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I might as well repeat it. Now is a great time to be looking for a new job. I'm a quant trader, so I've got a foot in tech and a foot in finance. Both are heav

I might as well repeat it. Now is a great time to be looking for a new job. I'm a quant trader, so I've got a foot in tech and a foot in finance. Both are heaving at the moment, recruiters calling all the time, salaries much higher than just a few months ago. I'm not sure what it looks like at the entry level end, but for experienced hires it's busy. I speak to a lot of recruiters, and they're having vintage years most of them, eg hitting billing targets in Q2 for the whole year. One job I passed on took a friend on my recommendation. Another few are in the pipeline at other firms. I can't remember a time when so many people I know were moving jobs.

rybosworld 5y ago
I'd be curious to know how you got into quant finance if you'd be willing to share.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Funnily enough a few people have written to me about that. I was a bit fortunate, I actually applied to be a derivatives trader out of uni. Which I did, but I ended up in a hedge fund, which was a type of firm I'd never heard of until the day I started working in one. I started reading a LOT of stuff about it. The mid-2000s were a bit of a golden age for hedge funds, and investors were just throwing money at them. I went to a lot of investment meetings where I wondered what on earth we'd said that was so attractive. At one point my boss in a derivs fund told me there was too much money, and that we needed to find something to do with it. By this time I'd read a bit about automated trading, and I figured some sort of strategy utilizing computers to trade would be the thing to do. So the boss decided to have me hire quants and devs to do this, and I've been in that area since. Pretty unique position to be honest, most people don't do it this way, and they don't get to just hire a team while in their mid 20s. Good learnings though.
noleetcode 5y ago
I'd love nothing more than to go out and get a new job, but I swore years ago to never again participate in leetcode hazing interviews, and every recruiter I've spoken to (15+ in the past few months) has described exactly that as the interview process. I expect I'll die at my current job.
- tpxl 5y ago
  2/2 places I interviewed at in the past month asked me for a take home assignment, one of which would skip it if I had any open source code to show them. I have 3 more in the pipeline and I doubt more than one will require leetcoding. As the sibling said, you can post in the HN who's hiring and who's looking to get hired threads.
- jrockway 5y ago
  There seems to be plenty of VC money around if you want to start your own company. Might be better than dying at your current job.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - noleetcode 5y ago
    It's funny, where everyone else seems to have the problem of "ideas are a dime a dozen, but time to execute is scarce", I just have zero ideas. My only true passion in the world of software development is gaming (the one area where I, like everyone else, have lots of ideas), and, well, being an independent game developer is an even worse crap-shoot than lining up for leetcode interviews! (I won't argue that it's not a self-defeating attitude to have in regards to considering indie game development, but the numbers certainly don't lie here)
    - the_only_law 5y ago
      Yeah same, I won’t say I have no ideas, but I have none that are commercializable.
      - antisthenes 5y ago
        Heh, I have some that I think are commercializable, then I go online and look for companies that are doing similar things, and lo and behold, there are already several competitors who are doing a pretty good job. At least a good enough job that there's no way I can easily cut into their market share or take some of their clients without significant outside funding.
worker767424 5y ago
I keep debating quant trading, but there are limited options in the Bay Area (I only know of Voleon), and my FAANG RSUs have done really well in the past few years. A quant firm could probably match my take-home pay, but there's risk with changing jobs.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  Its all cash in finance.
Trasmatta 5y ago
I'm pretty sure I could get a $25k-$75k bump if I were to hop jobs right now, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Partly because I've only been at my current place for about a year, and the place for that only 6 months. It's just so exhausting going through that whole process, and then taking months to get familiar with the team and codebase.
- mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
  I'm in a similar boat. For me though, it's not so much that I want to avoid the effort involved in the switch as that you need to spend time in a role in order to have significant impact, and that my longer-term success is likely going to be more dependent on whether I'm able to point to a record of consistently making significant contributions than it is in my maximizing my salary for the next year.
user5994461 5y ago
>>> I'm not sure what it looks like at the entry level end, but for experienced hires it's busy. Busy doesn't mean hiring, it just means they are sending candidates continuously (to fail). The reality is that high finance is extremely competitive. The positions are few. The candidates are many. My experience is that trading firms can easily sift through ten qualified candidates to make one hire. They complain about how difficult it is to hire, but they fail to acknowledge the endless stream of qualified candidates they rejected. P.S. Entry level is a slaughterhouse. Could be hundreds of candidates, who all come from top schools and pass dynamic programming exercises.
devnull3 5y ago
Companies offering BMW bikes to attract talent [1] Sure it looks like a cheap PR thing but this definitely is a symptom of heated market for employees. [1] https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/this-indian-startup-is-offering-bmw-bikes-gadgets-to-attract-tech-talent-121071901419_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/this-ind...
adi4213 5y ago
If you don’t mind me asking, what might the total compensation for some of the roles the recruiters have been contacting you and other experienced hires for?
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Varies a lot, depending on what the role is. I've got a broader range of potential roles than most people, who are in a single silo eg backend Dev or QA. The nice thing about the external recruiters I talk to is they are all up front about total comp, and their own comp depends on the new employee's comp, so they know... Crypto firms are in a massive hiring frenzy. Few hundred k salary (usd 250 to 500), nearly 1m in tokens for a manager role. But of course you gotta decide what those tokens really are worth, whether you actually believe in the project, and whether you care for crypto at all. For traditional startups the range depends a lot on the stage they're at. There seem to be quite a few who think they can get a CTO for usd130k plus a few percent equity. I'm not sure what quality you'd get for that but I guess at the next funding round you'd get a bump, and of you end up in a hyper growth startup you're golden. Finance, as a senior IC who can code you're maybe looking at 200k salary and perhaps half that bonus. That's assuming you don't get a cut of the profits. There are of course some shops where they'd pay way more than that, maybe double. There seem to be a few small name firms that pay similar to Jane Street. Naturally if you find a seat with a cut of the book, that can shoot up. Ordinary cut is a range as well, anything from 10 to 35% has been touted. TC would depend on how much capital you get allocated and how well you do with it. Somewhere like millennium has a reputation for paying well while things are good, then cutting the team on a pretty tight stop loss (like 3%) in a month. Funnily enough the recruiter told me they were trying to lose that reputation, so maybe it changed. But they're definitely doing things to attract people, eg they are supposedly very relaxed about paying a salary for a year while you develop the strategy.
  - adi4213 5y ago
    Thank you for your response, these discussions have certainly given me some food for thought. Those are some very compelling salaries. I currently work for a SaaS company (started in YC) and make about $260k TC. I live in San Diego and have some pretty excellent work life balance (I surf or kayak everyday, walk my two dogs a lot, am full remote+async). I also own a condo and spend about 1-2 months a year in Hawaii or traveling elsewhere. While I’m good about not always viewing the grass as greener elsewhere, the current market makes me think if I should look for a new job. I’m a backend dev with about 5 years of experience

