (and vice versa)!