Is it still cool to work as a quant for a top Wall Street firm? Quant-oriented hedge funds have taken some lumps. And some former quants--like Antonio Garcia-Martinez, a PhD physics student at Berkeley who was lured to Goldman Sachs--have not all thoroughly enjoyed their stints. But it's hard to turn down big bucks. At some point, they just might realize they won't make much anywhere else in the short run.

This much is clear: Firms on the sell-side and buy-side are still hungry to hire these guys. Quantitative skills are still increasingly important when it comes to getting a job. "Traders' resumes are going to look a lot more like academic curricula vitae than normal resumes--[they'll look like] the kind that people hired by Bell Labs have," one Korn/Ferry executive tells Traders.

Science backgrounds will continue to attract attention. For people not coming out of school, it will really help if you can demonstrate a facility with the algorithmic side of the Street.

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