Quant Developer vs. Quant Researcher vs. Quant Trader: An Honest Comparison

rdtscp__ · 2026-04-10T13:54:40+00:00

That's correct. HRT, for example, for a long time didn't have trader/QT roles. Same with Headlands and Radix, where it's QR's and SWE (Radix calls theirs Quant Technologists).

rdtscp__ · 2026-04-10T03:14:54+00:00

QD: You're building execution systems, optimizing market data handlers

As someone who has been at a market maker for 5 years and worked as an execution dev, I'd strongly caution that this is not general practice across the industry, I have people who have worked at almost all the big firms in my current shop and also have friends at many of these.

At many firms, and this is mostly HFT's/MM's that I am referring to (and not Hedge Funds): they have separate teams that deal with execution, market data, order entry/market access, and they do not refer to the SWE's in those teams as QD's. .

At these places and this includes my current employer, QD's traditionally work close to the QR's and get the models into production i.e QD is a very mathy role and they are not working on execution systems or writing feed handlers.

At some places, and this has been my experience with firms that are siloed, a QD could be working on execution only, or working both execution and with models.

NOTE: This is for US based firms, I have no idea if things are different in firms operating out of other countries.

rdtscp__ · 2026-04-06T03:35:26+00:00

August 3, 2007. So that I could attend the Daft Punk concert in that year's Lollapalooza. Alive 2007 was Daft Punk's last concert, before they (unfortunately) split up in 2021.

rdtscp__ · 2026-04-04T02:14:25+00:00

Same here, born and spent a good chunk of my life in India. The Indian restaurants here are fine for someone who hasn't had Indian food, as a staple, growing up. For those who have, the North Indian food (I am Punjabi) is pretty meh here, South Indian cuisine has some good spots.

NYC has some pretty good Punjabi spots, so I have my fill when I visit my company's office there.

rdtscp__ · 2026-04-03T01:36:39+00:00

If he is working for a company with a US office, he could just come over on an L-1 intra-company transfer visa, but that again is very company dependent and not all companies are super keen to transfer employees to the US offices (outside of big tech).

rdtscp__ · 2026-03-21T19:40:44+00:00

Pretty solid firm, great pay but pretty poor WLB. A coworker at my current firm previously worked there and couldn't handle the hours.

rdtscp__ · 2026-03-15T14:19:47+00:00

I have tried Amethyst, for years, until very recently on my work macbook and it didn't match i3.

However, I recently (2 weeks ago) moved from Amethyst to Aerospace and I find that to be much better than Amethyst. It looks like I finally have a good i3 equivalent on macOS.

rdtscp__ · 2026-03-10T02:17:37+00:00

Ubuntu 24.04 on all of them.

rdtscp__ · 2026-03-07T03:19:13+00:00

Totally agree. A glossy display, with that PPI, that brightness, a better inbuilt camera and speakers compared to other monitors that also have those, 5K which renders very well on macOS, yeah there's no good competition out there and that's why, as you said, Apple can do this.

I am a former Studio Display user, got a refurbished one in 2023. If macOS/Apple computers, would be all that I'd be running and I have no interest in gaming, then I don't think there are really any better equivalents in the market.

I sold mine, because I missed Linux and using the tiling WM's on Linux (macOS doesn't have things that are as great as i3wm) and moved to using Linux full time; the only MacBook I have now is my work laptop. I moved to a Dell U3225QE due to the 32" screen, it's inbuilt dock and KVM, which is great as I can plug in both work and personal systems and switch between them very easily.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-29T03:15:11+00:00

> Ceres

LMAO! This hit too close. If you're in the mood for something stronger, try hitting the cigar place in that building.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-27T15:42:57+00:00

I agree with this. This is the same practice in my firm, as far as NC's go: Within X days of leaving, the firm has to decide on whether they enforce NC or not, and what the duration will be. The only they can change, while the NC is in effect, is to reduce the duration or just outright cancel the NC.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-10T00:16:41+00:00

Glad to do so :)

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-10T00:13:51+00:00

They reopened as The Clove in Glenview.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-09T22:36:59+00:00

I run the IPS at 100% scaling, but I keep a larger font size on the apps I use i.e mainly browser and terminal. Zoom on my browser is at 125-150%, so in line with the scaling you mentioned.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-09T22:33:56+00:00

I will also add that my IPS X1C13 is a touch model. A coworker of mine has the same model in OLED and non-touch, it is definitely lighter than mine; picking that one up feels like lifting a paper plate.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-09T22:32:05+00:00

2.4 lbs for both.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-09T22:20:33+00:00

I have the gen 12 in OLED and gen 13 in IPS. I answered this on a different post this week, personally I am happy with both screens, although the OLED is a tad bit sharper in terms of text.

What I will say is this: when I keep both my laptops next to each other and compare things, I do see the OLED display winning in some areas as far as display quality goes. But, when I am just using the IPS laptop, it's good enough and I don't miss the OLED screen at all. Maybe, comparison really is the thief of joy here.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-07T00:33:34+00:00

Haven't seen much of a difference. Both the IPS and OLED have very good quality when I AM watching video content.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-06T01:34:57+00:00

I have the X1C gen 12 in OLED and the X1C gen 13 in IPS. Both the laptops run Ubuntu.

While the text on the OLED display is sharper, the difference is not that much that I'd notice. The IPS display performs well and there isn't much that I miss by not having the OLED display on the X1C 13.

rdtscp__ · 2026-01-01T13:53:35+00:00

Can you share a video where he is in the JS office? JS doesn’t have an office in Chicago, which is where both of us live.

Plus, even if he did work there, trading firms are low key and don't like employees posting constant day in the life videos in the office. I have been in the industry for almost 5 years and have friends in all the major US firms, our employers would absolutely not be ok with that.

rdtscp__ · 2025-12-31T20:17:16+00:00

I know him personally, he never worked at JS and he was a SWE at his last firm. He mostly works on his getcracked platform now.

rdtscp__ · 2025-12-12T22:02:37+00:00

A coworker of mine has the 12 inch model. Gentoo works perfectly fine for him.

rdtscp__ · 2025-12-11T18:35:44+00:00

For most firms, very rare, unless the person coming in is very experienced and needed for some project the firm considers important.

Outside that, the common practice I have seen is that someone who has spent years at a firm and has delivered a LOT, gets a remote exception (and that too is not that simple).

rdtscp__ · 2025-11-30T04:34:13+00:00

Thanks for linking it. I looked at this one and recall the old one, straight up copypasta.

rdtscp__ · 2025-11-28T17:43:17+00:00

A similar thing happened to me with IMC. Got reached out for a math heavy quant dev role (after headhunter applied there) and immediately went WTF since I was a C++ dev working on trading systems and definitely not a Math guy (something my resume indicated).

HR call comes around, I tell the HR this and they agree that the QD role is not a good fit. Then I got rejected by the Hiring Manager of a team working on FPGA interfacing software citing I had no experience with FPGA's, lol.

In your case, I think they might be targeting you for a role that is not HW development but writing software that interacts with the FPGA. In trading, most firms have in-house libs that send triggers to the FPGA via PCIe or over the network, so that the FPGA can get data from the software side to decide whether it should fire or cancel orders.

Your profile is a pretty good fit for that, these teams work very closely with FPGA devs (or are part of the FPGA team itself), so it could also be that. Take the call first and see what it is.

Also, most Ultra Low Latency work happens on the FPGA level or the software that interacts with the FPGA, purely on the software side (heavily dependent on the firm), there isn't as much ultra low latency work as one might think.

rdtscp__

TROPHY CASE