I've done FAANG, and I have friends who've done the HFT shops.

HFT shops do indeed pay more. Perhaps at the top percentiles they're similar but at the median, HFT probably pays double, and it's cash, not RSUs that vest over many years. The downside: culture of always in the office (not sure how covid will affect this), software that is insanely specialized and uninspiring, and generally awful work/life balance. I'm sure some shops are different, but they expect you to put in a lot of time to earn that salary. Compared with FAANG where the burn-out is at little more prolonged (and of course the morally dubious business that is ad-tech).

I've learned to stay away from both and have never looked back. But I think working a FAANG or HFT is a good thing for any dev to at least look into while they're young and ambitious and can "afford" a bit of burnout to see what life can really be like (or not).

Counterpoint: I've worked in two HFTs, and both have very decent hours and work/life balance.

Yea, I've spent time in a prop shop and the hours were incredibly decent. A lot of people checking in an hour before the open and checking out a bit after the close. In a lot of cases coming in for the open, seeing what's what, then hitting the golf course.

Prop shops seem to have a pretty strong understanding of ROI in all things, including time spent, so if your killer strategy just doesn't have a ton to act on today go take an hour lunch and head home or wherever. The place I was at was known as an "arcade" or a bunch of unrelated strategies from various teams that happened to work out, so maybe it's different other places, but I can say for certain that I've done 90 minute lunches off site with senior traders in the middle of the trading day just because the volume in their primary product(s) was mostly just interns throwing 1 lots at one another.

Define "decent". Is it 80/60/50 hours per week? Because it's clearly not regular 40 hour weeks.

Because I can work in a very chill environment and earn 200k-250k + stock. I can also work 60 hour weeks for 300k + bonus.

I used to work in London on roughly $180k putting in about 20 hours per week.

Where were you working? Or maybe you can say a list of similar places if you don’t want to be specific

Were you paid those insane salaries?

HFTs are pretty much, here's a lot of money work all the time and forgo your life outside of office.

> (not sure how covid will affect this)

This is the big question for all of Wall Street right now. So far it’s not been too bad but there are gaps here and there.

I went from ads to finance. Pay is much better (at least in Europe, and I don't have good information about top tech companies like Facebook Palantir Google that also pay stock). Also, even though both are morally dubious, ads are non-consensual so IMO way worse. At least in finance, every participant (even the hard-working taxpayer contributing to his stock-index retirement fund) is there for the same reason - to make money - so while not contributing anything to the world (directly, you can still donate your earnings), at least you're not taking anything away, just playing (and hopefully winning) a game.

I work in ads now too, I've thought about switching into finance for similar reasons. I just get along with people who are at work for the money hahaha, we all seem to get along and not get too stressed out. No one is bent out of shape because their passion idea is shot down, everything is nice and measured, bonuses are given out to people who come up with ways to make more revenue so (at least in my experience) there's not too many politics.

Is there anything in particular you did to switch? Any specific tech skills you picked up? Or did you just apply and do normal interviews?

I've mostly stayed in ads because I'm really good at JavaScript, and a huge chunk of ad optimization/tracking is on the frontend.

No, I switched from backend programming in ads to backend programming in finance. I did a bit of JS, knew OCaml before, learned Python on the (ads) job, studied math and made programming languages as a hobby so I had a fairly good grasp of a wide range of fundamentals, which basically means I can do pretty much anything you throw at me, in interviews or at the job (anything ordinary - I don’t have any specialised skills like Google-scale big data or Visa-scale concurrency). I don’t think it would be hard to pick that if you’re really good at JavaScript, I guess curiosity was my strongest feature.

The best thing for getting hired, unfortunately, was my degree (math+finance @ Oxford). Recruiters chased me! I don’t care about the degree, but they do - not necessarily people who interview you, but HR/recruitment department, they use your pedigree to float your CV to the top of the pile

Also interviewing is huge hit and miss. I got rejected by like 5 companies in a row (often initial rounds), then got 2 offers at once (and one of the companies said I was one of the strongest candidates ever).

Thanks for the info! A common pattern I’ve seen for anyone who’s successful is failed interviews, it definitely is a crap shoot.

Ads are completely consensual.

You explicitly go to Google, Facebook, some website. No one is pushing ads to you PC without you making a request to.

I mostly dislike ads and adtech, because their value is overstated. However... You aren't entitled to stuff that people publish. Thus placing an ad blocker when visiting my site, you're being an asshole.

Would you pay Google $500 per year for all of their services? Then $200 to Facebook. Then your local news portal another couple of hundred.

Absolutely much higher in HFT. I worked in HFT, my 3rd year bonus (at age 25) was 1.9m as maybe a p75 member of a high performing team. Even the median, across the front office at that firm, for 2-3 years out was 600k-1m.

I'm a FANG software engineer from a top 3 CS school with experience in low-level networking. I am currently starting the process of interviewing with HFT firms.

Would you be willing to share the name of your firm, and more generally your experiences, here or in a unicast channel?

Yes, 99th percentile quant compensation is significantly higher. But it's a bad comparison. Google alone hire mores more people into these positions than all quant firms combined. 99.9% at FANG might be more comparable.

If you want to pursue money, then yes both are your best options. Not really a significant difference, you’re just a cog in some billionaires machine extracting your soul for $$$.

Avoid both and Choose to make a difference in people’s lives.

>It is very difficult to make a positive difference in anyone’s life with his given skills.

Based on what? Anecdotal, but my partner is a data scientist and statistician full-time . She regularly volunteers or contracts her skillset to a range of projects, including medical research and criminal justice. It's very impactful work - some of the research will massively improve people's lives. And there is definitely enough work to mostly focus on those projects if someone wants to.

Can I ask where she finds these volunteer projects? I have that skill set and that day job and haven't found any volunteer places that make use of specifically the data science/ML/stats. I've looked unsuccessfully a few times.

Mostly from past colleagues/professors she did research with. Universities are a good place to look as they often have other groups reaching out to them for expertise.

There are plenty of opportunities for people with their skill set in the realm of biomedical research.