[HN Gopher] How to Build an Exchange (2017) ___________________________________________________________________ How to Build an Exchange (2017) Author : mksherif Score : 154 points Date : 2023-01-06 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.janestreet.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.janestreet.com) | ttobbaybbob wrote: | 2023 version would have more than one mention of {compliance, | regulat*, accounting} | [deleted] | dang wrote: | Related: | | _How to Build an Exchange (2017) [video]_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27879230 - July 2021 (12 | comments) | hardwaregeek wrote: | I've always been curious whether someone will succeed in using | the same development strategy as Jane Street, namely using a | non-C++ language as their primary language. I suspect OCaml may | have been a very good choice back in the early 2000's simply | because C++ was a much different language and there weren't many | options for other languages. Building up an ecosystem was not a | bad plan because most languages did not have much of an ecosystem | anyways. Nowadays ecosystems are a lot more developed. But on the | flip side, that could mean you could stand to use a language like | Rust that has an ecosystem and interoperability with C++. I know | Tsuru Capital uses Rust but I'm not familiar with any other | firms. | | It also could be that Jane Street succeeded regardless or even | despite OCaml. At the end of the day OCaml isn't going to ensure | that your trading strategies work. It's not going to suddenly | create alpha. But I do suspect they've gotten serious hiring and | marketing returns by using OCaml. And benefited the OCaml | ecosystem as a byproduct, which is a pretty solid side-effect, | even if side effects are not very functional :D | pclmulqdq wrote: | There is a little bit of survivorship bias here: in the 2000's, | the two main languages of HFT were C++ and Java. By 2015, all | the Java shops (and many of the C++ shops too) had failed. Lots | of companies tried to do something other than C++, but most of | them chose wrong. | log_n wrote: | A shell of Allston (formerly big Java shop) lasted until last | year. | codetrotter wrote: | > whether someone will succeed in using the same development | strategy as Jane Street, namely using a non-C++ language as | their primary language | | It's gonna happen and it's gonna be Rust | | > you could stand to use a language like Rust that has an | ecosystem and interoperability with C++. | | Indeed :) | LAC-Tech wrote: | Maybe. Rust as a core language is less productive than ocaml, | by a lot. But Rusts standard library is just so much better | than Ocamls (including Jane Streets version) - which tends to | even it out. | signify1121 wrote: | I have worked for a big (probably more successful) competitor | to Jane Street, that uses in its different offices C#, C++, | possibly some Java that I'm unaware of, and for non-production | systems a very large mix of everything under the sun (Python, | R, etc.) | | The idea that the language is part of their success is simply | absurd. If anything having to have to develop and maintain an | entire ecosystem probably slowed them down more than anything. | hot_gril wrote: | I once wrote one mostly in SQL with a Postgres database. It | behaved pretty predictably with concurrent usage. I wonder how | many trades per second it could do. Postgres itself can handle | a lot of the difficult details, but reinventing those wheels | for trading in particular can probably get you something | faster. | samwillis wrote: | The context here is that Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX and a number of | the other executives (Caroline Ellison and Brett Harrison) were | previously traders at Jane Street. This video is from 2017, a | couple of years prior to the FTX launch. It makes you wander if | any of them were in attendance. | [deleted] | jasonzemos wrote: | While I wouldn't be surprised to see some proactive PR from the | company in the wake of recent events, perhaps including the | post on the zkSNARK competition last month; which was in my | humble opinion one of the few submissions that has truly moved | me since the late 2000's on this site: | | I feel obliged to attest that the people I knew working at Jane | Street at that time were some of the straightest shooters one | could know. My anecdote is that SBF's toxicity didn't originate | in their culture. Perhaps it was a counteraction to it, if | anything. | sdenott wrote: | Can you link zkSnark convo mentioned here? | yellowstuff wrote: | https://blog.janestreet.com/zero-knowledge-fpgas-hardcaml/ | ackbar03 wrote: | Sbf was playing LoL at the same time | NkVczPkybiXICG wrote: | FTX didn't make any of the architectural decisions presented in | this talk. | dcolkitt wrote: | Yeah, as an exchange FTX was pretty terrible. The matching | engine was notorious for being high latency, unreliable, and | having all sorts of undocumented issues. Every algo trader | there will tell you horror stories about trying to cancel an | open order, getting a cancel confirmation, then getting | notified that the order was executed. Sometimes seconds | later. | | What really gave FTX a competitive advantage was its cross- | margining system. It was super easy to post collateral in any | supported asset, and all open positions were automatically | margined against each other. So if you were doing something | like pairs trades between spot and futures, you didn't need | to constantly monitor and manually move capital between the | silos. In hindsight though it's not clear if this was | possible because of better engineering, or just because | Alameda was internalizing all the risk. | CoolGuySteve wrote: | The main advantage of FTX's exchange was that it was far | better than Binance's but that's barely saying anything. | | I'm not sure why crypto exchanges have such lousy | technology. Lost acks, weird parser errors, missing order | id fields, sessions giving no indication that the matching | engine is down, etc. | | It seems like any conceivable way an exchange can break | will be encountered after only a couple months of trading. | It's a complete shit show compared to traditional exchanges | dcolkitt wrote: | There have been a few valiant attempts to build crypto | exchanges with modern technology and matching engines. | Generally the problem these run into is that, while the | algo traders and market makers love them, they have no | competitive advantage in attracting retail order flow. | Trading firms have no interest in just trading against | each other, so without retail flow nothing happens. | hot_gril wrote: | Having worked on several side projects that involve | money, I'll bet most money-related computer systems are | full of race conditions and other wacky behavior. There | are so many gotchas. For example, just writing a simple | "bank account" system/database, it's tricky to ensure in | a performant way that concurrent transactions don't bring | a user's balance below 0. If you're sending out money via | ACH or something, try handling all the ways that can fail | and need to be retried. | | I trade regular stocks in my Chase account. A few times, | it was down for maintenance after-hours, meaning I | couldn't enqueue trades to execute the next day. Not a | big deal, but doesn't inspire confidence. | w1nst0nsm1th wrote: | Because it was all a scam and didn't need to polish | details ? | elmomle wrote: | One of the stranger things coming out of the collapse of | FTX is that it wasn't _all_ a scam; if SBF and co they | had simply let FTX function without giving special | privileges to Alameda, it would have been a pretty non- | scammy crypto exchange (overinflated in value, sure, but | not fundamentally scamming its customers) and they all | could have made great deals of money on that alone. But | of course, that isn't what they did. | vgatherps wrote: | There's a graveyard full of "crypto exchange but built | with good tech", ftx even bought one iirc. | | The market favors move fast, market to retail, etc etc | over spending time cutting microseconds off the 99th%. | | A lot of the exchanges also don't have people who know | what they're doing. Lots of normal startup folks coming | from an environment where "premature optimization is the | root of all evil" and "move fast break things" is the | norm. | bcjordan wrote: | @dang could we get a (2017) added to this? Changes the context | quite a bit given FTX folks worked at Jane Street previously and | a modern version of this talk would have a much different | context. | [deleted] | [deleted] | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | FTX's Gary Wang worked at Google. | | https://www.forbes.com/profile/gary-wang-1/ | | It's intriguing how Forbes 400 list includes criminals. If | someone tricks people into "investing" with them and they | accumulate enough billions of US dollars, and it takes a few | years for the authorities to act, then do they get a spot on | the Forbes 400. What are the rules. | ctvo wrote: | I don't think the context changes at all. This talk is about | high performing systems (millions of requests per second) | written in OCalm. There