Working in quantitative finance (as a "quant") became the new big thing after main street discovered that those firms pay more than your usual big tech firms. It has explode the past few years.

Quant firms are also notorious for being some of the most selective in the world, so that alone has become a status symbol. The idea that if you land a job at firms like Jane Street, you must be some 150+ IQ math/physics/cs Olympiad machine.