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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

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/standupmaths https://www.youtube.com/user/standupmaths [1] https://signalsandthreads.com/ https://signalsandthreads.com/ [2] https://www.janestreet.com/puzzles/current-puzzle/ https://www.janestreet.com/puzzles/current-puzzle/

neilv 2y ago
I highlighted Jane Street's recruiting outreaches specifically, when talking with an R&D unit at a big financial institution. (I also mentioned the tactic of fringe-tech-that-some-heavy-hitters-love. OCaml, Lisp, Rust, Erlang, etc.) When I first heard of Jane Street, it sounded like Yaron Minsky was going around to MIT and such, high-touch, trying to hire just a few people. And later, things like this blog: https://blog.janestreet.com/author/yminsky/ https://blog.janestreet.com/author/yminsky/ The only negative thing I recall hearing is Jane Street alumni responsible for the infamous FTX and Alameda Research. I don't know whether the individuals were already fully into hopped-up sociopathic/narcissistic thinking in college, or whether their internship and employment experience contributed.
- caddemon 2y ago
  It seems their thinking is part of what led them to JS in the first place, which is a bit of negative and maybe they had some ideas reinforced there. But I also think they were some of the more extreme ones to begin with. They obviously didn't internalize JS's concerns about risk at all lol.
  - antasvara 2y ago
    A Jane Street trader's risk tolerance does not equal Jane Street as a whole's risk tolerance. When you have 1,000 traders, each individual trader's risk profile can be much higher. There are also guardrails around compliance, risk management, etc. at the firm level that traders aren't necessarily involved in. The things that made them great traders also made them much riskier choices to lead a larger company. To them, compliance is an obstacle in the way of profitable trades.
brightball 2y ago
I’d love to get in touch with somebody from their marketing department.
LudwigNagasena 2y ago
Their revenue per employee is probably similar to revenue of a single mid size company.
- herewego 2y ago
  I can assure you it’s much higher. Much higher.
- syntaxing 2y ago
  They made 10B net in 2023 (supposedly)…that’s a ballpark of 4M net revenue per employee. What mid size company makes 4M net per employee?!
  - yohannparis 2y ago
    They meant each employee as revenue equivalent of one entire mid-size company.
  - queuebert 2y ago
    GOOG, which has a reputation of being slightly bloated, made $138 billion in revenue across 140,000 employees. That's $2.3 million per employee.
    - xen0 2y ago
      More like 180,000 full time employees, and probably at least that number again in external and temporary contractors etc.
- gollum999 2y ago
  From the article: > At the end of 2023. Jane Street employed 2,631 people, so that equates to almost $4mn of net revenue per head on average. In adjusted EBITDA, it comes to $2.83mn per employee (or nearly $22mn for each of the 482 traders actual traders at Jane Street.) And regarding compensation: > Given Jane Street’s disclosed compensation and benefits of $2.4bn last year, this works out to over $900k for each employee on average.
ethagnawl 2y ago
They used to be very active in the NYC Meetup scene, too. ~~I think I visited at least two of their offices and the second was was stunning. It was far south enough and high enough that there was a nearly unobstructed 200° view of the southern end of Manhattan, both rivers, etc. It was also beautifully designed and had an obligatorily huge, open, stocked kitchen.~~ (This was actually Two Sigma.) They were also using exotic tech back then, too, like OCaml, which is itself a form of marketing and helps with recruitment. Moral qualms aside, it must be a fascinating place to work.
- detourdog 2y ago
  I used to ride the train with someone at Two Sigma. His hobby was working on better NTP boxes.
tikhonj 2y ago
Jane Street has been doing this since they were much smaller. I interned there when they had like 300 people, and they were actively cultivating a great brand as an employer back then too—and looks like they've really made it work over the last decade! My impression with them in general was that they were willing to do lots of things that did not "conventionally" make sense at their size, and those things paid off. The internship program, for example, was relatively large in comparison to the size of the company at the time (≈50 interns?) and had lots of structure (events/talks/classes/group projects/etc) like you would expect from a big tech company, not from a 300-person firm. They were also willing to build a lot of tools in-house like their own build system[1], their own code reviews system[2], etc. Most people would see this as wasteful NIH but I'm convinced it was a net benefit for them—they managed to be so productive in an absolute sense and especially on a per-engineer basis because they were willing to build so much themselves, not despite it. I'm sure the same thing applied to their recruiting efforts. The biggest thing I took away from my internship was how much conventional wisdom in the software world was not necessary or true. [1]: First Jenga, now Dune [2]: Here's a neat talk on how they do code review at Jane Street: https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/janestreet-code-review/ https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/janestreet-code-review...
- thor24 2y ago
  curious why did you end up leaving? Since the company is known to be this amazing.
- physicles 2y ago
  > how much conventional wisdom in the software world was not necessary or true. Do you remember any specifics? I’m also curious how their tooling made them so much more productive. Were the tools just really well designed, or did they integrate perfectly with each other?
- peppertree 2y ago
  I often dread when I see an employer using in-house systems for common tasks like project tracking and code review. I'm curious how does JS's internal tools stack up against systems out there, like Github or Jira.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

