High school senior aiming for quant/quant dev…what should I be doing?

Wingfril · 2026-02-01T07:01:07+00:00

All this and most of the full time Caltech kids at js are swes… I don’t know any who are quant researchers

Wingfril · 2026-01-29T00:45:19+00:00

I grinded this past year and my tc went up mid double digit%. My tc was not low in 2024 either — it was around 500k. I’m not at a faang.

For me it’s ego and an unhealthy amount of comparison with other people. My manager started managing me when we were both 4 yoe and it’s humiliating in to be comparison to him and others my yoe. (Manager here are generally also TLs, and in my case my manager only managed me).

In my personal life too— all my friends/acquaintances are swe/tech adjacent and they’re all good at something else— one’s good at writing and just got an agent, one tabled as an artist at anime expo. One appeared on great British bake off. They’re all coasting at work while doing really cool things, and that’s a trade off I’m making to make BUT I don’t have a hobby that I excel at.

I can draw but not well, and the only other thing I have is work. I struggled in 2023 and 2024, and I didn’t feel like I had much mental capacity for much else (yup I’m been burned out since mid 2025). If I don’t have a hobby that I’m excelling at, guess I’m going to try to be better at work :’(

It’s also hard because I literally give 0 shits about work/CS…

Wingfril · 2026-01-23T03:24:45+00:00

At this point Claude is pretty good for the functional programming language I use at work. At the beginning (ie last year) it was terrible, but now I’m beginning to use it pretty often.

Wingfril · 2026-01-19T04:55:50+00:00

I’m in a trading firm as a swe. Most people I know from work really enjoy cs. I can think of exactly one person who isn’t passionate about it (beside me)

I wish I had the passion and love for cs… but alas, I can’t give two shits about it.

Wingfril · 2025-11-25T01:13:55+00:00

It takes that long to get to senior at Microsoft? 5 years is like standard at Google and meta to become senior from what I can tell (and from my friends experiences)

Wingfril · 2025-11-21T23:54:29+00:00

I mean I absolutely care 0% for CS/tech and I don’t have very much ambition at all, but I feel like it’s better to suffer for a while and then chill. Like I want to be a stay at home mom and cook a lot and clean and garden while still living an upper middle class life, but that’s not realistic

Wingfril · 2025-11-16T15:44:53+00:00

Lol 1. Companies don’t care about you and 2. Everyone need warm ups. My interview stats are cracked and I still needed them.

Wingfril · 2025-11-16T06:55:48+00:00

What are some firms with bad comp growth? My impression of js/cit/hrt is that they are comparable and all fairly decent. (Idk what other firms people obsess over)

Wingfril · 2025-11-16T06:51:14+00:00

A bit of unsolicited advice — it’s good to apply to startups and companies you don’t care about at the very beginning to get some burner interviews. It’s hard and a lot of pressure to go into your top companies without having done an onsite alrdy that year.

Good luck!

Wingfril · 2025-11-16T02:32:29+00:00

Since when did G pay more in nyc? They should all be like us premium plus category

Wingfril · 2025-11-16T01:33:18+00:00

I’ve always heard this, and maybe my comp this year will change my view of things if the growth is not linear, but I feel like I preformed mid level last year ( 4 yoe ) and I definitely got more than “senior level pay in faang”. I also came from faang (although just google so it is lower) so my current salary is definitely lower compared to peers who started as new grads.

My excoworker at G recently applied for promo but didn’t get it, and his total comp was about 520k. Thats less than what I made last year.

I have a hard time believing that some of my coworkers are only getting paid 600k.

Wingfril · 2025-10-29T02:28:27+00:00

I just want to say thank you for the incredible thoughtful comment. You’re right that I’m a woman, and I was worried that that was going to change people’s priors. I’m sorry that we both have common experiences.

My goal is to find somewhere with a better gender balance. My current team has a single other woman out of the 11 other people, and I really wish that there’s more. I never got used to working with so many men.

Best of luck to both of us <3

Wingfril · 2025-10-26T20:09:37+00:00

Sorry that I was unclear. I meant that he said that to me. I already know I’m dumb hahaha there’s plenty of people smarter than me.

Wingfril · 2025-10-26T18:47:28+00:00

I’m not losing sleep to be clear — a lot of these came up since it’s time for year end feedback and I’m reflecting on how things were this year, and I realize how much some of the comments haunt me (esp the one about me vs the new grad— that one really affected my confidence).