rybosworld 5y ago

I'd be curious to know how you got into quant finance if you'd be willing to share.

lordnacho 5y ago
Funnily enough a few people have written to me about that. I was a bit fortunate, I actually applied to be a derivatives trader out of uni. Which I did, but I ended up in a hedge fund, which was a type of firm I'd never heard of until the day I started working in one. I started reading a LOT of stuff about it. The mid-2000s were a bit of a golden age for hedge funds, and investors were just throwing money at them. I went to a lot of investment meetings where I wondered what on earth we'd said that was so attractive. At one point my boss in a derivs fund told me there was too much money, and that we needed to find something to do with it. By this time I'd read a bit about automated trading, and I figured some sort of strategy utilizing computers to trade would be the thing to do. So the boss decided to have me hire quants and devs to do this, and I've been in that area since. Pretty unique position to be honest, most people don't do it this way, and they don't get to just hire a team while in their mid 20s. Good learnings though.

noleetcode 5y ago

I'd love nothing more than to go out and get a new job, but I swore years ago to never again participate in leetcode hazing interviews, and every recruiter I've spoken to (15+ in the past few months) has described exactly that as the interview process. I expect I'll die at my current job.

tpxl 5y ago
2/2 places I interviewed at in the past month asked me for a take home assignment, one of which would skip it if I had any open source code to show them. I have 3 more in the pipeline and I doubt more than one will require leetcoding. As the sibling said, you can post in the HN who's hiring and who's looking to get hired threads.
jrockway 5y ago
There seems to be plenty of VC money around if you want to start your own company. Might be better than dying at your current job.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- noleetcode 5y ago
  It's funny, where everyone else seems to have the problem of "ideas are a dime a dozen, but time to execute is scarce", I just have zero ideas. My only true passion in the world of software development is gaming (the one area where I, like everyone else, have lots of ideas), and, well, being an independent game developer is an even worse crap-shoot than lining up for leetcode interviews! (I won't argue that it's not a self-defeating attitude to have in regards to considering indie game development, but the numbers certainly don't lie here)
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    Yeah same, I won’t say I have no ideas, but I have none that are commercializable.
    - antisthenes 5y ago
      Heh, I have some that I think are commercializable, then I go online and look for companies that are doing similar things, and lo and behold, there are already several competitors who are doing a pretty good job. At least a good enough job that there's no way I can easily cut into their market share or take some of their clients without significant outside funding.

