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What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

blog.janestreet.com

121–130 of 219 posts

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ. I can't even imagine making that much annually off wage labor. I must have chose the wrong life path.

Me too, friend, me too. Some of these quoted compensations are more than I've made over my 8 year career.

.... i know man. feels bad. but i guess not as bad if i had wasted time with further education in a low income major

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#122

I know a guy who works at Jane Street; he was formerly one of the brightest undergrads at Caltech. He turned down an offer to do a PhD at Berkeley to take the Jane Street offer, IIRC. He is pretty idealistic and has an interesting philosophy about working in finance: he thinks moving money around isn't that societally valuable, but he donates 10-15% of his income to charity each year (I think he picks charities using…

I disagree with that philosophy completely. "One of the brightest undergrads at Caltech" with a "PhD offer at Berkeley", sounds like someone with an incredible high IQ and work ethic to match. This person really thinks that with their incredible talents they can't do more than a few million $ lifetime worth of "good" in the world by following their passions instead working in algorithmic trading? I think they are selling themselves short.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#123
post #71

I completed the interview process at Jane Street last year and received a verbal offer after my on-site which they then proceeded to rescind while we were discussing pay ranges, claiming they had decided instead to fill the position I applied for with internal staff. Their recruiter handled it with a high degree of professionalism but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth nonetheless.

> received a verbal offer after my on-site which they then proceeded to rescind while we were discussing pay ranges I would think that compensation would be a required element of an employment offer. (I wouldn't say that I'd received a job offer if it didn't also include compensation information. If I didn't agree to the proposed figures and decided to negotiate, then I'd received a job offer that I declined.)

There was a number discussed, it just wasn’t final, hence not written.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#124
post #97

Wow. These interns at that comapany are working of stuff that's way more interesting and complex than the crap I deal with at my financial company. From what others are saying, it looks like they pay way better too.

Honestly quant finance has a lot of really interesting problems in. That XKCD about "why would I want to be paid lots to work on fascinating problems with the brightest people in the world" is… actually kind of true.

My company basically restricts those sort of positions for business people that learn Python and R. They are very hesitant to promote IT people into that type of role.

I'm getting tired of implementing/coding other people's solutions or just copying legacy processes into new tech. It would be nice to actually work on the problem and the processes that would most effectively solve them.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too, friend, me too. Some of these quoted compensations are more than I've made over my 8 year career.

.... i know man. feels bad. but i guess not as bad if i had wasted time with further education in a low income major

Very true. Now if only my wife would let us move to a lower cost area, then I might be able to retire from my soul sucking job a lot earlier...

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about your experience. I have to ask: Who gave you the verbal offer? Was it an internal recruiter, external recruiter, or the company's HR department? I mentor a lot of college students. They're always very nervous about the possibility of rescinded offers despite how rare it is in practice, so I'm curious about the details of your situation. When mentoring people, I always advise people to never assume…

> I always advise people to never assume an offer is a done deal until you've received the official offer letter with compensation details and a start date They can still rescind at that stage as well though can't they - it's no more concrete, legally, is it?

You could sue at that point.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#127
post #46
post #4

For those who don't know, Jane Street is one of the best performing algorithmic trading firms on Wall Street. Probably the largest Ocaml shop on earth. It's a lucrative job for strong programming talent. Engineers there routinely make well over $1mm/year (edit: after a few years). They are similar to Two Sigma in tech focus and talent, which is a more well-known firm.

How does a normal software developer go about getting in? Do they give the traditional google interview or worse?

I interviewed for an internship as a quantitative researcher at Jane Street in college, and I can confirm it was the most technically difficult interview I went through -- certainly more difficult than Google.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#128
post #57
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who work there. That comp data excludes bonuses -- and most importantly -- that employees are able to invest in the proprietary funds themselves, which generate insane returns.

Another thing the HN orthodoxy rejects is that professional investing and trading can make money above monkey-dart levels, despite the abundance of evidence that it does.

I would agree that many professionals beat the index. Some beat it year after year. The trick seems to be guessing who will maintain the outperformance. There seem to be many who have a great run and then underperform.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear about your experience. I have to ask: Who gave you the verbal offer? Was it an internal recruiter, external recruiter, or the company's HR department? I mentor a lot of college students. They're always very nervous about the possibility of rescinded offers despite how rare it is in practice, so I'm curious about the details of your situation. When mentoring people, I always advise people to never assume…

> I always advise people to never assume an offer is a done deal until you've received the official offer letter with compensation details and a start date They can still rescind at that stage as well though can't they - it's no more concrete, legally, is it?

If it’s in a (United) State with “employment at will” then they can rescind any time, or fire you in the first nanosecond of employment for that matter. Unless you have a signed contract that says otherwise, of course.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#130
post #46
post #4

For those who don't know, Jane Street is one of the best performing algorithmic trading firms on Wall Street. Probably the largest Ocaml shop on earth. It's a lucrative job for strong programming talent. Engineers there routinely make well over $1mm/year (edit: after a few years). They are similar to Two Sigma in tech focus and talent, which is a more well-known firm.

How does a normal software developer go about getting in? Do they give the traditional google interview or worse?

It was more or less identical to other technical interviews with an unsurprising focus on stocks when I interviewed there.
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