is nothing here related to the | criminality of FTX or what its non-technical founder decided to | do with customer funds as a business decision. It matters very | little that one or more of them used to work as an analyst at | Jane Street. | paulpauper wrote: | _In 2017 we extended our trading experience, infrastructure, and | technology to digital assets, and we're now trading crypto 24 /7 | around the world. We price all the most actively traded spot | tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum in addition to derivatives | like futures and ETPs, and we trade on almost all major global | market centers, including crypto exchanges and traditional | venues. We're also a major OTC crypto liquidity provider, and our | JCX single-dealer platform provides reliable, integratable | liquidity in digital assets. Our institutional-grade crypto | offering is a natural extension of our deep cross-asset expertise | and our experience trading complex, difficult-to-price | securities._ | | Interesting. Crypto has much less liquidly overnight compared to | other markets, no? How would this work? Coinbase? | Zaheer wrote: | Fun fact: Jane Street, Citadel and other HFT firms pay | exorbitantly. You can see the base salary ($200-300k) posted | public here: https://www.janestreet.com/join-jane- | street/position/4274288... | | Even interns make $120/hr: https://www.levels.fyi/internships/ | delta_p_delta_x wrote: | I'm quite salty about HFTs. I'm a final-year undergraduate with | a bunch of close friends who all love C++ (yes, we're | masochistic that way). They're all really smart, too (me, not | so much--my GPA is 3.00/5). However, after a while, it got | really dull and frankly, a bit exasperating when all the rest | of them could discuss were HFTs, their ridiculous, outrageous | salaries, matching engines, order books, and low-latency | trading. Heck, one of our assignments last year was to write | such an engine in C++. It seems C++ developers are particularly | in demand at most HFTs. | | Some of these companies I have never even heard of before | having entered CS--Jane Street, Citadel, HRT, DRW, Ansatz, Two | Sigma... Their names and websites are cryptic, and their job | position listings are even more so, unless one knows that | they're mostly proprietary traders--in other words, making | money for money's own sake. | | It feels dirty and excessively capitalist--these companies | don't even have products to show for all their effort. Any | clients they _do_ have probably already make millions to | billions, too. | | My friends defend themselves by saying 'HFTs make money by | keeping the market liquid', 'there's nothing wrong with | arbitrage', etc. That's fair, but I still feel that's just | sugar-coating what I said. | | At the same time, I don't really say anything in person to my | friends, because, well, they're friends, and secondly, my lousy | grades make me feel thoroughly unqualified to make any sort of | criticism. | | I personally would rather do embedded, automotive, avionics, or | game engine development. I just wish I had someone to discuss | this with. Hardly anyone I know wants to do these instead, | because the salary is lousy to above average, the hours are as | bad, and especially game development is considered a mostly | rubbish job to have. It really sucks, because I've gamed all my | life and always found video games pretty damn amazing, both | technically and just in general. It was a pretty bad bubble- | bursting moment when I discovered just how bad the game dev | situation was--overwork, crunch, sexual abuse and sexism, bean- | counter-led design and marketing decisions. | | I'm not looking for 100% job satisfaction (I accept even the | most exciting work will have its dull periods), but it would be | _nice_ if the thing I spent 8-10 hours a day doing for a salary | was something that remotely excited me and others, instead of | just mindlessly piping money from X to Y and back just because | it paid half a million a year. | caddemon wrote: | Most people I've met that actually got jobs at top HFTs were | quite curious about a lot of topics in school (and still are | with extra time they have). I'm surprised your friends are so | fixated on HFTs while there are so many interesting and/or | fun other things to spend time on when undergrad on campus. | | A lot of HFTs have their own training programs anyway for the | job specific knowledge, so it is more important to build up | the right base math and/or dev background than to hyper | fixate on HFTs all of undergrad, even if your end career goal | is to make