High Frequency Trading is a fucking scam.

[Anonymous No.54925356]

Just got fired from my HFT SWE gig. Looking back, it's a total fucking scam, though I was the idiot who fell for it. As a 23 year old, the advertised 250k seemed insane. But let me tell you again its all a fucking ploy to get you in the door.

HFT firms run a "hire and fire" model. They bait you with big pay to get as many intelligent people as possible, only to fire a bunch of us later. The ones that dont get fired quit since thier life sucks. This is especially true for SWE roles, where the attrition rate is through the fucking roof. Trading roles? Even worse although the pay is much better than SWE. Research roles are the best, but their mostly filled with PhD's.

The entire plan from the beginning is to churn through as many gullible college students as they can, in order to find a few "superstar" employees who make money. If you're a SWE, you're bottom of the barrel. You're disposable, just another annoying cog in their money-making machine. Thats why you'll see a small handful of seniors with 13+ years of experience and a shitton of guys with 3 years or less but no one in the middle.

In the end, while HFT firms might flash big dollar signs, the reality is a brutal grind with shitty growth chances and a high risk of burnout.

I learned the hard way: a fat paycheck is just part of the job. Its better to look at the whole picture, including the work environment, growth chances, job security, and work-life balance. In the grand scheme of things making 100k to 150k (pre tax in an HCOL) more than other tech/engineering jobs for a few years is really not worth it. In fact, you will probably be richer 10-20 years down the line if you just stay in a normal company.

Can't even work for a year and a half since they made me sign a Noncompete i still get 3 months of base pay though since im on "gardening leave"

[Anonymous No.54926995]

>>54925356
You can work in another industry or just not tell them about your new job kek How will they even know ?
It is a scam. Before signing me they didn't tell me I would be required to install a phone app that once every two or three weeks it could wake me up during any time of that week.

[Anonymous No.54927600]

>>54925356
Cool story bro, always wondered what it was like in a HFT firm. Was fed some glory stories about HFT firms in the past by a former colleague in the past, but have since stayed the course in a more mundane SWE role.

[Anonymous No.54927816]

>>54925356
>>54926995
what is a day like in your HFT jobs

[Anonymous No.54927876]

>>54925356
you do understand that with 250k/year at 23 yo you can put easily 100k on the side each year then buy some serious long term dividend companies and spend the rest of your life on easy mod ?
How is that hard ?
Of course you gullible monkey you thought they would give 250k/year for life to anyone ?

[Anonymous No.54927959]

>>54925356
What does SWE stand for?

[Anonymous No.54927985]

>>54927959
Software engineer. I fucking hate acronyms so much. Programmer is just 3 syllables and doesn't sound gay.

[Anonymous No.54928002]

>>54925356
Thats why you should only apply to these shops if you have a a degree in math/stats/econ/physics/financial engineering. No one cares about you CS degree that teaches you some analysis and linear algebra. Its easier to teach a math/physics grad software engineering, than teach a CS graduate financial engineering/mathematics, discrete statistics, probability theory. Heck, most business schools teach MBAs nowadays software engineering, Java/C++, OOP, database architecture, AI development etc.

[Anonymous No.54928004]

Cool. How long does it take them to fire you i.e. how long can you sit on your ass collecting paychecks? Can you get the entire $250k?

[Anonymous No.54928011]

>>54928002
I bet this faggot thinks some many-to-many juncture table is "database architecture".

[Anonymous No.54928017]

>>54926995
Yeah, breaking a signed contract would be extremely dumb.

[Anonymous No.54928019]

>>54928011
This guy is 100% correct. It is why you see most CS grads retarded in math. CS isn't even CS nowadays, that is theoretical CS, and its just people learning SWE with extra steps.

[Anonymous No.54928024]

>>54925356
>If you're a SWE, you're bottom of the barrel. You're disposable, just another annoying cog in their money-making machine.

No shit, if you're not finding alpha for your firm, you're overhead

tl;dr: be a quant

[Anonymous No.54928029]

>>54928024
If you have alpha you wouldn't be working for a firm in the first place retard.

[Anonymous No.54928038]

>>54928029
Why do you think they pay so much? They pay for the alpha you bring in. Do you seriously think they pay you 250-300k so you push some commits every now and then?

[Anonymous No.54928163]

>>54928038
Will they keep me if I'm bad at the job but am alpha as fuck IRL? *flexes biceps*

[Anonymous No.54928414]

>>54925356
Jane street? I worked for a similar firm (masters in math). Left after a year, never looking back. Soul destroying and no life, similar to IB except the office is more full of autists. If you're not one of the quants (and even they get treated like shit).

Now I trade crypto and have a comfy wfh role, much much MUCH better. Less stress = success.

