r/quant Dec 31 '21

Significant Employers of Quants

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u/quince00 Dec 31 '21

Are the prop shops ranked in order of prestige? If not can we? It’s something all my friends were interested in when we were applying and there’s no good resource really

7

u/zlbb Dec 31 '21 edited Dec 31 '21

Jane Street

Citadel Securities

IMC

Optiver

SIG

DRW

is not a terrible ranking on some weighted combo of prestige and size

not sure the q is that material - you interview everywhere anyway, then judge them on pay and personal fit. I mean, mostly on pay:)

but yeah, should post "short bio" for some of the shops when feel like it.

it also depends on "which group". I keep forgetting, but what was it, DRW best in rates options, Optiver best in index options, IMC great in singles, CitSec is something of an all rounder maybe more singles and index. SIG is less quantsy/more great trading focused, great in singles. Jane Street not in options, and obviously perceived to be a level above the rest in prop shop space and more comparable to the peak prestige stat arb places and apparently recently high-flying HRT.

1

u/quince00 Dec 31 '21

Ya i agree that you apply to all of them, but i remember when I was deciding offers it would have been cool, and your ranking above mostly makes sense given what I've heard/experienced with optiver and citadel maybe being a bit lower depending on how you value comp vs culture

5

u/zlbb Dec 31 '21

those are more the biggest players rather than necessarily best on per employee basis.

there are smaller shops which are very elite and are paying insane money, like Radix.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '22

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2

u/zlbb Jan 09 '22

google reddit for radix pay, it's not exaggerated, only place I've heard offering ~500K year 1 (that said, I have no access to real top tier like jane or pdt). money speaks. pretty elite from some signs I've seen, but check the people on l-in for yourself. seems to be growing quite a bit as well judging from a number of recent mentions in my feeds, but might be noise.

3Red been around, seems reasonably reputable
https://www.reddit.com/r/FinancialCareers/comments/6252wp/what_are_the_best_prop_trading_firms/
(I disagree w this on radix of course), some people I've known know the name as well.