What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition • Hacker News Board

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#31

Post by ceeplusplus » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:57 PM UTC

ausbah wrote: post #26

hpkuarg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. Considering the business Jane Street engages in is highly competitive (maybe even the most competitive in the world), if their hiring practices cause them to have lower productivity, the market will force them to correct their practices or go out of business. In fact, historical evidence shows amply that the more competitive an industry, the less discrimination (of the sort that we talk about now, like o…

I highly doubt a multibillion company engaging in more widespread recruiting practices would be the difference between them succeeding and failing

I think you grossly overestimate the percentage of candidates at lower tier schools who would be qualified to pass a Jane Street (or really any HFT firm) interview. Even at the top schools the pass rate is incredibly low. In expectation you would be getting probably The quality level drops off very sharply after you go below the top 20-30 CS schools. It's just a matter of limited resources for recruiting. The common path taken by people who go to "lesser" schools is to grind really hard to get into a good MS or PhD program and then go to these firms.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#32

Post by hpkuarg » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

heartbreak wrote: post #16

filoleg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. When I was in college, about 8 years ago, Jane Street not only hired from our school, they came to our career fair on regular. I interviewed with them myself at the time for an internship, but fumbled because my combinatorics knowledge was severely lacking at that time, and algo wasn't quite up to par either. My college was a public state school (Georgia Tech). While it is a great school, it was public and aff…

C’mon your counter example is that they recruit from Georgia Tech. How much recruiting does Jane Street do at UGA? George State? Spelman?

There's about four thousand four-year-degree-granting institutions in this country. How much recruiting should Jane Street do at all of them?

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#33

Post by ecshafer » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

peterhadlaw wrote: post #5

Jane Street discriminates based on what school you went to, during their hiring practices.

When I graduated I interviewed with Jane Street and I graduated from essentially a no-name state school (Suny Oswego). I think I got a fair shake out of it.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#34

Post by Zaheer » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

Fun fact: Jane Street interns get paid $96 / hr. They're one of the top paying internships! https://www.levels.fyi/internships/

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#35

Post by gumby » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

mamonster wrote: post #25

mrweasel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? That seems like a dumb way cutting of potentially very talented candidates. Seriously it removes over 90% of candidates, if not more. That seems unsound.

You know there's a very well known joke that it's hard to get fired as a trader for underperforming the market by buying Apple, well it's hard to get blamed for hiring a bad intern if you hire him from MIT.

> well it's hard to get blamed for hiring a bad intern if you hire him from MIT.

Whew! I had four paid internships while I was at MIT and for two of them I got nothing meaningful accomplished. I learned a lot from that but for those two I was of no use to the companies.

Even decades later I still feel bad about that, so it's nice to think that nobody suffered as a result.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#36

Post by ausbah » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

ceeplusplus wrote: post #31

ausbah wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt a multibillion company engaging in more widespread recruiting practices would be the difference between them succeeding and failing

I think you grossly overestimate the percentage of candidates at lower tier schools who would be qualified to pass a Jane Street (or really any HFT firm) interview. Even at the top schools the pass rate is incredibly low. In expectation you would be getting probably The quality level drops off very sharply after you go below the top 20-30 CS schools. It's just a matter of limited resources for recruiting. The common…

to be upfront, I don't buy that a company with such large resources couldn't recruit from a larger pool of school. I'm also not under any illusion about the caliber of student at upper vs lower ranked schools, I see it as a matter of equity and meritocracy

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#37

Post by peterhadlaw » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #9

peterhadlaw wrote: post #5

Jane Street discriminates based on what school you went to, during their hiring practices.

Why exactly is that "discrimination" and not, you know, simple evaluation? Is every company that doesn't hire based on a random number generator discriminating?

if not in : skip_interview_entirely return False

...as opposed to give every person a fair chance based on merit.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#38

Post by YetAnotherNick » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #18

peterhadlaw wrote: post #5

Jane Street discriminates based on what school you went to, during their hiring practices.

Why? That seems like a dumb way cutting of potentially very talented candidates. Seriously it removes over 90% of candidates, if not more. That seems unsound.

Their aim is not to hire every good candidate. Maybe they are fine with just 10% of the candidates if they could be top choice of good enough chunk of candidates.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#39

Post by wyager » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

ausbah wrote: post #24

wyager wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not the case. I used to work there - lots of colleagues from outside the ivies etc. Lots of people who didn't go to college for CS, and in some cases did not go to a traditional college at all. Are there a lot of people from e.g. MIT? Yeah, because MIT is a good school and produces lots of people you want to hire.

I think this is more in regards to university recruiting, especially with internships? I have no doubt about your experience with post grad hiring, college name doesn't matter as much after you have experience under your belt

I think in general smaller companies have to prioritize on-campus recruiting, but if you sent in your resume and you had some random no-name school (or a school that specialized in some completely unrelated industries), I doubt that would disadvantage you beyond the fact that it doesn't necessarily communicate much information to hiring staff who aren't familiar with it.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2022 edition

#40

Post by esoterica » Wed, Sep 07, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #18

peterhadlaw wrote: post #5

Jane Street discriminates based on what school you went to, during their hiring practices.

Why? That seems like a dumb way cutting of potentially very talented candidates. Seriously it removes over 90% of candidates, if not more. That seems unsound.

The goal is to hire efficiently, not hire every single qualified candidate. If 10% of MIT graduates are qualified but only 1% of graduates from a no-name school are qualified, why spend 10x the effort to try to recruit from the latter?