I've received an exploding offer from a quant trading firm (a very good one, think tier 1.5). I'm still interviewing with two better firms (two of the very best, tier 1). The tier 1.5 firm knows about my other processes - is it likely that they gave me an exploding offer because they knew they could probably not compete with the other firms? In any case, should I ask for an extra week to think about their offer? I don't really want to decide before I hear back from the other firms. EDIT: got offer from one of the two other firms as I wrote this post... #jumptrading #janestreet #hudsonrivertrading #citadelsecurities #susquehanna #drw #towerresearchcapital #optiver
take the offer, push start date. finish interviews. if you get better offer then tell them to f**k straight off. they wanted to be manipulative. that’s on them.
Bad idea to renege. Quant trading industry is far smaller than SWE industry, especially for the best firms. Negotiate for more time while you interview with the other firms, then negotiate for more money if you get offers.
How did you get these interviews op? Applied online? Also, yoe?
I’m a new grad, applied online - top uni (maths masters) and an internship at another quant trading firm was probably how I got the interviews
Now that you have competing offers, ask for 100K signing bonus and 100K+ guaranteed year-end bonus. You did it boi 💪
Exploding offer is a bad sign. Avoid them if you have other options. The company or the team is trying to trick you into accepting their offer (by imposing a deadline before you can evaluate other offers), so in the future they will likely try to pull other moves on you. They might be desperate to fill a position. If you don’t accept until the deadline they might move the offer to the second candidate in line: that means their bar is not very high, and this will be perceivable when looking at the quality of the people you’ll have to work with over time.
Op, can you share your exploding offer details?
150 base + 40 target bonus + a small sign on. New grad quant role, London office, so comp obviously not comparable to US.
What kind of skills do you need to get into quant? And do you use these skills for your personal investments?
maths, cs, stats, ml, data science, good problem solving skills and stress tolerance mainly I just put my personal savings in stuff like index funds, as do most other quants (at least from my experience)
There is a huge tax cost in active investment so it doesn't usually make sense unless you are rich enough to get a way with tax evasion.