4 ms·

Sure, if you work at many hedge fund you'll make similar money, and likely more if you are good at the job and the fund has success. One other nice thing is th

Sure, if you work at many hedge fund you'll make similar money, and likely more if you are good at the job and the fund has success. One other nice thing is that instead of restricted stock you get actual money. And generally the money will be locked up for less time than the 4 year vesting that these companies often follow. And on top of that you can usually invest your money fee free in your own fund to help juice your returns. The downside is that there is almost certainly going to be more stress on you and probably no where to hide if you want to just rest and vest. Your team and company will likely be pretty small and everyone will be very aware of what everyone's contribution to the company's success.

makestuff 2y ago
The other downside is that it is harder to break into because there are less roles.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
packetlost 2y ago
It's pretty hard to get into these IME. I'm considered a top-performer at the deep tech company I currently work at, and interviewed at a hedge fund awhile back. The process was way less intense than what I would expect a big tech co. interview to be. I made it to the top three candidates, but didn't get it. In hindsight, the role wouldn't have been a good fit, it was "higher up in the stack" than I prefer to be, which is also what they said. I think you need to be a pretty unique individual to succeed in environments like that. Most people I know break down under intense pressure when shit hits the fan, even if they're wildly competent. I can only assume it's that much more intense when tons of money is at stake.
- diggan 2y ago
  I'm not sure it's enough to experience something once and then assume it looks like that across the industry, it's very context-dependent. While I've done zero attempts to work at any hedge fund, I know plenty of people who both had success when wanting to join one (even though some of them were under-qualified) and people who failed (some who were over-qualified).
  - packetlost 2y ago
    Oh most certainly. But that industry has a reputation for a reason, no? I would expect every place to have different culture, interview processes, etc.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
  Alot of getting hired into these roles depends on your upbringing/perceived social class by the people at the fund, the school you went to, how you present yourself, whether they want to work with you, how trustworthy you are, etc. The technical pieces are pretty far behind.
  - packetlost 2y ago
    Yup. There's a lot of credentialism and in-group stuff. I work with a ton of PhD physicists currently and it's one of those things that you can never quite forget in an environment like this as someone with "only" a bachelor's degree from a no-name college.
  - chollida1 2y ago
    > Alot of getting hired into these roles depends on your upbringing/perceived social class by the people at the fund, the school you went to, how you present yourself, whether they want to work with you, how trustworthy you are, etc. The technical pieces are pretty far behind. I'd disagree about your perceived upbringing mattering at all. I don't know of any fund that hires technical staff like that. I mean we're here to make money, if someone can do that, no one cares what their social upbringing is, I mean like at all. Now the school you went to matters, though it matters about as much as it would at a FAANG company. And as to "how you present yourself, whether they want to work with you, how trustworthy you are, " I would hope that all companies hire based on how someone presents themselves and would we want to work with them. Everyone should base hiring on how the candidate acts and presents themselves, that seems like an incredibly positive step, no? > The technical pieces are pretty far behind. Which specific fund are you referring to here. This seems very uninformed from my experience, but i'm willing to look at your evidence that hedge funds don't really value technical ability.
    - ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
      These are for very under the radar hedge funds that chip their programmers 500-2 Million for just writing basic software. I'm not talking about sweat shops like citadel. I'm talking about places that hire very rarely. The fund manager makes 25-150 million. Rest of the employees are in the low millions. Their employees are always a reflection of the firm, and to their outside investors. Its about more than technical ability. Jobs are never posted online, minialist linkedin profiles, no public footprint
dazh 2y ago
YMMV but the one hedge fund offer I got required putting 50% of the bonus into the fund itself, which then vests out over 4 years. I was told this is industry standard, so it's analogous to the 4 year RSU vesting you'd get at FAANG.
- wocram 2y ago
  Usually the deferred bonus is paid out to you if you leave, so it's a little bit different than an RSU grant.
boxfire 2y ago
and probably no where to hide if you want to just rest and vest. "Rest and vest". What a luxury. Some of us are trying to tread water with an anvil chained to the waist. That's what I get for choosing to work for something I'm passionate about. What a world
- pxx 2y ago
  if you refuse a higher paying job because you would like to work for something you're passionate about, you are explicitly valuing your passion at at least the delta between the job offers.
- dakiol 2y ago
  > That's what I get for choosing to work for something I'm passionate about. Are you passionate about working for your current employer or passionate about your career? I’m passionate about my career (programming/software development): I love reading the classic tech books out there (TAOCP, DDIA, etc.), I love working on side projects, sometimes I contribute to open source, etc. On the other hand, I couldn’t care less about my employer. Not because they are bad, but I just don’t care about most of the tech companies out there. I do what I need to do to get paid, but i’m not passionate about deadlines, conversations with other engineers about subjective topics, daily standups, on call, etc.
  - boxfire 2y ago
    Yeah I work in an FFRDC, pushing the frontier of our exploration of space. I'm quite passionate both about the employer and (most of the time) my work. If I didn't care about my employer at that level I woulda been out the door after two years. I think to myself sometimes about the other side of that though, like if I didn't care for them but the money was good. My home hobbies resemble work within my area, but not my current job function, but I'm keenly aware my employer may try to take advantage of my other talents and do I guess the only thing that saves having an alternative hobby is that I'm so diversified that whatever my work task is I can work on an orthogonal hobby at home. It's kinda nice, I've got both really. In my mind if I "sell out" (in terms of trading in for that sense of purpose in my work), and just work for the paycheck, then I would go for max. Work an HFT quant firm as a senior or principal engineer or research analyst. $$$. Or some other juicy gig. But I would hate myself if that became a slog and I had no time for my interests at home.
triceratops 2y ago
> And generally the money will be locked up for less time than the 4 year vesting that these companies often follow. Err...4-year vesting doesn't mean the money is literally locked away until you hit 4 years' tenure. A $1m stock grant vesting over 4 years might pay $250-350k every year, depending on the vesting schedule and stock performance. If a hedge fund pays $1m every 2 years then they're just paying more period. It's not the vesting schedule which causes the difference in comp.
- chollida1 2y ago
  > Err...4-year vesting doesn't mean the money is literally locked away until you hit 4 years' tenure No one said it did:) My point was that a typical bonus is about 2/3's employees at the moment its granted and 1/3 held back for a year sometimes two, so you get money faster than a typical 4 year vesting schedule. Does that clear things up?
  - triceratops 2y ago
    See my second sentence. That means the hedge fund flat out pays much more than FAANG. It's got nothing to do with vesting schedules. (BTW FAANG pays bonuses too. They're 100% the employee's when they're paid)
humansareok1 2y ago
>One other nice thing is that instead of restricted stock you get actual money. Stock at FAANG is basically equivalent to cash. You can sell it as soon as you get it.

