Quant Shop tier list

(Personal opinion based on consensus gauged online + speaking with quant alumni at my university) S: Renaissance. Medallion did about 66% gross a year for thirty years and nothing since has come near it. you won't get in, nor will I, they're 300 people and took their last outside money in 2005. Jane Street made more trading last year than any bank on earth and pays new grads accordingly. also the lot who gave us SBF and Caroline Ellison, so make of that what you will. HRT is much the same work with fewer stories in the press and marginally humbler offers. S-: Citadel Securities pays absurdly well and everyone who's been there mentions the hours before anything else, which rather makes the point. Jump had a miserable time in crypto and says nothing about the rest of the business, though it's plainly still elite underneath. XTX is quietly the most impressive of the lot, number one in spot FX with barely 300 people. it only sits here because there are hardly any seats to be had. A: D.E. Shaw would be a tier up if it paid prop money, the fund itself is about as reliable as this industry offers. Two Sigma is having a wretched time of it, founders at each other's throats, a co-CEO gone in April, a $90m fine from the SEC, and yet the research name still opens doors. Optiver is the pick of the Dutch shops if options are your thing.. SIG teaches options better than anyone and makes you play a hundred hours of poker while they're at it, pay is meh relative to S tier. IMC is a decent seat people tend to drift out of after a couple of flat bonuses. DRW nobody seems to leave, which tells you more than any comp thread would. B: Millennium is a superb business and a fairly brutal place to sit, lose 5% and half your book goes, lose 7.5% and so do you. Tower depends entirely on which pod takes you, some eat very well and the rest wonder what happened. Maven Securities is a proper London options shop that never gets a mention, underrated. Akuna is the best of the newer Chicago names, still a rung under SIG. AQR is full of genuinely clever people on asset management pay, and that's the whole story. C and D: you’ve probably never heard of them.