[Anonymous No.54928907]

>>54928414
what kind of wfh role you got?
I have a similar life, I trade crypto on the side and do bakery at home for customers (I am french), this way of life is so nice but sometimes the cash-flow is tedious.

[Anonymous No.54929129]

>>54925356
>Can't even work for a year and a half since they made me sign a Noncompete i still get 3 months of base pay though since im on "gardening leave"
are they actually gonna bother to enforce it tho?
some words in a pdf and actual actions are not the same thing...

[Anonymous No.54929736]

>>54925356
>HFT firms run a "hire and fire" model
They don't if you get into one of the nice places. But if you get stuck at a shithole like Citadel then I don't know how you didn't kill yourself. Those guys always looked miserable. Optiver guys always had bloodshot eyes too. I chose my firm specifically because I noticed during my internship they almost never fire anyone and the environment is really good for retaining talent.

[Anonymous No.54929758]

>>54929736
I'm actually curious where are with both a hire to fire and a year and a half on your non compete. It can't be SIG, surely, since they have an even longer non compete and they don't fire so frequently (but their research roles do require a PhD, so it seems plausible). But one of the Optiver offshoots would have a much shorter non compete.
Give us a hint or something.

[Anonymous No.54929790]

>>54929758
>tfw every other hft guy is on 4chan
[spoilers]got any secrets to share about jump trading?[/spoilers]

[Anonymous No.54929801]

Is /biz/ smart enough to get in to RenTech?

[Anonymous No.54929871]

>>54929790
I don't work at Jump, but yeah, we do watch these places. You don't think Musk's twitter, wallstretbets, and other shitholes can have such a big influence on the markets and we wouldn't have people browsing, would you? Traders actually trade off shit you guys post sometimes (well mostly Twitter, not so much /biz/).
>>54929801
Even to my own surprise, I got in touch with a recruiter for these people. Their interview is really to the point and they expect you to know your subject inside out to even get a foot in the door. They're not totally inaccessible, even if they are extremely difficult.

[Anonymous No.54930066]

>>54929871
Interesting, was the RenTech package any good? (e.g. access to medallion fund?)

[Anonymous No.54930438]

>>54930066
They don't talk about compensation at that stage. I just chatted about my research and answered questions the interviewer asked. He asked about pretty much every detail he could, so you get grilled very intensely. But the plus side is no bullshit questions and there wasn't any ego like the Citadel guys had. I actually didn't know it was Rentech until the recruiter told me after having set a time for my interview so I was actually pretty intimidated.
I noticed some of my sentences are missing words and had weird grammar by the way, sorry about that, I was posting while going in and out of a nap.

[Anonymous No.54930513]

>>54925356
You job hop every two years to make the most money also preferably scoring a promotion with each hop. Staying at the same place for more then 3 years working in software is mental and professional stagnation. You also are more likely to put up with bullshit not realizing it can be better elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.54930714]

>>54930438
>I just chatted about my research

STEM PhD -> exit to HFT shop?

Wish I found out about HFT earlier, by the time I clocked on to it I was nearly done with my electrical engineering degree, it was too late to start the grind to get in to one.

Saying that, I might have dodged a bullet as I'm wagecucking as a WFH EE in a LCOL area, doing fuck all rather than sweating it out doing 80 hr weeks. (plus I'm a Python brainlet with fuck all C++ or FPGA experience)

>I noticed some of my sentences are missing words and had weird grammar by the way, sorry about that, I was posting while going in and out of a nap.
yeah no worries anon, it's interesting to hear about Rentec as there's not much out there about it and they have the reputation of being secretive and elite

[Anonymous No.54930856]

>>54930714
Yeah I'm in quant research, I caught onto it because I got kind of bored with publish or perish and a prop shop's QR tests actually involved some really interesting maths. I think the moment I decided they would be cool to work with was when they gave me a problem involving a certain injective function, and literally specified "injective," and I just thought it was cool they were actually interested in some real maths problems rather than asking me to work with some fucking Excel bullshit. And they got harder and more technical too, there were even proof-based exercises which I thought was really fun (things like playing a game where you had to prove your strategy is optimal but also giving some linear algebra proofs, and I got a question about random matrices as well). Really liked it plus the compensation was way better than the university.
>there's not much out there about it and they have the reputation of being secretive and elite
They're more accessible than you'd think. I would never have guessed a recruiter would be placing people at interviews with them either, but it turned out to be as simple as that. Having said that, I didn't actually work for them, and the recruiter told me she heard they hired a really high profile guy from Stanford (I think?) so the bar is extremely high. BUT, you can definitely do it if you're really strong as a programmer, because they are always interested in getting nice code. Just make sure you understand every little detail about what you do.

