Whenever I hear about Jane Street and other such trading companies I wonder what do they bring of value into the world. It seems they're basically just working on increasing economic equalities.
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What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
21–30 of 71 posts
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#22Whenever I hear about Jane Street and other such trading companies I wonder what do they bring of value into the world. It seems they're basically just working on increasing economic equalities.
I've been in the field for a nearly two decades now, and it's highly recommendable. There's a game-like element that appeals to a certain type of person.
As for doing good in the world, there's an awful lot of businesses that really only contribute via tax. They do something where the entire benefit, sometimes more, is captured between the business and its customers.
But to say it specifically, you need market makers, because if they weren't there you'd have to wait a long time for someone with the opposite intention to you to show up, and that has a huge cost. And keep in mind MMs are only one part of the capital apparatus that we need in the world. This isn't just fluff, I literally had a friend phone me last week looking for money for his African startup that has had to turn down business for lack of capital.
The how of it is a long story as well, but quite an interesting one that spans a number of fields. Coding, economics, finance, and so on.
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#23Do the interns get paid?
Of course. How would they attract quality people if they didn’t pay anything?
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like most companies, Jane Street also doesn't discuss pay. However, as we reported last year, pay for U.S. trading interns at Jane Street in 2020 was $14.5k a month, plus an extra $500 a week work from home stipend (making $16.5k as a monthly total) for. From https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/finance/jane-street-p...
They’re paying their interns how much ? Either finance pays way more than I thought, or that’s wildly off - for comparison as the most senior developer in our London based organisation, having been here since the beginning, I make about $11k a month.
Jane Street can’t pay any stock (proprietary firm) so they have to pay a lot more cash.
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#25Whenever I hear about Jane Street and other such trading companies I wonder what do they bring of value into the world. It seems they're basically just working on increasing economic equalities.
Are you interested in a genuine discussion on this topic or have you already made up your mind? For those genuinely interested, for the most part trading firms employing quantitative and automated strategies look to keep the price of derivative or correlated assets in line with their underlying securities. For example a stock ABC might either directly or indirectly represent two other underlying stocks FOO1 and FOO2…
You hit on so many great points in this post. Another important function trading firms (especially market makers like Jane Street) is to serve as ready-and-willing counterparties for the pension funds, endowments, and retirement funds of the world.
All of those firefighters, police officers, and teachers can't get their monthly check unless the pension funds converts part of their investment into cash, and the amount traded gets so large you need well-funded financial participants who will pay the pension fund a large lump of cash and assume the risk of unwinding the position.
The same thing goes for portfolio rebalances. Some smart and prudent retirement fund has run their risk model and decided that their sector exposures are off by like a few percent. They've got 2% too much financials, 2% too little tech, they want to move 1% from consumer staples to consumer discretionary, etc. We're talking about billions of dollars being moved right here! They want to use the money from the assets they sold to purchase the assets they bought, but they want the transaction to happen all at once... not in two parts. Again, this is where the quant funds and market makers of the world come in.
It's easy to think that finance is all fat cats, hedge funds and multibillionaires, but anybody with a retirement plan, a pension, ETF holdings, or mutual fund holdings, benefits from the work these quant funds do.
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like most companies, Jane Street also doesn't discuss pay. However, as we reported last year, pay for U.S. trading interns at Jane Street in 2020 was $14.5k a month, plus an extra $500 a week work from home stipend (making $16.5k as a monthly total) for. From https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/finance/jane-street-p...
They’re paying their interns how much ? Either finance pays way more than I thought, or that’s wildly off - for comparison as the most senior developer in our London based organisation, having been here since the beginning, I make about $11k a month.
I think you're not up to date on the engineering market in London. Google London pays $11k/m (£100k/y) TC to strong new grads these days, and it's not uncommon for exceptional ICs in finance to earn up to £1M/y
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re paying their interns how much ? Either finance pays way more than I thought, or that’s wildly off - for comparison as the most senior developer in our London based organisation, having been here since the beginning, I make about $11k a month.
Jane Street can’t pay any stock (proprietary firm) so they have to pay a lot more cash.
Do UK/European organizations typically give employees stock?
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like most companies, Jane Street also doesn't discuss pay. However, as we reported last year, pay for U.S. trading interns at Jane Street in 2020 was $14.5k a month, plus an extra $500 a week work from home stipend (making $16.5k as a monthly total) for. From https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/finance/jane-street-p...
They’re paying their interns how much ? Either finance pays way more than I thought, or that’s wildly off - for comparison as the most senior developer in our London based organisation, having been here since the beginning, I make about $11k a month.
Jane Street candidates are already top shelf candidates, and can pretty much write their own tickets - so it's in the best interest of companies like JS to capture them for potential full-time employment, before they graduate.
A solid salary helps.
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like most companies, Jane Street also doesn't discuss pay. However, as we reported last year, pay for U.S. trading interns at Jane Street in 2020 was $14.5k a month, plus an extra $500 a week work from home stipend (making $16.5k as a monthly total) for. From https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/finance/jane-street-p...
They’re paying their interns how much ? Either finance pays way more than I thought, or that’s wildly off - for comparison as the most senior developer in our London based organisation, having been here since the beginning, I make about $11k a month.
As an American who worked in London and at a London company, London pay is always crazy low compared to what I’d expect.
Re: What the interns have wrought, 2021 edition
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jane Street interns are known (maybe not in this conversation :P) to get paid exceptionally well. A typical software engineering intern at a large Bay Area company is probably making something approaching $10k.
That’s about the ballpark for a paid SE intern in Germany (per annum, of course).
10k per month in the Bay Area.