Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus • Hacker News Board

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#91

Post by UK-Al05 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 12:58 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #82

UK-Al05 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OCaml is more of symptom of the people who they hire. Most companies don't want to hire OCaml and Haskellers. They fear they would be too expensive, and requires clear thinking so you can't hire bottom of the bucket devs. If you want to hire the best and willing to pay that is no longer a concern

> Most companies don't want to hire OCaml and Haskellers Most companies don't even know that these are programming languages. Also don't assume people interested in these languages are "the best". Regarding JS, this is all hearsay, but I think nowadays they hire good profiles (competitive programmers / olympiad winner / top graduates from prestigious schools), ask them hard leetcode questions, and teach them OCaml (w…

I'm not saying people interested in OCaml are the best. I'm saying you don't have to worry about smart people being incapable of understanding OCaml.

You got the direction the wrong way around.

Ask to introduce OCaml at any company. The first thing is they're worried about is not being able to find people. To which the answer is to train them. But then they're worried some people just won't be able to learn ocaml quickly enough. To which my answer is hire people who are good enough to learn it quickly. But then they get worried those people are expensive. Ultimately it comes down to not being willing to pay.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#92

Post by MichaelZuo » Thu, May 02, 2024, 12:58 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #79

bogtog wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you telling me that one of American capitalism's peaks is basically a worker collective?

Is Google a worker collective just because new employees are thrown a handful of shares?

If 80% of Google was employee owned, then it would be.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#93

Post by eddieroger » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #19

SkipperCat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its mostly done as a way to filter job applications into a smaller set. When Google was the 'hottest' job prospect (many years ago) they needed a way to reduce the set of applicants down to a number where hiring managers could handle the load. Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. That being said, if you went to a community colle…

> Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. It wasn't a "logical way", it was an "easy way". That's classist at the very least.

It makes logical sense - if they look over their staff and search for commonalities amongst successful employees, and trends like school or CS degree and GPA stand out, then it's logical to assume that will predict further success and thin the pool. It's a jerk move, sure, but it can be both.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#94

Post by coldtea » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:01 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #40

llm_trw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works out to 8 million per person on average. I'd be interested to see if the Pareto distribution holds here as well, namely that 1% of employees (26) hold half the wealth ($10b).

I thought the Pareto distribution was most famously associated with 80-20? Of course you can change α to get whatever ratio you want but this is the first time I heard of the 50-1 ratio being used.

The Pareto can be applied recursively. If 20% of the people have 80% of the wealth, then 20% of them will have 80% of that 80% (64%) and so on

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#95

Post by ethbr1 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:02 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #68

dchftcs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably includes the founding partners, so it might be that ~0.15% hold more than half.

only 1 founding partner is still there apparently (from the article). Rob Granieri

It makes you wonder if there's a retirement-encouraged culture for inactive partners.

Which is probably what you'd want in a high-performance firm, less everyone look at the absent top level extractors and it turn into a law firm.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#96

Post by iknownthing » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:02 PM UTC

SkipperCat wrote: post #41

znpy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Setting criteria such as having an Ivy League degree or a CS degrees with GPA over 3.8 was a logical way to achieve this goal. It wasn't a "logical way", it was an "easy way". That's classist at the very least.

To a certain extent, you are correct. However, companies like Jane Street need to filter and doing so based on colleges is the most efficient when other factors are all equal. Top tier colleges strive to base their admittance on performance and strive to be racially and culturally diverse. This gives Jane Street the ability to say they filter on the same criteria. I'm all ears if you have a better system that is more…

I'd say just go with GPA.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#97

Post by yen223 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:02 PM UTC

anonyfox wrote: post #5

If I remember correctly they are also by far the biggest poster child for OCaml, right? Blub Paradox at play here?

I've only ever heard of Jane Street because they're one of the few companies that did OCaml.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#98

Post by LudwigNagasena » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:03 PM UTC

andrew_eu wrote: post #86

I 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.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#99

Post by coldtea » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:03 PM UTC

anonyfox wrote: post #5

If I remember correctly they are also by far the biggest poster child for OCaml, right? Blub Paradox at play here?

In what way would the Blub paradox be at play?

The paradox being: developer familiar with programming languages of level of power N doesn't recognize that languages of level N+ are better (more powerful expressively), only that N- are lesser.

Re: Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus

#100

Post by ethbr1 » Thu, May 02, 2024, 1:03 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #77

Smaug123 wrote: post #13

> 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

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).