I graduated from a Russell Group university in 2017 and joined one of the best performing quantitative trading firms in NYC as a Software Engineer. Before that, I spent a summer interning as a Trader at a smaller shop. Let's get the obvious question out of the way: my first year comp was 250k and has consistently grown anywhere between 100-200k every year. I resigned in '21 because I was burnt out but I made over 800k in 2020, mostly due to market volatility caused by the pandemic. I was never attached to a desk, did some pretty standard work on a library for batching and manipulating data, though I was definitely a high performer. I see too much misinformation and mystery surrounding some of these companies so I thought I'd share my experience. Don't believe everything you read online. Between unaffiliated people simply lying, recruiters trying to market the company, and exaggeration, you'd think some of these companies are dreams with the culture of early Google and the guarantee of 7 figure incomes. Recruiters and headhunters love to inflate compensation numbers and lie about the culture to get people in the door. I know of recruiters pretending to be traders or engineers online to talk up the company. If someone claims they're on target for a remuneration payment of 1.3mil as a 27 year old while doing generalist "front end" work, they're likely lying. That is a real example of something a recruiter from my company said on Reddit. Ever notice that a dozen >1MM salaries were just shared on glassdoor or levels for one company within the same month? You really think a dozen 7 figure income individuals (at a company with <1000 employees) coincidentally decided to share their comp? The money is really good, but most engineers will not touch 7 figures unless they're doing ML/AI, FPGA or low latency. People didn't talk about money much at work, but I figure most engineers plateau off at 700 or 800k unless they're really ambitious or working in one of those areas. My firm kept compensation fairly even between traders and engineers, but the norm in the industry is traders making much more than engineers. You may never breach 600k at a lesser performing/compensating shop despite putting in 60 hours a week for years. The culture will probably suck and you aren't likely to enjoy your work. I realized quickly that these firms are hiring really smart people to work on really boring tasks. My experience has been the opposite of "move fast and break things"; development was rather slow and the projects were very very mundane. Contrary to popular belief, apart from certain roles, math knowledge isn't really needed for engineers and we don't throw in dynamic programming into our production code. That being said, I found many of my peers to be very academic and mathy. My company is known for having a better culture and work life balance but I found it to be very bland; not a lot of "fun" during work hours. Company events were very extravagant ($1000PP 3 Michelin star dinners, renting out the entire Met or other various historic venues), but it all seemed like rather shallow attempts at team building by throwing a bunch of money at it. Lots of snobbish people who are either stuck up because they think money defines your character, and/or because they were born into money anyways and went to elite private schools. I have friends at Citadel, Optiver and Jump where the culture is truly toxic and you'll age at thrice the rate than if you just worked in Tech so I guess bland is good. Engineering would work about 50 hours a week, traders and researchers usually more. Remote work isn't a thing and neither is WFH. You will also get treated like second class citizen as an engineer at most firms in addition to being paid less. Traders are not generally nice people and believe they're infinitely more important than you since they pull in the money. Many companies believe this too and are more than happy to screw engineers over to keep traders happy. From what I've heard, a trader could take a dump on your desk at Optiver and get you fired instead for not lapping it up. To sum it up, it's all about money. For the most part there isn't any inherent prestige, interesting work, or passion in quant; just money. We didn't even ask people "why do you want to work for us?" in interviews because we're realistic about people wanting money. I certainly didn't want to hear some student bullshit about their passion for finance and tech. A lot of people will think that's worth it, but I've seen enough coworkers and interns that end up going to Meta or Google to know that most brilliant hackers wouldn't want to spend their entire careers here. I left to take an extended leave, just started my own company and feel much happier. I'll answer some questions in DMs but I won't disclose anything identifying or anything confidential. I've given enough breadcrumbs for people to determine what my company was and I'm happy to see if any former coworkers want to confirm to give different perspectives. #engineering #quant
Depends on the shop and honestly your interviewer; interview process wasn't as standardized as, say, Google, and we would regularly customize questions based on what you had on your resume. For example, one candidate wrote a paper in school about a topic I was interested in and I crafted a question around that. But in general, for engineers, I would say the interviews are similar to Google or Meta with a greater emphasis on knowing the finer details of how a computer works, how your code is compiled, how it would be represented in memory. I feel like the talent is probably similar to Google or Meta but without "coasters" or underperformers. I'm certain any competent devs from Google could have done my job. The ceiling for talent goes a lot higher in FAANG though; just a lot more room for growth and building out really complex, intricate software. These companies just won't attract the kind of hackers that would create the next Golang or Rust. They also won't be able to hire that MIT PhD away from Google Brain who is passionate about AI.
Thanks OP for the insights!
What’s the stack
Most places use C++ with some Python and Java with a custom GC solution thrown in.
Do any of them use Rust or plan to adopt Rust?
you worked at Hudson or 2sigma.
What makes you say that? I wouldn't call TS pay or desk performance top tier.
The fact that OP graduated from non phd in 2017 and made 800k in 2020 means they 100% do not work for 2sigma 2sigma isn’t quant trading either. Hrt also doesn’t have quant traders
Do they hire project / Program managers? Asking since I seldom see job posts for them.
Thanks for sharing, OP. A few Qs from someone interested in quant research: 1. In terms of total comp, where would you put QRs - closer to traders or engineers? 2. For securing interviews, would it be better to use headhunters or try get referrals from employees? 3. Any tips on identifying if the team you’re applying for has toxic wlb / culture? E.g. interviewer mentions long hours - this would be obvious red flag. Any more subtle clues?
1. Closer to traders 2. In my experience, referrals are better but I am only 2-3 yoe 3. Just ask questions to the team / hr. People are pretty transparent about wlb and expectations
That’s my understanding as well. Once you’re staff in tech, there’s not many benefits to work in finance. The pay gap is only very big at junior up to senior level.
Thanks for sharing. So you moved from England to US? Did you also grow up there?
Thanks for sharing! Is 60 hours per week common for swes in this industry?
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I sometimes wish I was at a quant firm. Good to know it’s not for me. The recruiters I’ve talked to are always a bit fishy.