[caddemon]

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_]

>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]

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]

> 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]

Fair enough, the time around graduation can be pretty stressful for everyone!