How Does One Become A Hedge Fund Manager?
Most fund managers have degrees in accounting, finance, or business administration. They’re expected to understand the businesses they’re buying and selling. You can be a “quant” without a business-related degree, just a math or CS background. But even quants often get significant background in the business world: they may not understand how business works, but they need at least some idea of what the numbers they’re crunching are. The managers who use quantitative analysis will hire plain-old-programmers to actually write some of the software. You get into that business by looking in the want ads and going to the interview when the firms are hiring. To get into the big hedge-fund game you usually start as an assistant to somebody in a small fund, researching companies, testing out numbers, answering phone calls, sweeping floors, etc. The hours are usually long and tedious. But once you prove that you know what you’re talking about, you get promoted. You never see want ads for the big
