Jane Street vs. Optiver
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wow congrats on the offers
Both are great firms, congrats.
1) Jane Street will likely have the better brand name recognition outside of finance, and especially if you want to do tech afterwards, people are more likely to recognize that you passed through their vetting interview process which is actually somewhat challenging.
2) This is awfully hard to say. Prop is awfully eat what you kill. At Optiver the biggest cull comes early, so if you get an offer after your internship and manage to last a year, the median time to stay increases dramatically. I am not completely sure what Jane Street's typical tenure is like, but I imagine it's also fairly difficult to presume you'll stay there a priori.
3) This forum is predominantly overrun by two types of users. The bulk is going to be college students or bored IBD analysts that really don't have a clue what they're talking about. These people will say "Jane Street is so much better!", but their only basis for that is the interview process. The other type is an infrequent poster that pops up right as recruiting season is over and lauds a particular type of firm. These are the firms' employees. I've recognized Optiver employees show up in Optiver vs ???? threads and I'm 95% sure that the same can be said for Jane Street. Be wary.
There are pros and cons to each. The guy that does education at the U.S. Optiver branch is great and you seriously learn a lot in their internship program. The amount and variety of mock trading you do seriously can't be understated. Jane Street will have you working on more projects and the office partakes in a variety of strategies so if options MM isn't for you, you aren't SOL.
Chicago vs New York is also a factor. Having been in both cities, I can say that I loved Chicago (the summer is to kill for) and the cost of living gets you a lot more bang for your buck. The high end food scene is also actually comparable to New York.
The biggest appeal of New York is the people there. I had many more friends come here and to be completely honest it seems that every random person on the streets of Manhattan went to some top college and is incredibly interesting and motivated. Socially and professionally this is a big plus.
Grats again on the offers.
Your synopsis of NYC vs Chicago is pretty much spot on. I agree that NYC has a lot of intelligent accomplished people with varying interests. In Chicago it was boring and frustrating to be surrounded by Big 10 alums whose entire lives revolved around college and pro sports and had no interests outside of sports. It became really stale after a while. Having said that, it's still a great city, and the high QOL and low COL are to die for.
I'm not sure why you think Optiver is very generous with compensation. I couldn't find the latest annual report but as of several years ago Optiver's mean compensation was quite low http://www.amsterdamtrader.com/2011/07/optiver-financial-and-legal-repo… (note the numbers are in Euros which was considerably higher versus USD in 2010/11). Obviously traders will earn more than more than IT/back office but that isn't consistent with most traders at Optiver are getting huge bonuses. I'm not really sure what average compensation at Jane Street is like but my guess is that the section on earnings potential here is written by Jane Street employees/applicable to Jane Street https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/trading-in-qua….
From what I've heard Jane Street doesn't have individual PnLs and bonuses aren't particularly closely tied to individual or desk performance at least relative to other prop firms. I believe turnover is also quite low and they rarely fire traders although they are somewhat selective in giving full-time offers to interns.
http://www.amsterdamtrader.com/2015/06/optiver-killed-it-in-2014-2.html
Also i know roughly what '15 looks like for them.
As for compensation specifically, it is literally a profit share based on their "marbles" system, so when the firm does well, employees do well.
100MM isn't that much considering the size of Optiver. It seems Virtu spends >500k/employee on compensation (source:http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-2PR09O/1058843506x0xS104746…) and this site claims that is typical of London HFT offices http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/199934/want-job-high-frequency-…. The data seems to come from here https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house. In terms of outliers, GETCO appears to have spent 1.7 million on compensation per employee in 2008! Obviously GETCO paid less as it became less profitable but it appears it still spent over 500k/employee in 2011.
None of this data is from Jane Street but to me it suggests that Optiver isn't a leader in terms of compensation.
Your previous post history suggests that you have very little valuable insight into options market making compensation, so you should probably stop spreading misinformation when all you can offer is speculation on really old data.
Do you realize how much shit has happened since 2011? Firm A > Firm B in Year X doesn't matter; Optiver made 10 MM in 2009 but you would've gotten blown out if you bet against them recovering over the next few years.
Lots of people here don't know what they are talking about.
Unlike former Getco or Virtu where most of their employees are quant traders or algo developer(=included in the whole bonus pool), only 1/3 of Optiver employees are traders. So it doesn't make any sense to compare average or median bonus from Optiver to other algo firms where devs are also traders and vice versa. If you are a trader in Optiver, you get paid way more than the average bonus.
I can confirm that Optiver killed 2014 & 2015, and compensation was pretty generous compared to other firms (especially for more junior(non-partner) guys).
Yeah, Optiver is generous when they have great years. And unlike other firms where the top guys get a lion's share, Optiver pays well to junior guys as well. I know people there who were able to make $300K their first year out of college; a few of them are now semi-retired and pursuing their own ventures.
Don't underestimate your cost of living, especially housing. You'd have to make north of 1.6-1.8x as much in NYC just to be on par with Chicago.
This is true. However, with that said, for most people right out of college, the sacrifice of square footage might be worth it. I would have a bigger apt if I decided to stay in Chi town but to be completely honest my quality of life isn't that much lower in that regard - having a roommate is totally fine and actually kind of fun.
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