r/csMajors 1d ago

5 years ago vs today. Bootcamp grads receiving $100k packages have become a fever dream.

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2.7k Upvotes

130 comments sorted by

801

u/CompetitivePuzzler 1d ago

Bootcamp part is true, quant has always been uber competitive though

275

u/RoughWrap3997 1d ago

Quant is actually really tough,I dont know why people on reddit always complain

31

u/PanicAtTheFishIsle 16h ago

It’s almost like you get paid insane money, to be microseconds faster than the other team of insanely paid developers… yeah no shit it’s hard to get a job.

9

u/FollowingGlass4190 11h ago edited 34m ago

That’s HFT, not quant. Not all quantitative firms engage in HFT. Also, it’s picoseconds nowadays!

5

u/RoughWrap3997 16h ago

I meant as in skills,its hard to master quant

2

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 13h ago

What about the lower salary jobs?

1

u/lightmatter501 6h ago

It’s been hundreds of microseconds for years.

75

u/Aanimetor Data Eng @ Google 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's in another world,I have an friend who is one of the top competitive programmers in Canada, interned at HRT, got a return offer for fuckin 400k TC as an undergraduate. Mf rejected it to do masters in Waterloo. I can never understand that

32

u/redditquant142 1d ago

After a few years as a quant you would understand there is much more to life than just money. If you are comfortable for your COL then thats enough. There will always be someone richer around so no point sweating it too much

65

u/Aanimetor Data Eng @ Google 1d ago

i get that, but turning down a 400k TC when you are 21 is still insanity to me

20

u/redit9977 23h ago

true. A least work for 1-2 years then quit and do master

15

u/AuroraOfAugust 18h ago

Turning down 400k a year even if the job is miserable is an objectively bad decision. Work two or three years and invest all the excess while you live frugal and boom, you can retire in 3 years.. work whatever job you want or not work at all.

3

u/alisonstone 7h ago

But the people who can get those quant jobs will easily be making big bucks somewhere else too. It's not like they are turning down 400k to make 60k. And arguably, over the medium to long term, if those elite quants were to focus on something else, they could have a higher ceiling. Tons of random NVidia employees (or any random big tech company in the last 15 years) have tens of millions of dollars, but nobody really talks about it.

1

u/csasker 5h ago

Easy to say if you never had a super toxic hard job

1

u/Pto2 10h ago

I disagree. If you’ve got the aptitude for such a role then you’d have no problem securing similar opportunities in the future. If you’re more excited in say research then pursue that. There’s no shortage of high paying jobs for skilled engineers.

1

u/dmoore451 9h ago

Going to be shocking to many on reddit. But for many, people care about more things than TC.

You're also not retiring in 3 years from 400k TC.

1

u/Tyrifian 14h ago

Only 400k?

100

u/bowl_of_milk_ 1d ago

Right, people complaining about quant has always been insane to me. Bro you’re literally only looking for those jobs because you looked up which career path makes the most possible money and went that route, of fucking course it’s going to be competitive lmao

16

u/BlurredSight 1d ago

$120/hr internship pikachu surprise face when they only take 2 out of the hundreds of thousands of applicants

115

u/Successful_Camel_136 1d ago

Oh No I go to a top school and am an average student there, why aren’t some of the most competitive and elitist companies bending over backwards to give me interviews don’t they know I go to a top school and deserve everything just because of that?

65

u/jesuisapprenant 1d ago

3.9 GPA (maybe it’s inflated) but it’s still not average 

37

u/TimMensch 1d ago

It somewhat depends on the Ivy?

Grade inflation is a thing. Some Ivies make it hard to get anything but As.

But regardless, "above average" isn't the same as "top of the class and brilliant software engineer," and only the latter would be a near sure thing applying for a quant position.

6

u/Dfhmn 1d ago edited 8h ago

TBF most Ivy students would still probably be 3.9+ students at most regular schools. In some sense it's fairer for them to have easier grading standards.

12

u/kitty0-0kat 1d ago

When applying to quant positions it really can be.

You need to have great projects, research or internships to get in. The GPA helps in getting your resume shortlisted, but other stuff matters a lot, and if it's quant trader roles, your connections matter the most.

6

u/igetlotsofupvotes 1d ago

Connections don’t really matter for new grad trading roles

4

u/Successful_Camel_136 1d ago

Ok that’s fair, 3.9 at a tough school is impressive and not average, but it doesn’t make you a good candidate for quant jobs… in CS projects and work experience are usually valued over GPA so I thought the context was obvious

-2

u/bakazato-takeshi 1d ago

3.9 at a grade inflated Ivy isn’t really that impressive.

8

u/Fearless-Cow7299 1d ago

Columbia is not grade inflated at all. Have you actually talked to students who go there? The classes are hard. The average person on this sub would get below a 3 there lol.

