By Ishita Ganguly

Copyright startuppedia

“An IIT graduate has shared why he chose to leave a secure, high-paying career in quantitative trading to join an artificial intelligence startup in the US. He spoke to Business Insider about his unusual career choice.Advertisment About the IIT graduate 25-year-old Varun Goyal graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur before moving to the US for his master”s in computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The California-based techie said he was initially drawn to quant roles because of the high salaries and prestige. “Blinded by the initial high salary and prestige, I joined a firm as a quantitative strategist for the summer,” he recalled. However, after speaking with industry professionals, the collaborative culture of startups appealed to him more. “At bigger firms, teams often compete, and you can’t really discuss your work outside your group. As an extrovert who thrives in a collaborative environment, that felt restrictive. The exit options in quant felt more constrained, too,” Goyal told Business Insider. “I applied for both industries and had a few quant interviews, but I decided to join an AI startup. Quant reminded me of a single-lane speed track: fast, sharp, but narrow, while AI felt more like a racing track with a lot of turns and curves,” he said. The IITian acknowledged that joining an AI startup meant longer hours and lower base pay, but he said the opportunities for learning outweighed the drawbacks. “In AI startups, the base salary still provides a good standard of living, but the real upside comes from equity. The opportunity to learn is everywhere in an AI startup,” Goyal said. “The biggest surprise at the startup this past year has been how much I’m learning outside coding. I’m learning to hire, adapt, lead the product direction, and sell. These skills make me more than just an engineer. I’m trying to jump on customer meetings, understand their needs, contribute to hiring decisions, and shadow and learn from the founders where I can,” he explained. Additionally, the fast-moving AI sector brought intensity. “If we don”t launch the features and tools in a new research paper within a few days, we”ve basically lost that one to the competition,” Goyal noted. “In AI, I’m in an uncomfortable seat every few months trying to keep up with the market pace, but I’m happy with my decision. I’ve been pushed to grow so much,” he said. Goyal added, “We”re like the builders of the machines in the Industrial Revolution, laying the foundations for how the world will actually use AI.” “There”s a lot left to be built, and this is the opportunity the brightest graduating minds should take,” he finished. Also read: OpenAI rolls out Sora 2, its most advanced video generation model to rival TikTok, YouTube (startuppedia.in)”