makestuff 2y ago

The other downside is that it is harder to break into because there are less roles.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

packetlost 2y ago

It's pretty hard to get into these IME. I'm considered a top-performer at the deep tech company I currently work at, and interviewed at a hedge fund awhile back. The process was way less intense than what I would expect a big tech co. interview to be. I made it to the top three candidates, but didn't get it. In hindsight, the role wouldn't have been a good fit, it was "higher up in the stack" than I prefer to be, which is also what they said. I think you need to be a pretty unique individual to succeed in environments like that. Most people I know break down under intense pressure when shit hits the fan, even if they're wildly competent. I can only assume it's that much more intense when tons of money is at stake.

diggan 2y ago
I'm not sure it's enough to experience something once and then assume it looks like that across the industry, it's very context-dependent. While I've done zero attempts to work at any hedge fund, I know plenty of people who both had success when wanting to join one (even though some of them were under-qualified) and people who failed (some who were over-qualified).
- packetlost 2y ago
  Oh most certainly. But that industry has a reputation for a reason, no? I would expect every place to have different culture, interview processes, etc.
ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
Alot of getting hired into these roles depends on your upbringing/perceived social class by the people at the fund, the school you went to, how you present yourself, whether they want to work with you, how trustworthy you are, etc. The technical pieces are pretty far behind.
- packetlost 2y ago
  Yup. There's a lot of credentialism and in-group stuff. I work with a ton of PhD physicists currently and it's one of those things that you can never quite forget in an environment like this as someone with "only" a bachelor's degree from a no-name college.
- chollida1 2y ago
  > Alot of getting hired into these roles depends on your upbringing/perceived social class by the people at the fund, the school you went to, how you present yourself, whether they want to work with you, how trustworthy you are, etc. The technical pieces are pretty far behind. I'd disagree about your perceived upbringing mattering at all. I don't know of any fund that hires technical staff like that. I mean we're here to make money, if someone can do that, no one cares what their social upbringing is, I mean like at all. Now the school you went to matters, though it matters about as much as it would at a FAANG company. And as to "how you present yourself, whether they want to work with you, how trustworthy you are, " I would hope that all companies hire based on how someone presents themselves and would we want to work with them. Everyone should base hiring on how the candidate acts and presents themselves, that seems like an incredibly positive step, no? > The technical pieces are pretty far behind. Which specific fund are you referring to here. This seems very uninformed from my experience, but i'm willing to look at your evidence that hedge funds don't really value technical ability.
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
    These are for very under the radar hedge funds that chip their programmers 500-2 Million for just writing basic software. I'm not talking about sweat shops like citadel. I'm talking about places that hire very rarely. The fund manager makes 25-150 million. Rest of the employees are in the low millions. Their employees are always a reflection of the firm, and to their outside investors. Its about more than technical ability. Jobs are never posted online, minialist linkedin profiles, no public footprint

