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By a similar argument to https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ , no one will beat Jane Street in a weekend. Jane Street's hiring stan

By a similar argument to https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ , no one will beat Jane Street in a weekend. Jane Street's hiring standards exceeds FAANG's. This is a hiring/branding strategy. Good luck to them.

2-tpg 6y ago
I actually give it 48 hours before the top 3 equals what Jane Street can do in-house on this exact same dataset. A week before the reasonable plateau is reached, and a month or so before the absolute most information is squeezed out.
- basicneo 6y ago
  Yeah, I meant that Jane Street aren't doing this to find a solution that'll improve their own tech. I expect in a constrained environment, someone on Kaggle will beat Jane Street's solution.
yodsanklai 6y ago
> no one will beat Jane Street in a weekend They have high hiring standard, but I suspect their 100s of smart engineers can't compete with the rest of the world.
- lowlevellimbo 6y ago
  Most of the engineers at Jane Street aren't touching anything similar to this challenge so you'd be right.
whymauri 6y ago
Jane Street's interview was one of the funnest I've ever done. I failed but the questions were great!
- agravier 6y ago
  What was so fun about it?
  - filoleg 6y ago
    Not the parent comment you are replying to, and I cannot speak for full-time, but when I interviewed for an internship position with JS about 5-6 years ago, the questions were indeed fun. Problems required knowledge of basic stats, general problem solving, critical thinking/reasoning, and all of it was wrapped in a nice package. Mind you, when I say "general problem solving", I don't mean brain teasers like "how many piano tuners there are in Manhattan" (I don't like that kind of problems at all). I don't remember the details, but one problem was about estimating the most optimal move in a poker game given a specific situation at the table. The rules were explained in a very relevant and simple way to those not familiar with poker, which I wasn't at the time, and I didn't find that my lack of poker knowledge affected my ability to solve that problem at all (which is already an impressive feat, major credit to those who wrote that specific problem that way). Zero memory of the rest of the problems, but most of them were relying on just basic stats and reasoning skills/critical thinking, no bs, and they were written/designed in such a way that it was interesting. The kind of a problem you would randomly see online in the middle of some discussion and won't be able to resist the temptation to stay glued to your computer screen until you solve it.
lowlevellimbo 6y ago
> Jane Street's hiring standards exceeds FAANG's. As someone who has interviewed thrice and passed once, I disagree. Jane Street is extremely good at marketing themselves; before I ever worked there I received over $500 worth of "swag" (including a free iPad) just for attending talks and hiring events. The official recruiting strategy is grassroots where recruiters have anonymous reddit/hn/blind accounts to praise the company semi-anonymously. So you have a bunch of accounts posing as real employees or students talking up the company and the prestige of working there. They sell exclusivity and mystery, but they definitely pay top of market salaries. I don't personally believe the actual interviews are any harder than top FAANG companies but they did seem to recruit exclusively from FAANG and/or top engineering schools.
- mijoharas 6y ago
  Context: I worked at amazon and my buddy is at Jane street and used to practice some interview questions on me ages back (I think he mostly wanted to calibrate the questions on someone he knew fairly well, to know what kind of stuff he could expect). I'd say the standard is arguably a lot higher, the things being tested are fairly different, more focussed on raw reasoning rather than specific techniques. The main thing I'd say is that in general the standard of interviewing for FAANG isn't actually as high as people think it is.
  - lowlevellimbo 6y ago
    Well the interview bars among FAANG aren't consistent with each other either. I would say Jane Street interviews are on par or perhaps easier compared to Google and Facebook, but it likely depends on your personal proficiencies.

2-tpg 6y ago

I actually give it 48 hours before the top 3 equals what Jane Street can do in-house on this exact same dataset. A week before the reasonable plateau is reached, and a month or so before the absolute most information is squeezed out.

basicneo 6y ago
Yeah, I meant that Jane Street aren't doing this to find a solution that'll improve their own tech. I expect in a constrained environment, someone on Kaggle will beat Jane Street's solution.

yodsanklai 6y ago

> no one will beat Jane Street in a weekend They have high hiring standard, but I suspect their 100s of smart engineers can't compete with the rest of the world.

lowlevellimbo 6y ago
Most of the engineers at Jane Street aren't touching anything similar to this challenge so you'd be right.

whymauri 6y ago

Jane Street's interview was one of the funnest I've ever done. I failed but the questions were great!

agravier 6y ago
What was so fun about it?
- filoleg 6y ago
  Not the parent comment you are replying to, and I cannot speak for full-time, but when I interviewed for an internship position with JS about 5-6 years ago, the questions were indeed fun. Problems required knowledge of basic stats, general problem solving, critical thinking/reasoning, and all of it was wrapped in a nice package. Mind you, when I say "general problem solving", I don't mean brain teasers like "how many piano tuners there are in Manhattan" (I don't like that kind of problems at all). I don't remember the details, but one problem was about estimating the most optimal move in a poker game given a specific situation at the table. The rules were explained in a very relevant and simple way to those not familiar with poker, which I wasn't at the time, and I didn't find that my lack of poker knowledge affected my ability to solve that problem at all (which is already an impressive feat, major credit to those who wrote that specific problem that way). Zero memory of the rest of the problems, but most of them were relying on just basic stats and reasoning skills/critical thinking, no bs, and they were written/designed in such a way that it was interesting. The kind of a problem you would randomly see online in the middle of some discussion and won't be able to resist the temptation to stay glued to your computer screen until you solve it.

lowlevellimbo 6y ago

> Jane Street's hiring standards exceeds FAANG's. As someone who has interviewed thrice and passed once, I disagree. Jane Street is extremely good at marketing themselves; before I ever worked there I received over $500 worth of "swag" (including a free iPad) just for attending talks and hiring events. The official recruiting strategy is grassroots where recruiters have anonymous reddit/hn/blind accounts to praise the company semi-anonymously. So you have a bunch of accounts posing as real employees or students talking up the company and the prestige of working there. They sell exclusivity and mystery, but they definitely pay top of market salaries. I don't personally believe the actual interviews are any harder than top FAANG companies but they did seem to recruit exclusively from FAANG and/or top engineering schools.

mijoharas 6y ago
Context: I worked at amazon and my buddy is at Jane street and used to practice some interview questions on me ages back (I think he mostly wanted to calibrate the questions on someone he knew fairly well, to know what kind of stuff he could expect). I'd say the standard is arguably a lot higher, the things being tested are fairly different, more focussed on raw reasoning rather than specific techniques. The main thing I'd say is that in general the standard of interviewing for FAANG isn't actually as high as people think it is.
- lowlevellimbo 6y ago
  Well the interview bars among FAANG aren't consistent with each other either. I would say Jane Street interviews are on par or perhaps easier compared to Google and Facebook, but it likely depends on your personal proficiencies.