SRE/ Systems Engineer at HFT vs SWE at Tier 2
Hi I was wondering which would be a better option for a new grad if my end goal is just to make big bucks before returning to my home country (India). Not too bothered by the kind of work but would be bothered by being able to find an equivalent job back home. Currently in a top 20 school doing a Masters on an F1 visa. I have competing offers at both places with the HFT (Citadel, Two Sigma, HRT, Jane Street, DRW etc)paying almost twice as much as the Tier 2 SWE (Cisco, VMWare, Qualcomm, Adobe, Nutanix, HPE, IBM etc). I am interested in working in System Software and both roles claim that I would be coding in Python over Linux Infrastructure. Is there any reason under the sun that I should not go with the Systems Engineer role? Thanks TC: New grad, 17.5K$ a year as a TA
No downside going SRE / Systems. I would even say it is harder to find an SRE person for an open role than a SWE. Only thing I would mention is that everyone I know that does SRE / DevOps says all they do is write YAML files. It’s all configuration via tools and managed services. A lot of them don’t write any code. With systems experience, you can always check out data engineering or backend engineering.
Got it! Thanks for this. The role i have apparently mainly deals with distributed systems, network latencies and Python coding. My interviews dealt with similar topics as well so I think its less likely to be OPS/ configuration files and more on the lines of system management. I am likely to deal with quite some coding while in this position.
Then you will be fine. Distributed systems experience is in high demand everywhere.
I’d go with SWE, it’ll pretty much secure your future without a doubt. Don’t go SRE, it’s mostly going to be an ops role.
Can I dm you?
Citadel SRE is 🗑️, but SRE at other firms might be better
This is very similar to my situation, mind if I ask what happened? Still not sure if I want to do SysEng
I went with SysEng
Bad career move.
Did you get a return offer on F1 from these companies?
Tier 1 HFT >>> Tier 2 tech You can always go back to tier 1 tech if things don't work out.
And there are no real issues Career wise going down the SRE/ Systems Engineer line right?
As long as you're writing code and not just twiddling config files, there isn't really a big downside. As I mentioned, pretty easy to switch in a year or two if that's what you want.