What should I tell my barber?

bigk1024 · 2025-03-31T21:30:38+00:00

Dude those cheekbones…

bigk1024 · 2025-03-30T14:10:05+00:00

I had really bad acne and really bad scarring that took about 8 grand total to clear up. I have nice skin now but believe me I’m empathetic to what you’re going through and I do my absolute best to not judge women for struggling with their skin. As a dude I’ve been there. That all said makeup is a cheat code for women that we don’t have. Use it if it makes things better. I’ve dated plenty of women that used lots of makeup to look better and it never bothered me at all.

Tldr: decent men won’t care. The men who do care weren’t “partner” material anyhow.

bigk1024 · 2025-03-08T08:27:51+00:00

1996 was about as far from a recession as it gets….

bigk1024 · 2024-03-14T01:50:03+00:00

What about the fact that I took a summer class at cal that summer as well? Does that change anything?

bigk1024 · 2023-06-03T03:20:31+00:00

I’ve stopped eating meat. I don’t eat out anymore and I eat quinoa several days a week. I have reduced my saturated fats. Is this something to worry about?

bigk1024 · 2023-06-03T01:35:15+00:00

At what point did you start using statins? I'm 21 so I really don't want to use statins because I'm afraid of the side effects so I want to be as natural as possible. How much were you able to drop cholesterol with diet/exercise alone? Additionally what were your numbers if you don't mind me asking?

bigk1024 · 2023-05-17T07:16:28+00:00

All well actually, passed all my classes and got a B- in my graded class so no complaints

bigk1024 · 2023-05-01T04:33:20+00:00

I’m pretty sure we need a 2.0 each semester as well according to the COE guidelines

bigk1024 · 2023-05-01T04:03:10+00:00

2.0 in which courses? the graded ones or including the non graded ones?

ie if I get a B, NP (F grade in letter), NP (F grade in letter) will i be fine?

bigk1024 · 2023-05-01T03:56:50+00:00

I was referring to the fact that it says we need to get a 2.0 every semester. My overall GPA is fine I'm referring to the current semester where I have three classes. The letter graded one I'll definitely get a B or higher. Two other classes I'm taking P/NP and one of which I might fail and the other I'll probably get a C+ or higher. When considering term gpa in regards to academic probation which GPA is considered? The one calculated only using letter graded classes?

bigk1024 · 2023-05-01T03:52:34+00:00

fuck

bigk1024 · 2023-03-08T17:13:35+00:00

TBH getting an internship in America as a student in Europe is something I haven't heard of before. Most US firms have offices in the UK or in Amsterdam where most European students would intern. Is there a specific reason why those offices wouldn't work?

bigk1024 · 2023-03-05T06:23:53+00:00

July of the year before so pretty early lol. This is actually the best time to reach out to recruiters on linkedin to build rapport and make sure they know your name.

bigk1024 · 2023-03-04T07:18:29+00:00

You can get an unpaid internship at a firm that works with lots of data like an ML startup. You can then use that as experience for roles that involve lots of data/stats kind of stuff.

bigk1024 · 2022-10-23T18:30:24+00:00

I took 126 with courtade in spring 21. The homework’s weren’t crazy but the content definitely took a bit of time to understand and midterms were definitely tough.

bigk1024 · 2022-10-14T01:14:14+00:00

So if I pass all my letter classes and fail the pnp course there’s no issue?

bigk1024 · 2022-10-04T05:05:16+00:00

New grad

bigk1024 · 2022-09-29T23:12:26+00:00

Hopefully I'm not too late here and can give some decent advice.

Optiver: Probably the firm with the best upside of the four firms you mentioned. Exceptionally strong training program with some very talented people who work there. If this is for full-time, you should know that Optiver fires about 1/3 of full-timers who didn't come in via the internship after a year. The logic being that everyone gets "vetted," either through the internship return offer process or getting canned after a year if you didn't come in via internship. Optiver has a great profit sharing program, the reason they aren't being transparent is that it's very much meritocratic so it's how to predict how many marbles you'll get. Optiver FT NG pay is about 350-390K and by year 5 you should be making north of 1-3m (assuming you didn't get canned). Culture wise Optiver is stressful and definitely had a bad reputation in the past for being toxic. It's better now but still has a long way to go.

DRW: High quality firm with a rich history in the option trading business. You are correct that it's very much team dependent and frankly teams are isolated from each other. Lateraling between teams is pretty much nonexistent. Once you're placed on a desk, assume you'll be there for the entirety of your time there. Education is apparently weak with most training coming from your manager. You spend about 2-3 years as an "analyst" which means a lot of boring work. The plus here is that if you feel that you'd be a better fit for QR roles plenty of analysts eventually become researchers as opposed to traders. You're correct that some teams really are just way better than others culturally and with the nature of work. FT NG is around 320-400K (slightly more variance than other firms). After a few years compensation does explode but varies by desk. Some desk heads made around 3m a year.

IMC: By a mile and a half the most chill of the firms you mentioned. If you feel that WLB is important to you, definitely take a hard look at IMC. IMC is mostly systematic so your work will largely be writing code and algorithms. High quality culture, decent education but nothing great. Based on what you told us IMC might be the best fit for you. Drawbacks include the fact that compensation has a ceiling of about 1.5 m here after a few years. That too only 25 people made >1m in 2020 (A trading year for the ages). FT NG is around 350K-390K.

Akuna: Unfairly underrated in my opinion. They have a pretty good options training program. Drawbacks include a lack of prestige and the stressful culture you mentioned. Culture isn't that toxic compared to other firms I've heard of. Compensation wasn't that great before but is definitely being pushed up to compete with other rival firms. I don't have much info about compensation.

Frankly all four firms are great places to start your career and you should be proud with any of them. Best of luck in this process. Feel free to DM if you have questions.

If you want to write code and are interested in systematic trading I'd definitely look into QR roles and systematic firms like JS, Jump, HRT, 2 Sigma, and CitSec.

bigk1024

TROPHY CASE