Have a few offers, narrowed it down to Two Sigma and Google Two Sigma : platform team. 275k TC + 50k signing for L1 Google: Search org, some applied ML, mostly backend. 225k TC + 50k signing for L3 Both NYC so location is equal Everybody I met was super smart at both. I would say culture and SWE talent is also equal. Google + WLB seems better (it seems close though) + most likely more stable + 401k match vests instantly and is more than twice the amount (Two sigma has 5k that vests over 4 years. I don’t plan on being here for more than 2 so valuing that as 3.75k vs 20.5k over the two years) + Better GC policy + Much better perks (free lunch/dinner, better office) - TC is lower even after considering the 401k match (will still lose like 40k/year let’s say 35k pre tax if I count lunch/dinner at G) - Locked out of finance? Finance has a higher salary trajectory and idk if I love/hate it yet. Two Sigma + TC obviously + Higher earning trajectory/Faster career growth + Talked with a modeler that was on the team previously as a SWE (without a PhD) and said it’ll be possible for me to switch. They make bank + More impact/larger projects (Search might be kinda slow at G) - Higher expectations. Two Sigma isn’t known for a firing culture but I’m still worried about not being able to keep up - Not sure if I like finance yet (low level latency sounds fun though) - Not sure how open the code and design docs are. I like to learn from them. - Afraid of pigeonholing myself into Finance because I won’t learn as much about large scale distributed systems - System written in C vs C++ which indicates it might be old. Two Sigma is final. Google said “final” but I’m pushing for 240 + 50k signing Current TC: 165k + 20k signing YOE: 1 #engineering #software #swe #tech #offer #negotiation
Added. Also have an offer from DD actually but didn’t want to go to CA or do deliveries
Stock growth at G will probably close the gap to negligible but 2s will probably scale faster, but likely after that two year mark.
Two years in you’ll make better comp at Two Sigma which can be leveraged into more in your next move. If you go in and perform you’ll be able to print your ticket and it’s easy to go back into tech from finance. I see it all the time Surprised to hear their system is written in C though.
Yeah having to code in C is kinda putting me off the more I think about it… there was a 2S employee shitting on C on blind a while back too haha
Congrats! Finance in general is really rough. You make bank but market opens early so expect to be up before then & grind a lot of hours Google for better wlb 2 sig for insane tc
Is 50k extra really “insane” tho
Tc will start to explode once you gain experience and leave 2 sig. finance starts paying crazy amounts to experienced finance engineers(easily 500+ after 2-3 yrs)
The overall team and business dynamics of a small 1600 person company is so so different from being a cog in a 120k person machine. Don’t undervalue the opportunity and exposure you can get in access to leaders across the whole company with a small org.
I would personally do 2S just because it’s much smaller. Google is really enormous in comparison and smaller organizations appeal to me more. But that’s totally personal preference, and you can go back and forth between these two easily if you want.
Yeah I’ve been going back and forth between the two in my imagination already lol 😂
I have a friend who works for Two Sigma. He also got an offer from Google when he joined Two Sigma. He said it's pretty hard to switch to traditional software once you enter the financial world. If you like finance, this is the best place to work.
Worked at both, WLB at Google is significantly better than TS on average. Definitely inquire about the on-call support you'll be providing for this C/C++ system. C/C++ exposure actually sounds like a good thing, it's still the industry standard for HFT but hard to find here (we're predominantly on the JVM). Don't expect to switch to quant. It happens, but it's uncommon. The firm siloes engineering from modeling, moreso than peer firms.
Said no on call support because there’s a team for that but eventually there will be because they’re trying to reduce load on that team System is pure C, no C++ at all. I’m assuming cause it’s old (Reasoning was that it’s easier to call drivers in FPGA or smth) What’s your take on internal infrastructure and dev tooling having worked at both companies?
Dev tooling is much better at Google, it's not close at all. Infra varies. We use a lot of GCP these days, which is very solid and has better UX than internal Google infra. I don't think you can go wrong either way though. ML infra is a great and growing field, and hardware-adjacent HFT is relatively niche but potentially very lucrative.
Come to TS!
Congrats!!