bank. | _dain_ wrote: | >Most people I've met that actually got jobs at top HFTs | were quite curious about a lot of topics in school (and | still are with extra time they have). | | yeah and that's the worst part, they take the brightest | minds of the generation and have them working on moving | money around instead of building fusion rockets | caddemon wrote: | Tbf many of them were pretty jaded/burnt out by trying to | do academic research before fully taking the plunge. I'm | sure there are smart people drawn by the money right out | of the gate, but other fields have also done a really | good job of driving people away. | delta_p_delta_x wrote: | > I'm surprised your friends are so fixated on HFTs while | there are so many interesting and/or fun other things to | spend time on when undergrad on campus | | Many of them were or are interested in other things like | compilers, home-labbing; a couple of them game, too. It's | just that because we're about to graduate, job offers | dominate the conversation, and HFT jobs dominate _that_ | conversation. | caddemon wrote: | Fair enough, the time around graduation can be pretty | stressful for everyone! | rr888 wrote: | > 'HFTs make money by keeping the market liquid' | | Ironically they only really keep the market liquid when the | sun in shining. When there is a big crash and you really need | liquidity most HFTs disappear. | | They have put a lot of highly paid human traders out of | business though which is something. The C++ devs might be | earning a lot but its less than their predecessors. | slymon99 wrote: | Do you have any evidence for this, empirically? I mean yes, | HFTs aren't going to let their orders sit stale when FOMC | announces a giant rate hike, they aren't going to lose a | bunch of money to keep the market healthy. But generally | when vol is high, liquidity is at a premium, so I would | imagine HFTs become a higher percentage of the market | (though spreads are still going to be wider). | Game_Ender wrote: | If you want a good salary with impact and embedded/high | performance C++ look into the self driving field. Check | companies like "Cruise" and "Waymo" and see levels.fyi. It's | not all sunshine and rainbows, but it is making the future vs | simply manipulating the finical system. | delta_p_delta_x wrote: | Thanks for the recommendations. I've applied to more | traditional auto firms (BMW, VW, Mercedes, Volvo), and | hadn't really considered the newer ones. Cruise looks | particularly interesting. | kennend3 wrote: | Have family working there. You can get past 300K fairly easily | once you factor in signing bonus, annual bonus, and "extras". | | They pay VERY VERY well indeed. | Zaheer wrote: | Yup, that figure I posted was just base but we often see | folks getting multiples of that through bonuses. | rr888 wrote: | Its kinda sad though being a great company and the only thing | people know you for is high salaries. Anything else good about | the company? | emptybits wrote: | Jane Street is responsible for the Signals and Threads | podcast[1], which I always enjoy. They also contribute a lot | to the OCaml language, standard libraries, and do a great job | of explaining why OCaml is a great language and paradigm. | I've learned a lot because of Jane Street's sharings. | | I have no connection or interest in Jane Street but this sure | gives me a positive impression of the company. | | [1] https://signalsandthreads.com/ | nequo wrote: | Yaron Minsky, the host of Signals and Threads, is also one | of the two authors of Real World OCaml[1] which is a good | resource on the language. | | [1] https://dev.realworldocaml.org/ | caddemon wrote: | For anyone that did competition math in HS one of the two | authors of the main Art of Problem Solving books is also | high up at Jane Street, on the trading side. JS sponsors | stuff like math prize for girls now. | | Obviously there's a potential recruiting benefit to | funding contests and posting monthly puzzles and whatnot, | but I still think it's a cool vibe that not a lot of | other companies have. | paxys wrote: | They do pay extremely well, but are also very selective. The | kind of talent they are looking for can earn similar salaries | at large tech companies like Google ($400K-500K TC is pretty | common at staff+ levels). | caddemon wrote: | They do a lot of hiring out of school though, so they are | selective but if you make the cut you'd definitely be earning | more at the start of your career. Plus if you perform well | you can make well over 500K TC by the time you would have | been promoted to staff at FAANG, because of