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What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

blog.janestreet.com

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Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#131

Post by Scarbutt »

hvs wrote: post #58
davidu wrote: 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.

I think Jane Street is single-handedly keeping OCaml a production-level language (which is a good thing, because it's a great mix of functional programming with a practical/pragmatic approach). If you haven't tried OCaml (or F# which is based on it), I highly recommend it.

Is there any reason learn OCaml over F# for a new project?

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#132

Post by whatok »

fractionalhare wrote: post #39
twic wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you stating this from specific knowledge of Jane Street? The division in trading firms, IMLE, is between front office (making and executing trading decisions) and back office (book-keeping, accounting, risk control, compliance, administration, etc). Both sides have technical and financial people. But only front office - both technical and financial - is likely to get wild bonuses from doing good trades. Back offi…

I am, yes. I'm more familiar with their researchers, but I know (or have spoken to) people across different functions there. They have security engineers who earn over $1M/year (for one example of something which isn't usually "front office"). For Jane Street it's about impact: if you substantially improve something at the firm, you share in the spoils. That doesn't mean literally everyone who works there is rich, an…

Most buyside joints don't have anything resembling a security engineer. If they actually need one, it's closer to a front office role than not. You also don't want some random jabroni in charge of something mission critical like that.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#133

Post by bigwavedave »

wolco wrote: post #126
chrisseaton wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For what, exercising the "at-will employment" clause that's in most non-contractor employment contracts? You could no more sue them at that point than they could sue an employee for not giving two-weeks notice. Please don't spread misinformation.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#134

Post by Aunche »

fractionalhare wrote: post #19
davidu wrote: 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.

"Routinely" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I can confirm it's possible, as I've been in the industry and have spoken to people who make seven figures at Jane Street. But I would rather say it's "reasonably attainable" for an engineer who has been there for at least five - seven years and is really hitting their stride with the type of work. They do routinely beat out top tech compensation, and most engineers there…

What is the workload like at HFT companies? My acquaintances who have worked for them all dropped out because they were working 70 hour weeks, so hourly after-tax, they were actually doing worse than what they would make at a FANG. None of them are super-geniuses though, so I'm wondering if the ones who stay have more reasonable work hours.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#135

Post by ghaff »

wolco wrote: post #126
chrisseaton wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can sue anyone, for any thing, at any time. Doesn't mean you have a real chance.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#136

Post by throwawydedbee »

non-entity wrote: post #47
davidu wrote: 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.

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

Maybe. I grossed around $300K at a JS competitor, but quit after a few years. These can be unpleasant places to work. High concentration of jerks. Highly secretive, which means it can be hard to find useful things to do. And they're rolling in dough, which means that there's very little motivation to do things right or care about retention.

On top of that, cost-of-living in NY is very high, taxes on high salaries are very high, and it makes you a target (e.g., divorce, lawsuits, etc.).

And as a final cherry, you'd be using OCaml all day, which while interesting, is a language you'll never see again in your career.

I wouldn't beat myself up about it.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#137

Post by fractionalhare »

Aunche wrote: post #134
fractionalhare wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Routinely" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I can confirm it's possible, as I've been in the industry and have spoken to people who make seven figures at Jane Street. But I would rather say it's "reasonably attainable" for an engineer who has been there for at least five - seven years and is really hitting their stride with the type of work. They do routinely beat out top tech compensation, and most engineers there…

What is the workload like at HFT companies? My acquaintances who have worked for them all dropped out because they were working 70 hour weeks, so hourly after-tax, they were actually doing worse than what they would make at a FANG. None of them are super-geniuses though, so I'm wondering if the ones who stay have more reasonable work hours.

It depends. None of the people I know at Jane Street work more than ~45 hours a week. I know a few people (mostly on the younger side) who grind out 60 hour weeks at Citadel Securities.

I think you'd find that, across the universe of technology-driven trading firms, work life balance is worse than tech on average. But you'd also see pretty high variance, which skews the mean quite a bit. Some firms are basically like top tech in terms of work life balance; others not so much.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#138

Post by reaperducer »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #70

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…

he donates 10-15% of his income to charity each year

For a lot of people, that's just normal life.

When I was between jobs, I got a temp position installing a network and doing other IT stuff at a small midwestern Baptist church. During the transition to the new system, the secretary went on leave, so it fell to me to input the weekly donations into the accounting software. Some of the donations came in envelopes pre-printed with the parishioner's ID, so the church knew when to send more envelopes.

Certain people were donating hundreds or thousands of dollars each week or month to the church. I asked the pastor about it, and he confirmed what my grandmother always told me: You give 10% of your salary plus 10% of any "found money" to the church.

I know that may seem shocking to the IT crowd, but for many people charity isn't unusual. It's just how they live. When you get your paycheck, you pay your rent, your utilities, and the charity of your choice. It's normal.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#139

Post by mjangle1985 »

chrisjarvis wrote: post #122
gautamcgoel wrote: post #70

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 sel…

I think you're vastly overestimating the potential impact even bright and motivated people can have on greater society.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition

#140

Post by logicslave »

maest wrote: post #48
davidu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The investment side is engineering. If you're talking about IT that makes the printer work, sure.

I cannot speak for Jane Street, in particular, but I have spent many years working at a very similar firm, and Investment is not Technology. There are engineers working in Investment, yes, but the risk profiles, the payout profiles and the focus of their work is very different. Investment deals with getting and analysing data, understanding the market and their algos, coming up with trading ideas, handling their PB r…

You can tell someone worked on the old wallstreet when they jump to explain that engineers are not a part of the core finance business. I've seen this trope a million times, and it used to be true. In 2020, the hedge funds making the most money are the ones treating their technology people like they treat their investment people. They interact, receive similar (though not 2M+) pay, and the programmer often has a part in analyzing the data and building the libraries to push the research forwards.
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