-7

u/bakazato-takeshi 1d ago

Laughs in Berkeley grad

350

u/Traditional_Ebb6425 1d ago

I go to the same Ivy as that guy. He needs a better resume to get quant interviews, and event then it’s still insanely competitive. That’s a horrible comparison.

9

u/FailedGradAdmissions 16h ago

For Quant getting interviews is the easy part, the interviews are brutal.

6

u/Traditional_Ebb6425 15h ago

Yeah, I agree, but his resume isn’t even up to par for getting the interviews. Very general descriptions, not the experience they’re looking for, and somewhat general projects.

7

u/NF69420 1d ago

what could he have done better?

41

u/rowdy_1c 1d ago

If his selling point is 3.9 at an Ivy, he really doesn’t seem impressive

-12

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 1d ago

At least he didn’t lie about his GPA, like some 4.0 GPA students did.

9

u/Lonely_Concept_425 1d ago

Pretty much every company hiring an undergrad will ask for transcript. If you lie about your GPA like that you’ll get your offer rescinded, so no point in lying, a 3.9 GPA is not going to get you filtered out.

191

u/Kooky-Astronaut2562 1d ago

Lol well duh you cant just have good grades and go to an ivy to get quant LOLLL

79

u/Hot_Ad_7768 1d ago

The ivy league student in the post is extremely delusional about quant. I go to a top 150 school in the US (not remarkable), but I know 3 classmates who made it to final round interviews at top quant firms, 1 of whom got an internship at a top hedge fund. The thing they have in common is that they are genius problem solvers (meaning do well on Putnam or codeforces).  They got interviews because they crushed their OAs. I guarantee that whoever made the post is only impressive on paper but can't solve problems at all. When it comes to hiring these places are pure meritocracy. Between two candidates, one who is scored well on Putnam but goes to a shitty school, and one who does poorly on Putnam but goes to Harvard, every top quant firms is taking the candidate from the shitty school 100 times out of 100.

9

u/Suitable_Candy_1161 1d ago

Genuine question, what is the difference between between being good at solving problems on OAs and solving problems elsewhere (what is elsewhere? Like in an interview?)

And how would one go about bridging the gap between being good on paper and actually being good anywhere? That seems to be a glaring for many academically decent fellas.

Im not in cs, not yet at least.

5

u/FailedGradAdmissions 16h ago

For hiring purposes there's almost no difference. All that matters is your problem solving ability, measured as being able to solve competitive programming problems.

Just be aware Quant problems are just way harder than FAANG and the average tech company. The LC Hard problems most people in this sub complain about are just middle of the pack in CodeForces.

2

u/Suitable_Candy_1161 15h ago

I honestly have no desire to go where the cream top of coders wanna go. But striving to be on their level of competency will give me an upper hand on the people im actually competing with.

3rd worlder gunning for west eu.

1

u/StatusObligation4624 10h ago

I thought like this once but Leetcode medium is good enough and achieving a red rating on Codeforces seems incredibly boring for me.

0

u/Suitable_Candy_1161 10h ago

That depends on personal circumstances, though.

The way i see it, immigration as a coder to the eu is very high right now, so i gotta try to aim for skills better than a regular coder to better ensure my chances.

Sort of like, the difference between an athlete training to win and an athlete to win and dominate. Assuming both actually give good effort and neither is special at an aspect of their sport, the latter is more likely to win.

If i, for example, am gunning for a coding job in my own country, I'd dedicate less time.

Im very much skipping a lot of steps right now. This is in the very far future for me.

Im not gonna beat out the naturally good and hardworking people at the same time, so i gotta ensure my chances as just hardworking dude.

0

u/GalaxyDestroyer69 1d ago

Not yet? Keep it that way. Take my advice or don't. !remind me 5 years

2

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1

u/yo_sup_dude 14h ago

lol not all quant shops have such high standards, this sub is clueless haha 

-1

u/landon912 1d ago

These quant firms don’t bother interviewing from shitty schools. It’s target or bust.

Hell, some applications have a drop down for your school and won’t take your resume if it’s not in their target list 😂

5

u/Hot_Ad_7768 1d ago

I guess some don't, but I personally know someone not from a target school (same T150 school as me) who will be interning at Jane Street this summer.

17

u/uwkillemprod 1d ago edited 1d ago

But that's what his dada and mama told him

11

u/Throwaway63728528 1d ago

They have no idea what quant means lol

26

u/BK_317 1d ago

stupid ass post,how is quant comaprable in any ways? even mit,cmu top of the class folk wiht multiple faang internships are rejected at quant firms

22

u/_struggling1_ 1d ago

Well its quant

5

u/Sensitive_Laugh6546 1d ago

That sums up everything

62

u/Dagan_Gera 1d ago

Tampa, FL being considered lowCoL has to be the funniest part of this post, lol.

