[organicfigs]

I passed the interviews at one of the top stat arb hft firms and it sounds like there are a couple of responses from similar shops here. One thing people haven't mentioned: pedigree. I passed 3 rounds of interviews and my final interviewer was batting for me, when I didn't get the offer, he said the team was apprehensive because I didn't have the pedigree from MIT/Princeton like everyone else. He wasn't a fan of the decision because he worked at a string of failed startups himself prior to starting there, c'est la vie. Also for the curious, he said the salary range was 400-460k with ~3-5 yoe.

[rokobobo]

A hiring partner at an HFT firm once told me why they had a disproportionate number of people from MIT or Ivy League schools, especially for fresh grads: they selected for intelligence, coding skills etc., but they also needed people who could very quickly focus on the top priority tasks for the firm. (For example, if someone committed buggy code and the firm was losing out on profits because its algorithms weren't running, do you hunt down the bug or do you revert?)

And it turns out that kids from Ivy League schools tend to be very good at constantly being aware of these top-level priorities for the firm. This applied for almost every front and mid office role in that firm: DevOps, algorithm developers, traders, researchers. I can't speak for all the firms out there, but I think at least my friend would happily substitute pedigree for another item on a person's resume that demonstrated experience with running a live system where downtime is very costly.

[keredson]

this. i was involved in a lot of interviewing / hiring at one of the top quant firms. i was shocked at how much this factored in.

[mraza007]

Why does going to good school really matter if you are bringing in top notch skills I think that's one the reason why financial companies are having a hard time retaining good tech talent but they pay really well compared to FAANG