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What the interns have wrought, 2020 edition
- angrydev 6y agoImpressive stuff, congrats to these three
- kyawzazaw 6y agoOnly one of them have a LinkedIn. Super curious about their background.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoDamn. You gots some sharp interns. Good show!
- polote 6y agoLet me know if I'm wrong, but it seems like Jane Street is going contrary to the HN common belief that a lot of things should be "buy" instead of "build" and yet they are quite successful
- noir_lord 6y agoThe particularly niche they operate in means that "buy" isn't really an option for them, the stuff they'd be buying hasn't been commoditised yet (and arguably much of it couldn't be since in doing so any advantage it gave you would be immediately diluted). It's a case of an ellipse peg in an elliptic hole.
- johnisgood 6y agoYep, and they use OCaml! I always feel like I have to point it out since people do not think much of it, have lots of misconceptions of it, and so on.
- geodel 6y agoIt need to be pointed out because there may be like grand total of dozen companies which uses OCaml so it is something remarkable. It is like paintings from famous painters in billionaire's homes. Now for me and may be for lot of people stuff from Bed Bath and Beyond is just fine on our walls. So for ultra-rich / successful/profitable company might see beauty in Ocaml but most of the world runs fine on run of the mill services in PHP/Java/.net etc.
- Barrin92 6y ago>but most of the world runs fine most of the world doesn't run fine. If airplanes were built like your average software stack they'd drop out of the sky every other day. Development practise at a place like JaneStreet is an example how things ought to be done. I really dislike the analogy of Ocaml as some sort of esoteric billionaire tool. It's just a sound language that everyone can understand, it's not even particularly academic despite its reputation. This is just what software engineering looks like if you actually treat it like... well engineering.
- kyawzazaw 6y agoWhat development practices do they have that is unique to them?
- geodel 6y ago> If airplanes where built like your average software stack they'd drop out of the sky every other day. I missed to add C/C++ to my list. That would have covered real time systems you mention. > Development practise at a place like JaneStreet is an example how things ought to be done. As much I agree Jane street is doing cutting engineering for their domain, it seems unrealistic that rest of the world is unaware of good software engineering in generic usecases.
- noir_lord 6y ago> it seems unrealistic that rest of the world is unaware of good software engineering in generic use cases. Depends on who is aware and whether they have the clout to actually implement it, the trenches are full of developers who know there are better ways and that those better ways would have a positive RoI but that it wouldn't show up possibly for 3-4 quarters minimum which makes it a hard sell to management if you can get them to even understand it without a tortured analogy - those programmers frequently don't have the authority to enforce the standards particularly when the other half in the trench with them are busy adding to the pile or actively fighting against it. There have been times where I've wanted to shiv (figuratively) a developer who writes the worst most pointless convoluted code after he proclaimed code should be "self documenting". Fortunately these days I'm at a level where at least for my teams I can enforce whatever standard we agree on and if we can't agree then the one I agree on - if we can't reach a consensus I operate on democratic principles, one man, one vote - I'm the man, I have the vote (though I try to avoid having to do that).
- gadders 6y agoI think they would believe that a lot of the things they are building are a source of competitive advantage related to trading, low latency etc. I doubt (for instance) that they have coded up their own HR system.
- untog 6y agoThere are no (very few?) universal rules in tech. The HN advice to buy instead of build is correct in the majority of cases where a startup isn't actually doing anything revolutionary on the tech side (and there's nothing wrong with that! Bringing proven tech to an industry that doesn't have it is a great business model). It sounds like Jane Street does not fit that model.
- geodel 6y agoI do not know if it is very difficult to understand. Next food/ clothing delivery startup with a webpage and mobile app : Buy. Cutting edge Wall street firm : Build.
- jrott 6y agoEven if you want to make it complex it's if it is core to your business and provides competitive advantage build otherwise buy.
- davidu 6y agoFor those who don't know, Jane Street is one of the best performing algorithmic trading firms on Wall Street. Probably the largest Ocaml shop on earth. It's a lucrative job for strong programming talent. Engineers there routinely make well over $1mm/year (edit: after a few years). They are similar to Two Sigma in tech focus and talent, which is a more well-known firm.