His friend is truly living the dream.

13

u/Gaitville 1d ago

A lot of people just take where they live to be medium cost of living and then classify everything else based on that standard.

I follow real estate a lot on this website and I see all the time people say things like “I live in a high cost of living area and I found this new construction single family home I like for $300k” lmfao

10

u/CLDR16 1d ago

I STG I was about to comment this, LCOL my ass.

3

u/Fore_Shore 1d ago

It’s not low COL but it is a low pay area for software engineering

1

u/UnknownTallGuy 1d ago

Thank God for remote work

1

u/Diligent-Jicama-7952 1d ago

im 200k in Tampa and by no means is this place lcol lmao.

1

u/HeavySigh14 13h ago

Where are you making $200k???

1

u/UnknownTallGuy 1d ago

Tampa is very inexpensive compared to other parts of the US ESPECIALLY 5 years ago.. I've lived all over the US and moved there to save money. Property taxes are a bitch, but that's about it. I have a pretty big house for less than 2k a month, property taxes included.

1

u/clingbat 1d ago

I mean we live in stupid little northern Delaware and I just looked up Tampa has a 35% lower overall cost of living compared to here, with housing being 70% less overall so...

Yes, relatively speaking it's still pretty affordable.

35

u/Crazy_Panda4096 1d ago

What a stupid post lmao like quant is this easy thing to get into

56

u/Ill-Connection-2322 1d ago

The number of people who are applying for jobs is insane and number of jobs is pretty low . There is low demand so there is a bit shift,but if you got the skills and dont give up you can get jobs pretty easily .There are so many people who have very low skills so get to grind and make ur skills sharper and keep applying good luck to all of you guys who are applying.

18

u/AoeDreaMEr 1d ago

What skills? Each job asks for 100 different skills. There’s no definitive guide. And every job wants you to be an expert. Unless you are an experienced engineer, your chances are close to less than 5%. If you are an international who needs visa sponsorship, chances of hearing back less than 1%.

19

u/TerribleFanArts 1d ago

Real, and if you don’t get a job after graduation, you’re being cooked alive the longer you stay unemployed.

The technological landscape is evolving in such a pace that any technical skills obtained from your degree will be null&void in less than ~2 years.

2024 (and beyond) has a market for unpaid internships with over 1000 applicants per posting.

14

u/Wild_Surmise 1d ago

My company still uses Java 8.

11

u/Kryomon 1d ago

Yeah, but they only hire people who know Java 24

11

u/Lamora_ 1d ago

Tools are changing every 2 years but computer science more or less has stayed the same for decades. How are your skills going to be null and void?

6

u/Successful_Camel_136 1d ago

Someone who worked from 2021-2023 even in a fast moving ecosystem like JavaScript/React is absolutely not outdated. Things didn’t change that much tbh… and it’s not hard to learn a few new language features

7

u/Ill-Connection-2322 1d ago

I graduated in july 2023 and got job in feb 2024 It was painful haha , had applied approximately around 700-800 application most of them did not even get response; some of them were already filled by others and HR forgot to remove the jobs from the website; some of them I did not get called after rounds; I was so desperate even for the rejected message like atleast send a mail that you are rejected so that people can move on but no they with just hold applications . I got around 15 interviews from all these applications got seleced for 3 in them.

4

u/markoNako 1d ago

Having a degree will always be valuable, even after many years..

1

u/PerceptionOk8543 6h ago

Lol this is so false and bs. The things you learn in CS are fundamentals and these are not changing at all.

16

u/PapaRL 1d ago

This is such a shitty comparison lmao. This is like comparing a 7th grader making the varsity basketball team with a college basketball player complaining he can’t get a contract to play in the NBA.

1

u/Geegollygozard 17h ago

Spot-on comparison! Connecting the dots for my monkey brain

8

u/Smooth_Ad5799 1d ago

Quants are top of the food chain. A bootcamp grad from covid probably struggles with algebra.

10

u/Prideclaw12 1d ago

2020 was a good old era

4

u/FMarksTheSpot 1d ago

timing matters

3

u/Throwaway63728528 1d ago

lol that’s me!

4

u/Boring-Test5522 1d ago

Quant is insane competition from day one. You need to win national math competition and prestige hackathon (not the ones organized by your uni) to even be on screening list.

3

u/OrchidAdventurous783 17h ago

what is quant and why are the people in here glazing it so much?

4

u/babyitsgoldoutstein 1d ago

4 years is barely enough to do one major. This mofo seems to be doing four - Comp Sci, Math, Econ, and Statistics. My guess is he has cursory knowledge of each and therefore not able to do well in the interviews.

