Hey! Trying to pick between these 4 for my final (junior summer) internship. I value learning opportunities/growth, WLB, and prestige (in that I can lateral back to tech / other high tier companies in the future). I'm also interested to see if anyone has insight on the NG pay for the 3 quants. Databricks data is out there but quants not so much. For interns, Optiver pays prorated $300k/year. IMC about $250k/year. Two Sigma around $250k/year. Also interested to hear about what culture is like at each of these firms. My experience from interviewing has been that IMC has the best and Optiver the worst.
either db or 2s per prestigehunt
is prestigehunt the best source lol
well no, no reasonable person would ever decide anything based on that site
It should basically be between optiver and db
Depends what you’re interested in
Intern pay is a terrible metric to use
+1. I’ve never heard of pro-rating a summer internship stipend to a full year salary as part of decision criteria. Apples and oranges 🍊
It indicates salary expectations. The intern salaries are close to full time salaries (without the large sign on bonus)
Optiver, No question
Congrats on the offers! Side note: I don’t speak for db, but personally makes me cringe to see WLB as top criteria for a young eng. imo these are the early days to be obsessed w ur craft and soak in everything. Not an inclination to 5pm clock-out and “mental health.”
Doesn’t this speak about the people at DB? Not saying that it’s a negative or positive thing
Tbh yes. If u look at (public) reviews, the one area db consistently gets rated low for is wlb. I’d say it’s bc the founders and culture tend to value work ethic, impact, tenacity. And yes this sometimes means working hard / long hours / not being a baby.
Optiver for sure, there marble system is fantastic way to get a fair share of company wide profits especially during special years when market goes tits up or down like COVID era. SWEs can reach 1M comp during those times and Chicago is a fucking great city to ball out.
Gotcha tyty
how much time did it take to hear back from 2sig after final round?
Weeks
could you clarify? I am also waiting
I do not recommend Databricks for juniors. It’s a super top-down company and career growth is hard. Most juniors are just working on dealing with the massive amount of tech debt we have and ops/support work, and this isn’t the kind of thing that gets rewarded here even if takes all your time. You’d have to be very lucky with team placement, but I would say more likely than not you’d be stuck on a team with this issue. It’s a widespread problem. Valuation is super high too as is which limits upside. Go to two sigma or optiver. I think optiver comp growth should be better with their marble system, but culturally I’ve heard two sigma is a bit better and NYC > Chicago imo.
To be fair, you’d probably be insulated from this as an intern since you’ll have a self-contained project, but if you’re looking for your internship to set you up for a full-time role, I wouldn’t recommend.
Yes, 1.5-2 years is roughly the normal time to L4.
If you’re actually interested in SWE, go with databricks
will databricks money ever catch up to optiver or two sig tho? im getting paid literally triple at optiver for intern and i heard it's similar for NG.
Only at senior levels at databricks. However, progression and development for a SWE career is more well defined. At optiver, unless you switch out to algorithmic trading, you’re at the risk of getting into a situation where you’re overworked learning a niche which isn’t valued in the industry, at a TC which plateaus 5-6 years into your career. This is the general sentiment though, hope someone from optiver confirms or calls my shit out