- polote 6y ago> Engineers there routinely make well over $1mm/year. Do you have a source for such claim ? data from h1b salary [1] tells that senior software make 200k base, and here [2] they explain that the average salary is 440k [1] https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=JANE%20STREET&job= https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=JANE%20STREET&job= [2] https://news.efinancialcareers.com/fr-en/307393/jane-street-pay https://news.efinancialcareers.com/fr-en/307393/jane-street-...
- TylerE 6y agoWall Street jobs are very very performance bonus driven. Not unusual for bonuses to be 5x or more salary in a good year.
- maest 6y agoIt's rarely the case that Technology sees those kinds of bonuses; that's most common on the Investment side. And yes, even places like Jane Street separate between Investement and Tech.
- davidu 6y agoThe investment side is engineering. If you're talking about IT that makes the printer work, sure.
- maest 6y agoI cannot speak for Jane Street, in particular, but I have spent many years working at a very similar firm, and Investment is not Technology. There are engineers working in Investment, yes, but the risk profiles, the payout profiles and the focus of their work is very different. Investment deals with getting and analysing data, understanding the market and their algos, coming up with trading ideas, handling their PB relationships, doing the actual trading (e.g. portfolio optim, factor hedging, worrying about financing and borrow costs) etc. Technology deals with all things infra and (in most places) ingesting data and making it easily available internally. In particular, I would be surprised if the interns in this article were on the Investment side - a fund would rarley publish anything remotely resembling research. In fact: "Yulan ended up working with both the trading desk that was running this process, as well as the research group, which pointed her at some cleaner cost functions to optimize, as well as encouraging her to try out simulated annealing in addition to the greedy algorithm she started with." The "research group" and the "trading desk" are Investment.
- BooneJS 6y agoBravo for not only having internships that matter, but highlighting them as well.
- 909832 6y agoDoes Jane Street and similar firms hire Math or CS PhDs with backgrounds in theory?
- fractionalhare 6y agoYes.
- tony_goobret 6y agoWhat do the math or CS PhDs do at Jane Street? I don't know much about trading so I am curious.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nwsm 6y agoIf you're interested enough, read Gregory Zuckerman - "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" (2019) The first half of the book goes over the academic history of quant trading.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoYes. The one small firm that everyone in the industry has heard of is basically all phd guys screwing around with theory and execution and getting filthy rich in the process.
- awake 6y agoHow about design or other backgrounds such as hci?
- Smaug123 6y agoI'm not at Jane Street, but at G-Research (also quant finance). Much as a joke goes which I first heard in the Effective Altruism sphere, our quants come from all kinds of backgrounds: their PhDs are in fluid mechanics, statistical physics, pure maths, you name it!
- GoodJokes 6y agoWhat a waste of talent.
- andreasvc 6y agoWhat are the advantages of Re over Re2?
- thedufer 6y agoThere might be others, but the big advantage in my eyes is that Re, because it is pure-OCaml, is platform independent, whereas Re2, being backed by the C++ lib of the same name, is not. At Jane Street this is relevant because we share a lot of code between Linux servers and JavaScript (running in Chrome) clients.
- gautamcgoel 6y agoI know a guy who works at Jane Street; he was formerly one of the brightest undergrads at Caltech. He turned down an offer to do a PhD at Berkeley to take the Jane Street offer, IIRC. He is pretty idealistic and has an interesting philosophy about working in finance: he thinks moving money around isn't that societally valuable, but he donates 10-15% of his income to charity each year (I think he picks charities using the GiveWell/effective altruism methodology). In his view, the value of his lifetime charitable contributions exceeds the impact he could hope to have in pretty much any other field of endeavor, so the job is completely worth it.
- ch4s3 6y agoI think that's a pretty interesting approach.