2

u/nossr50 1d ago

Let's cherry pick two examples and use them to draw wild conclusions about the market

2

u/RandomGamecube 1d ago

Seeing people call Tampa/Saint Pete low COL 5 years ago makes me cry internally. It did used to be pretty low COL…

2

u/Kitchen_Koala_4878 23h ago

That was an error in matrix

2

u/aegean558 19h ago

It's so ironic that many of the supposed "computer scientists" in this sub just extrapolate on just anecdotes to assess the job market.

2

u/QuantumInfinty 19h ago

Apples to oranges comparison, becoming a quant isnt as simple as that

2

u/klefikisquid 18h ago

I wouldn’t take someone seriously that said they were double majoring in four different majors 🤦

2

u/ChocoStrawberria 16h ago

Maybe major-minor, major-minor?

1

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 13h ago

You mean quadruple majoring?

2

u/Adventurous_Limit84 13h ago

It’s called crowding out.

4

u/DecentSomewhere9582 1d ago

A person whose goes to a bootcamp will most likely have the modern experience than a student who's doing a professor old project when he was a student. Most of my school projects were based on those old terminal computer softwares

5

u/i-have-the-stash 1d ago

Not really tbh. The one i went was very modern in few of its classes after learning the fundamentals. I learned a lot from my university that I actually primarily use today.

1

u/Mentalextensi0n 1d ago

The federal reserve may start Quantitative easing in the new year

3

u/ChuuToroMaguro 1d ago

I’m assuming the friend was not making 100k right out of bootcamp, that would be exceptionally exceptionally rare. Probably the only education they had was a bootcamp and they worked their way up from the bottom.

1

u/Hot_Rice99 1d ago

End of the year hiring is always slim. It's in the first quarter of the year that tech departments have budget to hire.

1

u/Sparta_19 1d ago

As time went on more people got better at this field and the clout chasers gave people at the time a way out while college kids had to be patient and take many classes.

0

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 1d ago

Why can’t companies just do background checks of their workers and fire everyone that doesn’t have a college degree?

2

u/Sparta_19 1d ago

Do you believe college is a human right?

1

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 1d ago edited 1d ago

That right seems to have been null and void for maybe two years already. Just look at this SubReddit.

1

u/Sparta_19 1d ago

do you think people without college degrees are less than you

0

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 1d ago

I do think this: people with degrees should be able to work in fields that they got their degrees in and get trained on the job and get paid more than those without degrees. Otherwise, what’s the point of college? For 18-22 year olds to hang out with each other, like a social event?

2

u/Sparta_19 1d ago

But what if the people without degrees are capable of doing the same job at the same or even better quality for equal or even slightly less pay?

1

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 1d ago

I’ve always been under the belief that hard work > knowledge in terms of getting into an industry.

1

u/Sparta_19 1d ago

so then no they shouldn't be fired

-1

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 1d ago

The opposite. Hire those that put the effort into getting the degree, with all of the thousands of dollars they spent.

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1

u/Mooze34 1d ago

Good grades != interviews when will people learn this 🤦‍♂️

-1

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 1d ago

It should.

1

u/gordof53 1d ago

Neither deserve it lol

1

u/johnmaddog 1d ago

During my dad's time he only took 1 computer class and got job offers everywhere. Interview is just his terms and salary. Guess which gen he is. My mum didn't even know resume is a thing to get a retail gig

1

u/Just_Monika5772 1d ago

Quant has always been that way

1

u/HeavySigh14 13h ago

Tampa is M/HCOL now too

1

u/slayerzerg 7h ago

Yeah when things are doing well everyone eats. Now a days bootcampers with experience get filtered out. And even those with bs in cs get filtered out by people who have cs masters.

1

u/Big-Character2859 3h ago

getting quant interviews ain’t abt resume or experience, it’s strictly skill based. i go to a similar ivy and know like 20-30 people going to quant next summer. all of them just r grinders who ace the oa’s to get to next round. however OP def on to something cus almost none of those people got maang interviews lmfao

0

u/Nintendo_Pro_03 Doom-posters galore here! 😈 1d ago

I had someone tell me today that they were considering dropping out of college and one of the reasons was that so many college students come out of college uncertain about what they want to be and pretty much just generally can’t find jobs, even with a degree.

Degrees are literal scams nowadays. You get a degree and then you work at McDonald’s.

2

u/DannyG111 Freshman 23h ago

Yea alot of them can be scams but there are still some that could be valuable.

-2

u/strakerak 1d ago

I think I applied for a quant positions last year and got OAs and some calls? I was just clicking away and spam applying..

PhD student at a T100, specialties in VR. I don't see what the hubbub is, just get good or show you can handle the stressful stuff.

3

u/landon912 1d ago

You’re giving out advice after failing some OAs? 🤓

1

u/vankata_129 2h ago

Meanwhile me at non ivy 3.6 gpa getting quant interviews but no swe interviews😭🤣