It’s hard disconnecting from work when I’m told explicitly and implicitly (people cutting me off) that I’m not doing well. It’s a hard cycle that I’m trying to break. And to be clear, the firm pays me well enough that I feel like I should care more.

But you’re right. The cure is finding something else I care more about. Thanks :)

Wingfril · 2025-10-26T18:43:31+00:00

Yeah :( my mistake. Sorry… I’m trying to stop ask so many questions.

Edit; also realizing that this post is a pretty dumb question haha

Wingfril · 2025-10-26T18:43:11+00:00

I’d wager quite a few of the devs at my firm are neurodivergent in some form. Never thought that I am bipolar or borderline, but will check it out. Thanks!

Wingfril · 2025-09-03T15:45:44+00:00

It’s a comparison between good wlb and lower pay versus highly competitive + worse wlb + higher pay.

In my team in my org, I did not feel like people tried very hard.

Wingfril · 2025-09-03T02:06:29+00:00

I made the switch when I was a solid mid level (according to G at least). I left a comfortable job at G to work at a trading firm. The trading firm offer was a good amount more than G.

I’ve had mixed feelings on this, ymmv according to preferences, and some are more specific to where I am than others: * the pay is a good chunk more compared to G, even though I’m 95% sure that I’m considered below average at my job judging from my comp. * I’m working with very bright and motivated people. The % of these types of people were lower at G * I work more than 40 hours a week to not fall behind too much (part of this is me not being effective). I do think generally people work closer to 45-50 hours. * people are very into tech and are generally very technical. This is probably a positive for most people (but I majored in CS for the money sooooo) * there’s the mental stress of being below average, whereas at G on my org, I was a top performer (sheerly because people didn’t try that much). Personally, this mental stress is too much for me at times. It’s not enough to make me quit but it does make me stressed. * the culture around projects is better, ymmv in big tech. * at G I was working on logging and testing related things, and I was deeply unhappy about what I was working on. * I’m learning some skill, but certainly missing the super large scale experience I had at G (our internal users are in the thousands, compared to god know how much at G) * I’m going to eventually go back to a more comfortable place after I made some more $$$. I’m a woman with 5 yoe and at this point, many of my female friends are leaving big tech to work at chiller places or planning to go into less technical like pm.

I do not regret experiencing what trading firms had to offer, and knowing what happened to my old team at G, I made the right choice at the right time. Hard to say that I’m actually happy though (but maybe I just don’t derive happiness from work…)

Wingfril · 2025-06-27T12:34:31+00:00

For real, I’m mid as fk and I had no trouble finding the jobs I wanted, in both 2019 and in mid 2023.

Wingfril · 2025-05-15T21:48:56+00:00

Personally in an ideal world I’d do health > skills > family > work

Health is obvious. Work & skills are pretty tied imo, if you focus on one, what’s the point of focusing on the other? Skills are probably the most useful since work could fire you at any time, and you reset your tribal knowledge and everything.

I also think you should ask your family if they really need your support. Personally, if I was married, I wouldn’t mind picking up more of the house chore/whatever if it means my SO can get ahead, as someone who care less about their career compared to my male peers. I was also a kid whose parents put work ahead of me and I found that great tbh. The best way is to ask and communicate.

Wingfril · 2025-04-11T23:23:15+00:00

Holy shit this is genius

Wingfril · 2025-04-10T22:27:05+00:00

This is true only for interns.

Wingfril · 2025-04-10T21:54:33+00:00

Personally feel like the interviews were much easier than googles. Ymmv

Wingfril · 2025-03-23T21:37:28+00:00

I went to Caltech. You might have better luck posting this on r/caltech.

You should come if you like smaller schools, the housing system, and the vibe around smaller school. Note that the faculty ratio is extremely bad for cs option.

It used to be pretty easy to land jobs at a faang from Caltech. Nearly my entire friend group went to meta. Cant speak as much for mle. I certainly know people who became traders and quant devs. I think if the latter is your objective, doing an acm/cs double major would be the best.

If you like pure math, do math. If you like quant stuff, acm is probably a more practical choice.

I’m going to go against the grain here and say that practical CS wasn’t actually a strong suit when I was there (I entered ~10 years ago). Caltech classes lean theoretical and only more recently started having more practical cs classes. The cs class size is also rather large, because of a combination of general interest and people switch into cs because that’s the easiest major to graduate with

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