Citadel Securities vs F(AANG)

500k in Chicago is like a million in the bay area

To people who mentioned FB (the majority so far): care to say why you recommended that option?

Yoe?

Fb can prob do 450k or even more for e5 since you have competing offer. It all depends on your situation, do you have property here, kids, etc. If I had no attachments to the bay area i would definitely leave asap. But that's just my preference

Was FB not able to match the citadel offer? Or did it not help at all in negotiations?

FB would get you further career wise / resume wise, so long term I'd definitely choose FB. Depends, on your goals I'd say.

I worked at Citadel Securities for many years as a quant before FB. Go to Citadel if you care about TC. Or if you want to try it for a year and don't care about opportunity cost of one year. Go to FB if you're committed to a long career in tech. Citadel disadvantages: no hard technical problems (don't have to scale to a billion users). Low diversity of problems. Poor exit opportunities outside of finance. Second-grade citizen to revenue producers. FB disadvantages: more politics, have to worry about X-fn relationships, evangelizing your work. Lower TC. Much lower TC when adjusted for COL. Citadel doesn't really fire SWEs. And WLB will be similar to FB.

Former alum of both Citadel and a FANGMULA here -- I fully enjoyed it at Citadel, now work at a similar quant hedge fund, and I couldn't imagine going back to a tech company again. But it's a different mindset compared to tech. The biggest thing is whether you enjoy quant finance -- if so, then go to Citadel and you'll love it, but if not, then stay in tech. First -- the real difference is Bay Area vs Chicago. Honestly, you're going to decide based on that and the rest of what I say doesn't matter. But in my experience, Chicago is actually pretty great (unless you live in the bad parts of town, but don't worry, you won't). Way cheaper than Bay Area (not just in rent but also taxes) and far better city scene, better dating too. And Chicago actually has beaches that are awesome. Comp -- it's definitely much better at Citadel than FANG. While definitely not the norm, it's not unheard of for ICs to reach a million a year as a developer or low level manager. Hours -- it's largely self-imposed and your boss will never tell you to work longer, but you will feel a need to work more hours at Citadel than FANG. Probably ~45-50 hours a week. They have (very good) free lunch but most people eat at their desks. Somebody down-thread said there are no hard problems at Citadel -- LMAO, so not true. Actually the opposite -- I thought the problems at my FANG were a joke in comparison. And since Citadel is so much smaller than FANG, you'll actually own an entire significant project on your first day (instead of a tiny sub-feature on a large team like you would at Facebook). Quality of people -- the best at FB/google/amazon are just as good as the best at Citadel/JS/HRT but the *average* at Citadel/JS/etc is just so much smarter than FANG it's not even a contest. You'll learn a lot more at Citadel. I routinely saw one or two people single-handely doing what took an entire team at my old FANGMULA. Exit ops -- if you want to stay in tech, then FB has better exit ops to other tech companies. (Conversely, Citadel has better exit ops to other HFTs like Jane Street or Two Sigma or PDT or HRT but there's only a handful of those). And there are plenty of exit ops from Citadel to a FANG (those recruiters definitely know the citadel brand name), but it might be harder to network your way into smaller tech firms coming from Citadel. Office Vibe -- FANG feels like a campus where you'd hang out with friends after work, and you won't feel that at Citadel. Citadel does have great free lunches and onsite gym and one ping pong table, and some flexibility on what hours you work, but definitely doesn't feel "cool" like FANG. The office doesn't have a secret hidden bar or a lego room or a VR game room or any of those "cool office" things like FANG does. Pressure -- I felt far more connection with the business at Citadel (both good and bad). If your team is not making money, you'll definitely feel it; whereas at FANG you might go years without even realizing your company is a business that tries to make money. FANG doesn't really do formal "20% time" anymore but you can still get a little -- that's much rarer at Citadel. You're welcome to experiment here and there, but they would definitely frown at you if you wanted to create some new open source framework for something tangentially related to the business. At Citadel, someone will actually notice whether you are "helping the bottom line" whereas at FANG, if you're doing something completely unrelated to the business, they'll just call that "long term investment". Interest in the domain -- to get ahead at Citadel, you will be expected to show an interest in the business much more so than at FANG. You don't have to be an expert but you will need at least an interest in it.

To anyone saying Chicago isn't safe: not the same part of chicago 🤦‍♂️. The office is nice: I imagine you were here for an on site though already. Infra positions aren't as "intense" or high turnover from what I can tell