neilv 2y ago

I highlighted Jane Street's recruiting outreaches specifically, when talking with an R&D unit at a big financial institution. (I also mentioned the tactic of fringe-tech-that-some-heavy-hitters-love. OCaml, Lisp, Rust, Erlang, etc.) When I first heard of Jane Street, it sounded like Yaron Minsky was going around to MIT and such, high-touch, trying to hire just a few people. And later, things like this blog: https://blog.janestreet.com/author/yminsky/ https://blog.janestreet.com/author/yminsky/ The only negative thing I recall hearing is Jane Street alumni responsible for the infamous FTX and Alameda Research. I don't know whether the individuals were already fully into hopped-up sociopathic/narcissistic thinking in college, or whether their internship and employment experience contributed.

caddemon 2y ago
It seems their thinking is part of what led them to JS in the first place, which is a bit of negative and maybe they had some ideas reinforced there. But I also think they were some of the more extreme ones to begin with. They obviously didn't internalize JS's concerns about risk at all lol.
- antasvara 2y ago
  A Jane Street trader's risk tolerance does not equal Jane Street as a whole's risk tolerance. When you have 1,000 traders, each individual trader's risk profile can be much higher. There are also guardrails around compliance, risk management, etc. at the firm level that traders aren't necessarily involved in. The things that made them great traders also made them much riskier choices to lead a larger company. To them, compliance is an obstacle in the way of profitable trades.

brightball 2y ago

I’d love to get in touch with somebody from their marketing department.

LudwigNagasena 2y ago

Their revenue per employee is probably similar to revenue of a single mid size company.

herewego 2y ago
I can assure you it’s much higher. Much higher.
syntaxing 2y ago
They made 10B net in 2023 (supposedly)…that’s a ballpark of 4M net revenue per employee. What mid size company makes 4M net per employee?!
- yohannparis 2y ago
  They meant each employee as revenue equivalent of one entire mid-size company.
- queuebert 2y ago
  GOOG, which has a reputation of being slightly bloated, made $138 billion in revenue across 140,000 employees. That's $2.3 million per employee.
  - xen0 2y ago
    More like 180,000 full time employees, and probably at least that number again in external and temporary contractors etc.
gollum999 2y ago
From the article: > At the end of 2023. Jane Street employed 2,631 people, so that equates to almost $4mn of net revenue per head on average. In adjusted EBITDA, it comes to $2.83mn per employee (or nearly $22mn for each of the 482 traders actual traders at Jane Street.) And regarding compensation: > Given Jane Street’s disclosed compensation and benefits of $2.4bn last year, this works out to over $900k for each employee on average.

ethagnawl 2y ago

They used to be very active in the NYC Meetup scene, too. ~~I think I visited at least two of their offices and the second was was stunning. It was far south enough and high enough that there was a nearly unobstructed 200° view of the southern end of Manhattan, both rivers, etc. It was also beautifully designed and had an obligatorily huge, open, stocked kitchen.~~ (This was actually Two Sigma.) They were also using exotic tech back then, too, like OCaml, which is itself a form of marketing and helps with recruitment. Moral qualms aside, it must be a fascinating place to work.

detourdog 2y ago
I used to ride the train with someone at Two Sigma. His hobby was working on better NTP boxes.

tikhonj 2y ago

Jane Street has been doing this since they were much smaller. I interned there when they had like 300 people, and they were actively cultivating a great brand as an employer back then too—and looks like they've really made it work over the last decade! My impression with them in general was that they were willing to do lots of things that did not "conventionally" make sense at their size, and those things paid off. The internship program, for example, was relatively large in comparison to the size of the company at the time (≈50 interns?) and had lots of structure (events/talks/classes/group projects/etc) like you would expect from a big tech company, not from a 300-person firm. They were also willing to build a lot of tools in-house like their own build system[1], their own code reviews system[2], etc. Most people would see this as wasteful NIH but I'm convinced it was a net benefit for them—they managed to be so productive in an absolute sense and especially on a per-engineer basis because they were willing to build so much themselves, not despite it. I'm sure the same thing applied to their recruiting efforts. The biggest thing I took away from my internship was how much conventional wisdom in the software world was not necessary or true. [1]: First Jenga, now Dune [2]: Here's a neat talk on how they do code review at Jane Street: https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/janestreet-code-review/ https://www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/janestreet-code-review...

thor24 2y ago
curious why did you end up leaving? Since the company is known to be this amazing.
physicles 2y ago
> how much conventional wisdom in the software world was not necessary or true. Do you remember any specifics? I’m also curious how their tooling made them so much more productive. Were the tools just really well designed, or did they integrate perfectly with each other?
peppertree 2y ago
I often dread when I see an employer using in-house systems for common tasks like project tracking and code review. I'm curious how does JS's internal tools stack up against systems out there, like Github or Jira.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]