[Anonymous No.54930945]

>>54930714
>Wish I found out about HFT earlier, by the time I clocked on to it I was nearly done with my electrical engineering degree, it was too late to start the grind to get in to one.
by the way, if you are really interested, if there's a certain role you're interested in I can try to help out if you have any specific questions, I can't answer much about the programming roles but I can give some answers about trading and research
and for what it's worth, I think if you get into a nice place then it's not as bad as OP and some others make out, there are definitely some bad places to work and the hours may be a bit long, but I don't think they're much longer than a lot of other jobs that pay much worse and are much more boring

[Anonymous No.54931357]

anything different about HFT shops other than the tech than say a human professional trader? like is it just all technicals but at an extremely fast level or do they do anything special on top of that? I ask because anytime Ive heard people complain about "algos" or whatever moniker to say its not fair for their personal type of trading honestly just wasnt that good at trading and got beat and were complaining

[Anonymous No.54931389]

>>54925356
how fast is considered high frequency?

[Anonymous No.54931408]

>>54931357
well there are programmers and there are quants.
the programmers just do what the quants tell them to.
the quants have to make observations and if their algos don't improve the 'model', which pretty much all of this is random luck at this point, they get fired.
and if they get it right, they stick around for another year and need to come up with a new idea and get lucky.

[Anonymous No.54931486]

>>54931408
what profitablity % or gain is considered successful? that sounds sketchy as hell if your jon is essentially always on the line makes sense but I would hate it, not that I even would qualify but its sounds pretty fascinating from my comfy home office as a retail trader

[Anonymous No.54931644]

>>54931389
Down to as low as nanoseconds with FPGA

[Anonymous No.54931677]

>>54930856
>>54930945

thanks for the offer anon, doubt I can break in to trading and research though, the odds are stacked against me

>3 years out of university (went to a decent UK uni, but not the elite ones)
>they only hire new grads and people with previous HFT experience?
>unremarkable academic background (only have a bachelors)
>100% a mathlet, I dodged all the mathematically intensive subjects like signal processing

I guess the only way in now is to become a good solo trader and try and show off a good Sharpe ratio or something on a cover letter? Though if I become a good solo trader, what's the point in working for a HFT shop, and solo trader strats probably won't scale up

If I want in at any cost, it would probably be as a programmer

[Anonymous No.54931706]

>>54925356
Sounds like jump trading
Honestly, what did you expect? They are ran by the biggest jews ofc they’d fuck you over

[Anonymous No.54931747]

>>54931644
i imagine at that area its down to order book fulfillment ordering and stuff

[Anonymous No.54931764]

>>54925356

lol anon just buy $peperoni in like half an hour

[Anonymous No.54931792]

>>54931357
prop shops do have manual traders so what you got told in the other post is not correct
The job of the quant researchers is to make sure the traders are actually making good trades, very roughly speaking. Traders and researchers can exist on a bit of a spectrum, though. One way to think of it is that the quant researcher comes up with a big picture idea, and the trader is kind of responsible for manually tending to it. This is important because there are a lot of times you'll need a human with good reaction to spot some signals and step in to manually correct something, and traders are generally their most valuable when they're doing that.
Traders are also really valuable because we can't actually have everything researched and planned out from the get-go. A really good example is the GME stuff, or Elon Musk tweeting about doge. It came up one day kind of out of the blue, and suddenly we've got to react because there's huge volatility and that means profit. But, we don't have time to go and do anything algorithmically, right? We can't do that so quickly so we need the traders to come in, quickly come up with some strategies pretty much on the spot.
>>54931677
>I guess the only way in now is to become a good solo trader and try and show off a good Sharpe ratio or something on a cover letter?
Cover letters don't make a difference desu, they just want something on your CV to say you're good at maths and the rest is not really important, I know for a fact my CV wasn't read at all except for my PhD
If you aren't good at maths though that might be a problem, because you do need strong skills with probability and need to be pretty quick to make it as a trader, and as a researcher you obviously need to be very strong

[Anonymous No.54931848]

>>54931408
I was under the impression HFT was about very simple strategies like arbitrage with very tight profit margins (thousandths of a penny per trade or even smaller) but done at such high volume/frequency as to make massive profits.

[Anonymous No.54931968]

>>54931792
>If you aren't good at maths though that might be a problem, because you do need strong skills with probability and need to be pretty quick to make it as a trader, and as a researcher you obviously need to be very strong

I'm super rusty after leaving university; I haven't touched any advanced mathematics in ages. I could probably get quick at prob/stats if I worked at it, but I'm never going to be IMO medallist tier.

looks like the programming/IT route is for me tbqh, thanks for your advice anon