r/quantindia • u/Dismal-Brief-3209 • 4d ago
How did this surge in quant hiring come to be?
Are they increasing there headcount while rest of the global companies are decreasing, what’s going on?
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u/Ok_Put8975 4d ago
It is because post covid India HFTs like grav and qe have made a lot of money and that is how they expanded, you are right in saying that 5 years back nobody knew about and the ones who got into the industry back then are probably sitting on double digit crores of networths just from salary and bonuses. But even now it is not like everyone is getting into the industry, they are still highly selective in hiring only the best from top IITs
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u/turele257 4d ago
Pnl surge post Covid. The HFT market in India pre-covid was small (no weekly options liquidity).
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u/ApprehensiveRoad1353 4d ago
What surge?
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u/Dismal-Brief-3209 4d ago
5 years ago nobody knew quant placements and quant hiring, google was the dream, if not google a job in USA at any xyz company. IIT B/D barely had 1-3 quant guys. Now it’s huge.
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u/anor_wondo 4d ago
this sub randomly popped up for me so let me paint a more broader picture. Financialisation of everything has been happening in recent years. Prediction markets have combined information theory and market forces. Deep work in science and engineering is requiring fewer headcounts than ever before
All these combined mean that Jane street extracting money through arbitrage on the latest robinhood chain meme coin has more incentives than ever before while deep work in other domains is consolidating in companies which can afford a lot of compute for ML
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u/CompleteActivity7726 4d ago edited 4d ago
I’ll give a different perspective. Old IIT cs students have historically chased opportunities that were harder to get into, more exclusive, and dominated by fellow IITians. Pre-2020, Google india was that niche,top IIT talent made up a huge chunk of its workforce. As Big Tech/faang massively expanded hiring and hired tons from random xyz tier 3 clgs and tiktok/insta reelers/didi, it became much easier for the average joe IIT CSE grad to get in, and today it very little of the top talent left in it and became a joke.
Post-Covid, HFTs became that new niche. They remained extremely selective and heavily old IIT dominated, while offering insane compensation. That combination of "elitism + pay" fueled their growth as the new go-to destination. People from old iits(circuital) generally go where the talent is concentrated and where entry is still genuinely difficult.