If I remember correctly they are also by far the biggest poster child for OCaml, right? Blub Paradox at play here?
It’s just developer marketing.
Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
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Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
A little further down: > The real money is at the top. The bond prospectus reveals that Jane Street has 40 “equity unit holders on a full-time basis and in good standing”, with an average tenure of 16 years. Among those there will be at least a handful of billionaires, even if no Jane Streeter appears on any rich lists. Sounds like any other partnership. A few people at the top are providing the equity and getting a…
> and the thousands under them are getting salaries. The difference is that these thousands also get to invest in Jane Street, which seems a pretty profitable investment (70% margins, etc).
Typically at such companies you have to be at the very top of the hierarchy to be able to buy in and get a slice of the profits. It is very unlikely that rank and file employees are able to participate, at least at a scale larger than, say, a Google employee buying some extra shares.
Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#113Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their revenue per employee is probably similar to revenue of a single mid size company.
They made 10B net in 2023 (supposedly)…that’s a ballpark of 4M net revenue per employee. What mid size company makes 4M net per employee?!
They meant each employee as revenue equivalent of one entire mid-size company.
Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#115I often discuss Jane Street as a great model of employee branding. They do well placed adverts/sponsorships (e.g. Standup Maths[0]), they produce a quite decent quality podcast (Signals and Threads [1]), and they have consistent monthly puzzles [2]. That level of investment in branding only makes sense, I think, at a large size. I'm kind of surprised they only have ~2500 people. [0] https://www.youtube.com/user/stand…
Their revenue per employee is probably similar to revenue of a single mid size company.
From the article:
> At the end of 2023. Jane Street employed 2,631 people, so that equates to almost $4mn of net revenue per head on average. In adjusted EBITDA, it comes to $2.83mn per employee (or nearly $22mn for each of the 482 traders actual traders at Jane Street.)
And regarding compensation:
> Given Jane Street’s disclosed compensation and benefits of $2.4bn last year, this works out to over $900k for each employee on average.
Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#116If I remember correctly they are also by far the biggest poster child for OCaml, right? Blub Paradox at play here?
Might also be that Jane Street is to OCaml what WhatsApp was to Erlang. Many ascribed the success of the small team at WhatsApp to their tech-stack, Erlang and FreeBSD. The reality probably was that they had hired really smart people, and those people choose to use Erlang (because eJabberd), but they could have been just as successful using another language. Yes, Jane Street uses OCaml, they have no reason to stop us…
> but they could have been just as successful using another language.
His thesis is that finding one really good engineer in said language was 1 in 10 (10 interviews to find 1 really good engineer) whereas in more commonly used languages like Java, JavaScript, etc., it might be 1 in 100
[Edit] https://www.juxt.pro/blog/clojure-in-griffin/
If we had picked Python, it’s very boring and reliable, and the same could be said of Java. But you’re picking the lowest common denominator. I would say high performers, and the best programmers are often people that will only work in niche languages.
The problem is, there are good Java programmers, but there are also thousands of terrible Java programmers. If you pick the right niche, it’s easier to find the high-end talent. I think Paul Graham also made a very strong case that in a startup, you should be using the most powerful language you can, and that is Clojure.
Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#117They discriminate employment based on what school you go to, or at least they did circa 2013
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Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#118SBF got his start there right?
(It's briefly mentioned in the article, in the risk section)
Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#119> The only founder still at the firm is Rob Granieri, but insiders say it is functionally run by roughly 30-40 senior executives in what kinda resembles an incredibly profitable anarchist commune. Or as Jane Street itself puts it: > We operate as a functionally-organized structure consisting of various management and risk committees. Each committee is responsible for directing the overall strategy of the firm and for…
The second definition of "anarchy" according to Google: > the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism. Sounds like a perfect fit.
> Sounds like a perfect fit.
Sounds like a company.
Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus
#120> At the end of 2023, Jane Street employed 2631 people > About 80 per cent of the company's capital comes from employee equity, which has swelled to $21.3bn at the end of 2023 o.O
Are you telling me that one of American capitalism's peaks is basically a worker collective?
In a worker collective every worker has a single vote and workers are paid proportional to the value they add.
Jane Street shares and profits are proportional to the capital you invest/accumulate.