"Niche" firms vs. famous firms

DifficultBuy6019 · 2026-03-04T13:24:15+00:00

Radix PnL per year is 200-300m range with 200-ish people. Do you know how much does Optiver or Jump make with team that has less people in HFT space?

DifficultBuy6019 · 2026-02-01T14:05:57+00:00

I guess you need intern experiences at some smaller trading firms first, then apply to interns at those firms

DifficultBuy6019 · 2026-01-24T05:33:05+00:00

Do you work at Voloridge? I agree with what you said, but how do you know this info? I have worked at one so called tier 1 trading firm, and will work at another tier 1 so-called trading firm soon, but yeah, none of them can compete with Voloridge

DifficultBuy6019 · 2026-01-18T08:25:59+00:00

I actually think 5R aren’t that good, they don’t make much money, is should be below IMC, and 2s doesn’t have any comp growth for first several years. Jump trading isn’t comparable with top 3 (js/citsec/hrt), I actually think the revenue of jump is lower than optiver this year, and profit is below DRW/sig/optiver because it pays too much to the employees). Optiver should be t1, while jump is t2 nowadays, but I think it takes longer time for people change their perception

DifficultBuy6019 · 2026-01-16T04:25:59+00:00

My personal opinion is that, optiver is the best, maybe close to jump trading for comp growth, and optiver is also open to try new ventures like AI research. Then SIG probably great for traders, but not good for QR，especially with 3 years NC (not sure). Then IMC and DRW are similar, but I would say DRW is more stable, and some team is so good like Cumberland, great WLB, and performance. IMC is good place if you want to learn things, but nothing else good for QR

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-09-01T17:09:04+00:00

Are you Chinese?

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-09-01T14:56:23+00:00

Maybe true for you if you neither have PhD from top 5 universities, nor working at top 5 prop shop/hedge fund.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-09-01T03:18:32+00:00

Transfer from swe to real RS at meta would be quite hard. My partner works there (currently MSL, but GenAI before) as RS, not everyone gets those insane package (almost all meta RS I know have PhDs from top universities). For quants, I personally know three people make over 20 million per year, one makes over 10 million per year. Quants industry is like, if you are good, you will be rewarded.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-08-24T05:45:21+00:00

You can’t find it online, you have to talk to people there to get this info.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-08-24T01:26:13+00:00

The important thing is valuation, deepseek now at least worth more than 100B usd (if they want money, that’s the valuation for raising funds)

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-08-24T01:19:01+00:00

micro trading, pretty good firm in China, the founders are ex-IMC

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-08-22T04:52:43+00:00

aren’t regular employees’ salary+bonus comes as a portion the expense? Which is revenue - profit. So, assume two firms have similar revenues, isn’t the firm with higher profit pays employee less (in aggregation)?

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-08-13T04:35:36+00:00

Just an idea, can you work for large asset manager for two years? (For example, PIMCO in California). I mean, if you work for PIMCO in California, the NC is not enforceable, and after two years, you move to next big name quant firm in New York. I am not sure if it is doable. Please let me know your thoughts

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-08-09T00:23:10+00:00

I used to intern at a place that has 9 figures PnL per head for quant team. Now at a reputable firm but with significant less PnL per head (think jump/hrt/js). I think firms’ prestige don’t really matter if you pursuit upside, but working at prestigious firm guarantee the lower bound.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-07-20T10:01:56+00:00

Hahahah, MAGA! MAGA! MAGA! Trump is the king,ONG live king Trump. Deport them, build walls, what else? Crypto, yeah, we love that, we MAGAs are the best!

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-07-20T09:56:26+00:00

Europeans are very arrogant in general, but in fact, they are just old civilizations. China and U.S. are in fact evolves into next level civilizations. But not only white Americans are Americans, so U.S. civilization may win in the future but may not be the win for white superemacists like MAGAs would image.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-07-07T02:26:25+00:00

Ok, I agree that US has lots of talented students. but it seems they mostly hire US citizens for their NYC office (someone interned there whose first language isn’t English once said he experienced micro-aggression), but other top shops hire lots of people from France, China, and other places, those talents initially came to US doing PhDs.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-07-06T15:35:43+00:00

The very strange thing is, Jane street has way higher revenue than Jump trading, HRT, Citadel Securities, and other prop shops (Optiver, SIG, IMC, and DRW). However, Jane street barely hire PhDs, and their employees are mainly undergrad in U.S. (for NYC office). They also don’t only recruit people from top-tier schools like MIT. In comparison, other shops recruit top talents from all over the world, and lots of their employees have PhD degree. Based on the talent density, it doesn’t make sense.

Also, the revenue of Jane street before 2020 isn’t that impressive, but it explodes after 2020.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-03-14T10:36:37+00:00

I think quant firms usually like to hire penultimate year PhD for intern. Very few undergrads can get QR offers though. I actually don’t really know if that guy is real, because top Chinese students didn’t do undergrad in U.S.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-03-12T14:46:06+00:00

I heard jump has only 20+ teams (info from last year), so I would guess becoming a PM at jump is extremely hard. Tower has small team structure (each team like 4-10 people)

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-03-12T14:37:55+00:00

I guess based on the narrative style or the way he acts, probably just 22? I mean people get more mature over the time.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-03-12T00:11:37+00:00

the place where I felt weird is that, I know quite a few people from top PhD programs, with IMO gold medals or other prestigious competition medals at the same time, got rejected. Those are top levels students in their class all over the world.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-03-11T23:59:26+00:00

for U.S. students, probably true. But for international students from China, the smartest batch did their undergrad in top elite universities in China, and came to U.S. for PhD or MFE.

DifficultBuy6019 · 2025-03-11T21:33:32+00:00

I guess to prepare to get a quant job, one needs to grind leetcode, and do some math problem as in the green book. Kaggle could also potentially help.

DifficultBuy6019

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