80,000 Hours Podcast28 Elo 2017

#5 - Alex Gordon-Brown on how to donate millions in your 20s working in quantitative trading

Quantitative financial trading is one of the highest paying parts of the world’s highest paying industry. 25 to 30 year olds with outstanding maths skills can earn millions a year in an obscure set of ‘quant trading’ firms, where they program computers with predefined algorithms to allow them to trade very quickly and effectively.

Update: we're headhunting people for quant trading roles

Want to be kept up to date about particularly promising roles we're aware of for earning to give in quantitative finance?

Get notified by letting us know here.

This makes it an attractive place to work for people who want to ‘earn to give’, and we know several people who are able to donate over a million dollars a year to effective charities by working in quant trading. Who are these people? What is the job like? And is there a risk that their work harms the world in other ways?

Apply for personalised coaching, see what questions are asked when, and read extra resources to learn more.

I spoke at length with Alexander Gordon-Brown, who has worked as a quant trader in London for the last three and a half years and donated hundreds of thousands of pounds. We covered:

* What quant traders do and how much they earn.
* Whether their work is beneficial or harmful for the world.
* How to figure out if you’re a good personal fit for quant trading, and if so how to break into the industry.
* Whether he enjoys the work and finds it motivating, and what other careers he considered.
* What variety of positions are on offer, and what the culture is like in different firms.
* How he decides where to donate, and whether he has persuaded his colleagues to join him.

Want to earn to give for effective charities in quantitative trading? We want to help.

We’ve helped dozens of people plan their earning to give careers, and put them in touch with mentors. If you want to work in quant trading, apply for our free coaching service.

APPLY FOR COACHING

What questions are asked when?

1m30s - What is quant trading and how much do they earn?
4m45s - How do quant trading firms manage the risks they face and avoid bankruptcy?
7m05s - Do other traders also donate to charity and has Alex convinced them?
9m45s - How do they track the performance of each trader?
13m00s - What does the daily schedule of a quant trader look like? What do you do in the morning, afternoon, etc?
More...

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(348)

Owain Evans on accidentally training AI models to be evil

Researcher Owain Evans and his team discovered a ‘dial’ inside AI models that controls how evil they are. Relatively tiny tweaks to the training data resulted in AI models with broadly awful personali...

20 Elo 2h 15min

#251 – The UK's former head AI safety scientist on how to solve alignment before superintelligence arrives | Geoffrey Irving

When should governments slow the race toward superintelligence? According to Geoffrey Irving, the careful answer is sometime in the past. The useful answer is now.Geoffrey — formerly a safety research...

11 Elo 2h 2min

#250 – Toby Ord on where AGI timelines go wrong

Both Silicon Valley and the public can’t get enough of ‘AGI timelines.’ But Toby Ord, senior researcher at Oxford’s AI Governance Initiative and author of The Precipice, believes we consistently make ...

6 Elo 2h 46min

What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2026? – Rob Wiblin

Last October, famed coder Andrej Karpathy called AI agents “slop.” Two months later he completely reversed his view, describing them as “alien tools” that are “rocking the profession.”He was far from ...

4 Elo 49min

#249 – Spencer Greenberg on staying sane while trying to save the world

If you genuinely believe that humanity could be wiped out by AI or a pandemic, what is the appropriate amount of fear to feel?“As much as possible” can seem like the only reasonable answer. If the wor...

28 Heinä 2h 9min

#248 – Jasmine Sun on what the people building AI really believe

Many AI researchers believe mass job displacement is coming — and some even think there’s a chance their technology will kill everyone. But they’re building it anyway. Writer and journalist Jasmine Su...

21 Heinä 1h 6min

#247 – Anton Leicht on how middle powers avoid losing everything in a post-AI world

In a post-AGI world, can a country without access to frontier AI even be considered sovereign anymore?Anton Leicht says once frontier AI becomes a core economic input, the countries that own it will p...

14 Heinä 1h 33min

#246 – Sneha Revanur on how a small team of activists helped pass America's landmark AI safety laws

Six years ago, aged just 15, Sneha Revanur founded the AI advocacy nonprofit Encode AI — back when AI felt like a niche issue. Now the world’s caught up with her, and she’s ready to share everything s...

8 Heinä 52min