bonuses. | kennend3 wrote: | One difference is Google, etc are all doing massive layoffs | and i doubt JS, Citadel, etc will do this. | nequo wrote: | Note though that Citadel is reputed to have a turnover rate | of 100% per year. Their layoffs take care of themselves. | hermitdev wrote: | I spent 9 years there, left a decade ago. Turnover is | high, but this is a gross exaggeration. It is stressful, | and not everyone can hack it. I was there during and | after the '05 layoff when roughly 2/3s of IT was cut. | That's still the worst I've heard of from what I hear | from friends that are still there. | | Ken G definitely does the "Good to Great" getting the | right people on the bus thing, which typically means the | bottom 5-10% are cut, but even that was slowing before I | left. | nequo wrote: | Thanks for correcting me. Did you get a sense of whether | engineers had a higher or lower turnover rate than | traders? | tomjerry777 wrote: | The turnover for engineers tends to be lower than for | traders at citadel and at a lot of quant firms. | | Additionally, the turnover for citadel is not evenly | distributed across teams. Certain teams and orgs have a | lot more turnover than others. Some teams are made up of | people with <=2 YOE at company while others are made up | of people with >=15 YOE at company. | kennend3 wrote: | This! | | My personal background is a "well known hedge fund" and | the turnover there was rather high. | | Many quit because it wasn't "a good fit". | johnmaguire wrote: | Really? Isn't FinTech getting hit harder than just about | any other industry right now? | kennend3 wrote: | First, i dont consider Citadel, JS, etc "fintech" because | they are not in the same line of work. | | " Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", | refers to firms using new technology to compete with | traditional financial methods in the delivery of | financial services. " | | This is NOT what people like CIT, JS, etc. do. | | So maybe FinTech is being hit very hard, but from what i | hear Cit, JS are doing just fine (no real layoffs). | smabie wrote: | Haha yea FinTech would be a pretty derogotory term to | call a HFT firm | ecshafer wrote: | I agree that Two Sigma, Jane Street, Renaissance, etc. | are NOT Fintech. Fintech is a really large umbrella which | seems to includes people like Paypal or Bloomberg and | things like robotraders or companies that deal with some | financial product. Hedge Funds / HFT / Algo traders can | be really sophisticated with their technology, but I | wouldn't call them "Fintech". | nvarsj wrote: | HFT makes money off of volatility. The more the world | burns the more money they make by keeping markets liquid. | durumu wrote: | That's true, in much the sense that doctors make money | off people being sick. In times of high volatility, it's | HFTs that provide liquidity and keep spreads narrower | than they'd otherwise be. It is extremely illegal to | purposefully make markets more volatile; good trading | firms are not going to do that. | paxys wrote: | Smaller companies do layoffs as well. They just aren't as | highly publicized as those at tech giants. Severance | packages are usually worse/nonexistent as well. | | HFT companies also have much higher performance bars and | rates of overwork/burnout. I'm willing to bet that people | are leaving Jane Street, Citadel etc. (whether voluntarily | or not) at much higher rates than large tech companies like | Google. | mmiyer wrote: | True of Citadel, but Jane Street is supposed to have a | solid wlb, and because of the high pay and the few | companies willing to pay at that level, people generally | stick around there. These kind of finance companies also | do better in volatility so they're definitely not laying | off right now. | Ntrails wrote: | I would assume JS has industry standard levels of notice, | non-compete and deferred comp - which will sure help keep | people around | caddemon wrote: | Jane Street definitely does not have a non-compete. | Citadel does though. | | Deferred compensation is probably not relevant to any of | the major quant firms, payment is almost entirely cash. | If you're high enough up to start receiving stake in a | prop firm directly as part of your bonus you are an order | of magnitude above the TC cited by the original comment. | | Of course, the amount of comp you can get is a big reason | people stick around. For that level of earning potential | JS is really good on the WLB front. But it's not going to | be as good as big tech is (or at least has been), since | QT/QR just has different requirements as a field. | boring_twenties