worker767424 5y ago

I keep debating quant trading, but there are limited options in the Bay Area (I only know of Voleon), and my FAANG RSUs have done really well in the past few years. A quant firm could probably match my take-home pay, but there's risk with changing jobs.

sydthrowaway 5y ago
Its all cash in finance.

Trasmatta 5y ago

I'm pretty sure I could get a $25k-$75k bump if I were to hop jobs right now, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Partly because I've only been at my current place for about a year, and the place for that only 6 months. It's just so exhausting going through that whole process, and then taking months to get familiar with the team and codebase.

mandelbrotwurst 5y ago
I'm in a similar boat. For me though, it's not so much that I want to avoid the effort involved in the switch as that you need to spend time in a role in order to have significant impact, and that my longer-term success is likely going to be more dependent on whether I'm able to point to a record of consistently making significant contributions than it is in my maximizing my salary for the next year.

user5994461 5y ago

>>> I'm not sure what it looks like at the entry level end, but for experienced hires it's busy. Busy doesn't mean hiring, it just means they are sending candidates continuously (to fail). The reality is that high finance is extremely competitive. The positions are few. The candidates are many. My experience is that trading firms can easily sift through ten qualified candidates to make one hire. They complain about how difficult it is to hire, but they fail to acknowledge the endless stream of qualified candidates they rejected. P.S. Entry level is a slaughterhouse. Could be hundreds of candidates, who all come from top schools and pass dynamic programming exercises.

devnull3 5y ago

Companies offering BMW bikes to attract talent [1] Sure it looks like a cheap PR thing but this definitely is a symptom of heated market for employees. [1] https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/this-indian-startup-is-offering-bmw-bikes-gadgets-to-attract-tech-talent-121071901419_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/this-ind...

adi4213 5y ago

If you don’t mind me asking, what might the total compensation for some of the roles the recruiters have been contacting you and other experienced hires for?

lordnacho 5y ago
Varies a lot, depending on what the role is. I've got a broader range of potential roles than most people, who are in a single silo eg backend Dev or QA. The nice thing about the external recruiters I talk to is they are all up front about total comp, and their own comp depends on the new employee's comp, so they know... Crypto firms are in a massive hiring frenzy. Few hundred k salary (usd 250 to 500), nearly 1m in tokens for a manager role. But of course you gotta decide what those tokens really are worth, whether you actually believe in the project, and whether you care for crypto at all. For traditional startups the range depends a lot on the stage they're at. There seem to be quite a few who think they can get a CTO for usd130k plus a few percent equity. I'm not sure what quality you'd get for that but I guess at the next funding round you'd get a bump, and of you end up in a hyper growth startup you're golden. Finance, as a senior IC who can code you're maybe looking at 200k salary and perhaps half that bonus. That's assuming you don't get a cut of the profits. There are of course some shops where they'd pay way more than that, maybe double. There seem to be a few small name firms that pay similar to Jane Street. Naturally if you find a seat with a cut of the book, that can shoot up. Ordinary cut is a range as well, anything from 10 to 35% has been touted. TC would depend on how much capital you get allocated and how well you do with it. Somewhere like millennium has a reputation for paying well while things are good, then cutting the team on a pretty tight stop loss (like 3%) in a month. Funnily enough the recruiter told me they were trying to lose that reputation, so maybe it changed. But they're definitely doing things to attract people, eg they are supposedly very relaxed about paying a salary for a year while you develop the strategy.
- adi4213 5y ago
  Thank you for your response, these discussions have certainly given me some food for thought. Those are some very compelling salaries. I currently work for a SaaS company (started in YC) and make about $260k TC. I live in San Diego and have some pretty excellent work life balance (I surf or kayak everyday, walk my two dogs a lot, am full remote+async). I also own a condo and spend about 1-2 months a year in Hawaii or traveling elsewhere. While I’m good about not always viewing the grass as greener elsewhere, the current market makes me think if I should look for a new job. I’m a backend dev with about 5 years of experience