- rob2312 6y agohttps://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/ https://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/ describes that philosophy in good detail. It's a pretty compelling argument, in my opinion
- vikasnair 6y agoHaseeb Q notably donates 30% of their income, citing 80000 as inspiration. Really interesting life story, as well: https://haseebq.com/about/ https://haseebq.com/about/
- chrisjarvis 6y agoI disagree with that philosophy completely. "One of the brightest undergrads at Caltech" with a "PhD offer at Berkeley", sounds like someone with an incredible high IQ and work ethic to match. This person really thinks that with their incredible talents they can't do more than a few million $ lifetime worth of "good" in the world by following their passions instead working in algorithmic trading? I think they are selling themselves short.
- mjangle1985 6y ago
- jolux 6y agoI completed the interview process at Jane Street last year and received a verbal offer after my on-site which they then proceeded to rescind while we were discussing pay ranges, claiming they had decided instead to fill the position I applied for with internal staff. Their recruiter handled it with a high degree of professionalism but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth nonetheless.
- kyawzazaw 6y agoMaybe I am not too familiar with it (although I have heard interns negotiating for pay with Akuna). I thought intern compensation is pretty much set. Did you have counter offers to negotiate?
- jolux 6y agoIt was an engineering position, not an internship.
- rtlfe 6y agoWhat kind of position was that for? Must not have been a generalist software engineer if there was only one slot available.
- jolux 6y agoI’m a little wary of disclosing in case they read this but it’s probably rare enough that they would know from the description anyways. I will say it’s a software position and it remains on their careers page as open.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoSorry to hear about your experience. I have to ask: Who gave you the verbal offer? Was it an internal recruiter, external recruiter, or the company's HR department? I mentor a lot of college students. They're always very nervous about the possibility of rescinded offers despite how rare it is in practice, so I'm curious about the details of your situation. When mentoring people, I always advise people to never assume an offer is a done deal until you've received the official offer letter with compensation details and a start date. Unethical recruiters are notorious for misleading candidates into thinking the job is a sure thing in order to discourage them from interviewing elsewhere. When mentoring hiring managers, I emphasize the importance of never misleading candidates into thinking they have a job until we send the official offer letter. It's common for new hiring managers to get so excited that they give the candidate too much information too early. Even simple statements like, "We were really impressed with your performance and now I'm going to work on getting you an offer" can be disastrously misleading to candidates who don't realize that their interviewer/recruiter isn't the only decision maker in the process.
- grugagag 6y agoOff a tangent but whenever I hear OCaml I can’t stop thinking about F#. I started dabbling in F# in my spare time but time didn’t allow a deepdive. From a few months of playing with it it seems like a solid alternative to other languages and codebases appears to be easier to follow though I never used it in the real world. Does anyone with real world experience have the patience to write about it? Does using F# make coding fun again? Also, does it look like F# will pick up in popularity anytime soon? Thanks
- davidgl 6y agoI've been working with F# for about 5 years now, love it. The .net ecosystem has a huge amount of libraries available, performance is excellent, and F# is a joy to develop it.
- giantg2 6y agoWow. These interns at that comapany are working of stuff that's way more interesting and complex than the crap I deal with at my financial company. From what others are saying, it looks like they pay way better too.
- Smaug123 6y agoHonestly quant finance has a lot of really interesting problems in. That XKCD about "why would I want to be paid lots to work on fascinating problems with the brightest people in the world" is… actually kind of true.
- giantg2 6y agoMy company basically restricts those sort of positions for business people that learn Python and R. They are very hesitant to promote IT people into that type of role. I'm getting tired of implementing/coding other people's solutions or just copying legacy processes into new tech. It would be nice to actually work on the problem and the processes that would most effectively solve them.
- samatman 6y agoThat sounds like a recipe for a lateral move. You've got the domain knowledge already; train up with an eye towards what other fintech companies are hiring for, and your chances of busting out of the rut are decent. Good luck!
- giantg2 6y agoI don't have much domain knowledge, at least not to the level they want (CFA charter).
- centimeter 6y agoThe interns usually get the coolest projects.
- wink 6y ago