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What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

blog.janestreet.com

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Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#51

Post by strikelaserclaw »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #47
asdfman123 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people get into places like Jane Street because they hustle and aren't necessarily any smarter than you. Sometimes feelings of inferiority like this are just a backdoor way to avoid having to put in that work.

I've basically gotten nothing for my hustle lol (except a state school degree and working at Amazon, but I don't think that's considered "accomplished" to these types of people).

What about a large percentage of the world born into poverty and barely making a living? I'm sure a lot of people will take a state school degree and think working a job at amazon is pretty awesome or you can compare yourself to newton and feel like an absolute nobody (even if you are a great scientist in your own right). Point is, there are always people to compare yourself to to feel bad, it is never ending.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#52

Post by xhevahir »

jkestner wrote: post #34
laidoffamazon wrote: post #2

Great article, one I wait for yearly. Relatedly - how do others deal with being objectively inferior, in basically every way, to the types of people that work at Jane Street? It always irks me that they end each of these articles with a recruiting pitch, as if most of us would ever be good enough to even get an interview, much less get an offer.

The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make money off the next financial crisis.

Seriously. They're in the business of finding ever more ingenious ways of shifting money from one party's pockets to another's. I can think of some important ways in which they are definitely not better than me despite their vastly more impressive technical skill.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#53

Post by piva00 »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #49
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised you put some much value in one gate that you didn’t pass through.

It's not one gate , it's basically every gate (unless you count Amazon as a gate that's impressive, but nobody does).

Still, having such low self-esteem after individually accomplishing quite a lot more than what 95% of people on Earth (not counting in history) has been able to is a sign you need to look into with some professional help.

It's not healthy, your sense of self-value seems to be completely tied to external perceptions and expectations. Answer to yourself: who are you, actually?

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#54

Post by piva00 »

Dudester230602 wrote: post #5
laidoffamazon wrote: post #2

Great article, one I wait for yearly. Relatedly - how do others deal with being objectively inferior, in basically every way, to the types of people that work at Jane Street? It always irks me that they end each of these articles with a recruiting pitch, as if most of us would ever be good enough to even get an interview, much less get an offer.

> Relatedly - how do others deal with being objectively inferior, in basically every way, to the types of people that work at Jane Street? Would you not rather be whoever founded Jane Street and gets the largest profit share? Why aspire to be an expensive perfect instrument in someone else's hands?

Not everyone associates self-worth to monetary or financial reasons, it takes a quite quirky human (and culture) to give that much of your identity to money.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#55

Post by latency-guy2 »

jkestner wrote: post #34
laidoffamazon wrote: post #2

Great article, one I wait for yearly. Relatedly - how do others deal with being objectively inferior, in basically every way, to the types of people that work at Jane Street? It always irks me that they end each of these articles with a recruiting pitch, as if most of us would ever be good enough to even get an interview, much less get an offer.

The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make money off the next financial crisis.

As they should. Doing whatever one wants is the ideal.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#56

Post by kaycebasques »

mitchbob wrote: post #26
GolDDranks wrote: post #13

TIL: "wrought" means about the same as "worked", but it has a more "tangible" sense to it, like doing some smithery/forgery.

It was in the first official Morse code transmission. The title of the Jane Street piece is a play on this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_hath_God_wrought

It is also originally a quote from the King James Bible. I'm sure your Wikipedia page mentions that but it's just too interesting not to mention explicitly here as well :)

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#57

Post by mraza007 »

kyawzazaw wrote: post #35
laidoffamazon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, 2 of these are at top CS schools that I can't get into, and most of their intern class is from Harvard/CMU/MIT/Stanford/Waterloo and the like. I think I might actually just be objectively inferior in all regards, not just technical or in software. I've got ~5 years of full time experience, I make decent to good money (though I don't think most people on HN would agree lol) but I'm skeptical I could build the…

I think you should talk to a professional therapist. > I make decent to good money (though I don't think most people on HN would agree lol) Actually, HN might. HN is not exactly high compensation chasing.

> Actually, HN might. HN is not exactly high compensation chasing.

That’s why I love HN you always get to learn something new from other people’s experiences not always talking about the compensation and money

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#58

Post by ido »

kyawzazaw wrote: post #35
laidoffamazon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, 2 of these are at top CS schools that I can't get into, and most of their intern class is from Harvard/CMU/MIT/Stanford/Waterloo and the like. I think I might actually just be objectively inferior in all regards, not just technical or in software. I've got ~5 years of full time experience, I make decent to good money (though I don't think most people on HN would agree lol) but I'm skeptical I could build the…

I think you should talk to a professional therapist. > I make decent to good money (though I don't think most people on HN would agree lol) Actually, HN might. HN is not exactly high compensation chasing.

I think there’s also wildly overestimating the value of elite schools for undergrad - in undergrad you’re so far from the “state of the art” that you’d probably get about the same level of education at those schools than you would at any good (for example) European public university/US state university with a decent CS department - of which there are many and they're neither as expensive nor as selective.

Elite schools only really matter for their reputation and for research (which is done at the grad level, not in undergrad).

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#59

Post by dchftcs »

jkestner wrote: post #34
laidoffamazon wrote: post #2

Great article, one I wait for yearly. Relatedly - how do others deal with being objectively inferior, in basically every way, to the types of people that work at Jane Street? It always irks me that they end each of these articles with a recruiting pitch, as if most of us would ever be good enough to even get an interview, much less get an offer.

The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make money off the next financial crisis.

One way to look at is that the more people who can figure out how to make money in a crisis without adding to said crisis, the less severe the crisis becomes. If someone can price distressed corporate bonds better, they will bid higher, and bagholders of companies that actually have decent prospects (but are hurt by market anomalies in crisis situations) can then lose less money, compared to the alternative.

As an analogy, imagine that your home is wrecked in a hurricane, but a scraps dealer is able to offer money for what's left. If there's only one scraps dealer around, they will absolutely rip you off and pay you just enough that you'd be livid and kicking but still aren't motivated to find a way to sell the scraps yourself. But if there are two scraps dealers competing for the wreckage, it'd be easier for you to get a market deal.

Scraps dealers improve their profitability by finding better ways to sell the scraps, so in a competitive environment, you could indirectly benefit from their experience. You make them sound like terrible people by saying they "make money off a disaster", but objectively their existence is a net benefit to the situation. One thing that can make this argument break down is that scraps companies may rely a lot on information asymmetry and price gouging, but that is actually less of problem for financial transactions that can be systematically electronified, where there's a lot of regulation and said regulation is more easily enforced.

Making markets efficient is a very abstract concept that people makes people feel disconnected from the benefits. But in this abstract way, it does contribute to the economy.

Not enough smart people thinking like Jane Street (or any large trading company with a track record of managing risk), but still performing financial activities, is arguably what causes financial crises to begin with. Think people buying into schemes based on returns that are too good to be true, bundling bad mortgages without modeling it properly, or banks not taking clients' money seriously.

Re: What the interns have wrought, 2023 edition

#60

Post by [deleted] »

wk_end wrote: post #28
nicolashahn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people that attempt and fail their interviews settle for FAANG and are probably pretty happy. Most software engineers I've met don't even know about Jane Street. Also, definitely not "in basically every way," but very specifically logical/mathematical intelligence.

Yep. I worked at JS, and there's plenty of ways you're probably "superior" to me. Also, ~almost everyone I worked with at JS was brilliant and I don't say this to disparage anyone, even as engineers there were definitely blindspots. Also also: please remember that SBF worked there too.

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