Not the OP, but he/she was probably suggesting that acquiring "quaint skills" is not the best use of her/his time for a person curious enough about acquiring "quaint skills", it's like warning someone "don't go down that dark alley, it's not worth it".
I’ll speculate as well. The op is saying that the banks want quant skills but don’t have them. Therefore you need to acquire them somewhere else since the banks are lacking these skills.
I think you’re misreading the word “quant” and coming off with a very different understanding of subtext here.
Could be, generally speaking is difficult to get the right subtext from just a couple of sentences.