dazh 2y ago

YMMV but the one hedge fund offer I got required putting 50% of the bonus into the fund itself, which then vests out over 4 years. I was told this is industry standard, so it's analogous to the 4 year RSU vesting you'd get at FAANG.

wocram 2y ago
Usually the deferred bonus is paid out to you if you leave, so it's a little bit different than an RSU grant.

boxfire 2y ago

and probably no where to hide if you want to just rest and vest. "Rest and vest". What a luxury. Some of us are trying to tread water with an anvil chained to the waist. That's what I get for choosing to work for something I'm passionate about. What a world

pxx 2y ago
if you refuse a higher paying job because you would like to work for something you're passionate about, you are explicitly valuing your passion at at least the delta between the job offers.
dakiol 2y ago
> That's what I get for choosing to work for something I'm passionate about. Are you passionate about working for your current employer or passionate about your career? I’m passionate about my career (programming/software development): I love reading the classic tech books out there (TAOCP, DDIA, etc.), I love working on side projects, sometimes I contribute to open source, etc. On the other hand, I couldn’t care less about my employer. Not because they are bad, but I just don’t care about most of the tech companies out there. I do what I need to do to get paid, but i’m not passionate about deadlines, conversations with other engineers about subjective topics, daily standups, on call, etc.
- boxfire 2y ago
  Yeah I work in an FFRDC, pushing the frontier of our exploration of space. I'm quite passionate both about the employer and (most of the time) my work. If I didn't care about my employer at that level I woulda been out the door after two years. I think to myself sometimes about the other side of that though, like if I didn't care for them but the money was good. My home hobbies resemble work within my area, but not my current job function, but I'm keenly aware my employer may try to take advantage of my other talents and do I guess the only thing that saves having an alternative hobby is that I'm so diversified that whatever my work task is I can work on an orthogonal hobby at home. It's kinda nice, I've got both really. In my mind if I "sell out" (in terms of trading in for that sense of purpose in my work), and just work for the paycheck, then I would go for max. Work an HFT quant firm as a senior or principal engineer or research analyst. $$$. Or some other juicy gig. But I would hate myself if that became a slog and I had no time for my interests at home.

triceratops 2y ago

> And generally the money will be locked up for less time than the 4 year vesting that these companies often follow. Err...4-year vesting doesn't mean the money is literally locked away until you hit 4 years' tenure. A $1m stock grant vesting over 4 years might pay $250-350k every year, depending on the vesting schedule and stock performance. If a hedge fund pays $1m every 2 years then they're just paying more period. It's not the vesting schedule which causes the difference in comp.

chollida1 2y ago
> Err...4-year vesting doesn't mean the money is literally locked away until you hit 4 years' tenure No one said it did:) My point was that a typical bonus is about 2/3's employees at the moment its granted and 1/3 held back for a year sometimes two, so you get money faster than a typical 4 year vesting schedule. Does that clear things up?
- triceratops 2y ago
  See my second sentence. That means the hedge fund flat out pays much more than FAANG. It's got nothing to do with vesting schedules. (BTW FAANG pays bonuses too. They're 100% the employee's when they're paid)

humansareok1 2y ago

>One other nice thing is that instead of restricted stock you get actual money. Stock at FAANG is basically equivalent to cash. You can sell it as soon as you get it.