Have two offers currently that I'm entertaining. A mid tier hedge fund vs a well known investment bank. Bank offers a higher base and tc. Both involve working on greenfield projects with good tech. Benefits are also similar. Which one would be better career wise long term? Leaning HF currently as they are more prestigious and comp long term will be probably higher but would like your thoughts on this as well. Offers are initial and have not negotiated yet. Yoe: 8 Location: London #swe #engineering #london #hedgefund
The hedge fund would be the best option here. You’d be sacrificing some WLB when compared to the investment bank, but you’d be able to make more money later on. Good luck! TC: 90K
Hedge fund have better people than investment bank so join hedge fund. can you please share interview process for hedge funds? What kind of questions they ask? What should i prepare for hedge fund interview
Standard algo questions. Lc medium I'd say. Some non lc questions about parsing some input or implementing some code that calls an external api etc. There was also a pretty standard system design round. You can look for individual questions either here by searching for specific companies or on glassdoor.
HF SWE here, definitely choose HF here imho. Like others said the long-term tc is higher and this is buyside finance so pay is just about always more than you'd get in the other parts, all things considered.
What makes people think some random hedge fund will make them a lot of money down the line, especially when you're going in as a SWE? Not every hedge fund is Citadel or DE Shaw. Not saying its the worst choice but take peoples opinion with a grain of salt.
I would rather work for a random small fund than an investment bank just for better atmosphere. Banking is where fun goes to die.
I think thats a more reasonable assessment.
I worked in 3 HF and in 4 big banks/investment banks. Banks are boring as hell, there is a lot of bureaucracy and politics, things are slow to happen in banks. Hedge funds are usually much more fun. Plus - benefits in my experience are much better in HFs, plus I am not sure why the bonus is so low in your offer - in hedge funds the bonus is typically a big part of comp, not sure how it is in London, but it's the case in almost every HF I know about in US. Benefits like - food, gym membership, other fun things, banks don't have it even for green field projects.
IIRC London has lower finance salaries than US and because of some past scandals/mishaps, HF bonuses are lower than they used to be. You used to be able to get multiple times your base like 2 to 3x and now they're lucky to get 100% base. I may be wrong but just what I heard
High tier hedge funds should still pay pretty well, it shouldn’t be 10% bonus at 8YOE
Curious are these numbers in USD or GBP?
No investment bank tech is good. Plus they'll zero out your bonus and say oops sorry. If it's BofA feel free to DM me.
What’s wrong with Palantir? Don’t go to finance especially as a SWE. You’re not respected by the company. Stick to tech.
Depends on what's a mid tier hedgefund imo, if it's no name with 15 employees then that's fucked. Also depends what skillset you will develop in both roles. Bank jobs have like infinite security but they do suck as the others say
It's about 1k employees globally and moderately well known. It's just not JS or Citadel tier.
That's much better then, do they trade at high frequencies or more volume testing? What tech is it? The asset class sometimes matters in these cases for bonuses and stuff
Hedge fund. Might be just a bit lower to start but eventual TC is much higher than the bank.