wrote: | When I worked at a small prop shop, the cutoff was $400k | TC, after which 50% would go into the fund for N years. | | Currently I work at a large bank. My comp is all cash, | but many of my colleagues get deferred stock | compensation. Not sure what exactly the limit is but it's | definitely much less than, say, $1m. | caddemon wrote: | Might depend on the firm (or times) then, the starting | trader TC is already pushing 600K at HRT, JS, etc. and | many don't let you invest year 1 even if you wanted to. | I'd be shocked if any of the major names made you take | comp as a stake in the fund pre-1m today. | | Large banks are for sure a different story, though I've | heard of other large banks buying people out that they | wanted to hire by offering the equivalent package in | their stock of what the guy would've made in the other | company's stock. | Ntrails wrote: | > Deferred compensation is probably not relevant to any | of the major quant firms, payment is almost entirely | cash. | | Deferred != stock. | | > If you're high enough up to start receiving stake in a | prop firm directly as part of your bonus you are an order | of magnitude above the TC cited by the original comment. | | Fair | caddemon wrote: | Yes you could theoretically delay cash comp over a period | of 3+ years like tech companies do with stock, but I've | never heard of that happening. | | I suppose by the technical definition the year end bonus | cash is deferred comp, but I don't think 1 year is | especially hard to plan around. People might stick out an | extra few months because of it but it's not locking | anyone in for years at a time. Plus even if you | subtracted an entire year from the JS retention rates | they are still quite good. | | Regardless, the amounts cited by the original comment are | only the base which isn't deferred by more than 2 weeks | at a time, whatever your bonus potential is. | Ntrails wrote: | > I've never heard of that happening. | | I have heard of it enough that I assume it is industry | standard (much like the non compete). | | Admittedly I am more familiar with the quant side than | pure dev | caddemon wrote: | Interesting, I only have close friends at a handful of | places so perhaps those are exceptions. Could be a dev vs | trader thing too, I have heard the trader bonuses can get | really nuts so maybe a deferred structure starts to make | more sense at a point. | KRAKRISMOTT wrote: | When they start letting you put your own cash in, you | need cash to start with. | caddemon wrote: | Jane Street does much better at retention than Citadel | and probably many other quant firms. The performance bar | is definitely higher than the average at Google but it's | not like there is no WLB either. | | Because they are more selective about fit to begin with I | wouldn't be surprised if JS has better yearly retention | than most FAANGs. People seem to hop between different | big tech cos quite a bit (pre hiring freezes anyway). | lotsofpulp wrote: | I do not see a way to compare big tech companies and Jane | Street or Citadel, seeing as how the big tech companies | employ many tens of thousands of very qualified people | and Jane Street and Citadel are a couple thousand max. | caddemon wrote: | Yeah there are a lot of differences, I wouldn't normally | bring up the comparison. My point was just that the | turnover is not as bad as the other commenter was | implying. | jrockway wrote: | Where is Google doing layoffs? The latest news I have is | that people are very worried about layoffs, but so far | they've only started putting people on rebranded PIPs. | | The other FAANGs are definitely laying people off, though. | I personally think the recession is a self-fulfilling | prophecy, but regardless of my take on the fundamentals, it | is certainly fulfilling itself and everyone in tech should | be pretty worried right now. This is not the year when | you're going to increase your salary by jumping to a cool | startup as employee #3. | dasil003 wrote: | > _This is not the year when you 're going to increase | your salary by jumping to a cool startup as employee #3._ | | Agreed, you won't get a big salary out of the gate | because unproven startups paying huge salaries are | dropping like flies as the easy capital dries up. On the | other hand, the likelihood of getting in on the ground | floor of the next FAANG is increasing as staffing costs | decrease and behavioral changes increase during a | recession. EV obviously still higher at established top- | of-market companies, but when has that ever not been the | case? | kennend3 wrote: | you are correct, it has not happened yet, but you willing | to bet it wont in the next 6 months? | | https://www.seattletimes.com/business/google-employees- | brace... | | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/22/google-tells-employees- | highe... | DWqRdped wrote: | a high performer at citadel or JS can make 1m in 5 years. i | don't know many people at google make that much. | dasil003 wrote: | Not many at Google receive that much in their offer letter, | but with the stock appreciation over the last decade and | stacked refresher grants, I'd be willing to wager there | were thousands making >$1M as of Nov 2021 (many fewer since | the stock has fallen though). | hansvm wrote: | If Google is offering an initial total cash equivalents | of $300k (say $140k salary, $480k/4 stock, 15% annual | bonus on each), that's roughly the same deal as somebody | else getting a base salary of $300k. The fact that a | particular investment decision (GOOG) can accidentally | push the individual's yearly increase in net worth past | $1M isn't a good way to judge what Google is actually | offering: | | Anyone with a base salary of $300k can obtain a similar | payoff structure by taking out a $550k loan to invest in | GOOG, and taking out additional smaller loans at each | stock refresh. The tax benefits from capital gains/losses | and time-value-of-money benefits from getting your bonus | sooner should handily outweigh the cost of servicing the | loan, but even in a worst-case scenario where you pay | interest for no benefit, that example Google offer would | be a lot more comparable to a $315k-$330k salary, not a | $1M+ salary. | Sevii wrote: | Citadel has 2600~ people, Jane street 2000~ while google | has 150,000~. | selectodude wrote: | Those are low numbers compared to the smaller prop shops that | routinely pay 1MM+. | | Gotta have a PhD in pure math though. That shit is bananas. | smabie wrote: | You don't need a PhD in pure math to get into these prop | shops. | | However they do sometimes pay !MM+ | nequo wrote: | Do you have a source on the $1mn+ figure? I would be curious | to read more about this. | selectodude wrote: | I mean, not really. This is personal knowledge. You can't | really look up salaries because the base is like $175k but | even in mediocre years they're getting high six-figures in | bonus. | | Take a peek at what Wolverine, Radix, or Jump are paying | new grads though. It's generally like $500k+. Even Jane | Street, which is a larger place that hires people who | aren't published mathematicians (see: Sam Bankman-Fried) | pays $750k | caddemon wrote: | Yeah the numbers he posted were also base from JS and | Citadel websites, so they're not reflective of how much | one could (or even guaranteed will with the early career | bonus floors) actually make at those places. | | This is for traders and researchers though. You can get | pretty similar early career salary + bonus as a SWE at JS | or Citadel, which is probably what more people on HN | would be considering. Do you know what kind of pay the | smaller shops offer for pure SWE? | selectodude wrote: | I'm afraid that's out of my purview. Only familiar with | quant traders and researchers. | | I'm sure it's as good or better than big tech. But you | don't get to live in San Francisco and the work is a lot | more boring. | slymon99 wrote: | > You don't get to live in San Francisco | | You get to live in New York City which is unparalleled in | the US in terms of urban amenities. The weather can be | brutal though. | | Or you live in Chicago which is like, still a solid city, | but the weather is even worse. | | I would disagree that trading firms are more boring than | big tech. They are typically much smaller and leaner | (even HRT and JS are like sub 2k?), and generally | employees have massively more impact and ownership as | opposed to being a cog in a 20k developer machine. | laidoffamazon wrote: | I'm more surprised people don't know this. It's the primary | cause for my depression. | matheist wrote: | Anyone know of any open-source exchanges at the level of | sophistication described here? | shakezula wrote: | I wrote an open source one in Go that I'm still working on. | It's never meant for production. The code is at | github.com/dylanlott/orderbook and there's an accompanying | write up on it at dylanlott.com/orderbook if you're interested. | eftychis wrote: | Thank you for the writeup. | [deleted] | jjoe wrote: | Are there any technical books or reading material about matching | engines out there? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-06 23:00 UTC)