Salary Expectations For Prop Trading Firms (2024)

5y

5y

5y

Most Helpful

Pokerguy177:

The tier 1 firm is promising 105k base while the tier 2 firm is promising 80k base. The thing is, I think that I would be very above average at the tier 2 firm while I would be at best average at the tier 1 firm. I was wondering which one would be better if I were only looking at compensation.

If you’re really focused on compensation, you should be thinking of where you’ll perform at your best in an abstract sense. That includes the usual suspects of a good boss, strong teammates, other quality of life considerations as well as how advancement looks for top performers. These are intangibles that are often used as justification that “it’s not all about the money,” but even when it IS about the money this can be very important, maybe not in the short term, but maybe so and definitely in the long term.

It’s tempting to go where you think you’ll be above average. But think about the implications and down the line. Maybe you’re not above average right now at the other higher paying place because you weren’t eating and breathing true quantitative skills your whole life like some from different backgrounds, but if you’re passionate about this and work for a few years, why couldn’t you be above average? Yes, of course the others could do the same thing, but you’d be surprised how many promising brilliant people start coasting at some point in their life. Or are you saying you’ll never reach that point no matter how hard you work? Then is prop trading right for you, when the competition eventually kills off you and your firm who never will be able to reach that level?

Furthermore, even if you’re below average still... you’re not competing with these people. If you’re working with brilliant people, the tech stack is probably better. There’s more people you can ask for help if you want to better understand something. Ignore reward for the moment... Don’t you think you would perform better in terms of PnL numbers relative to yourself at the other place? Then if you’re below average and everyone’s throwing up better numbers, doesn’t that just mean the firm as a whole is more likely to do better, so you’re less likely to get stiffed at the junior level?

Anyway that’s my rambling. Remember that those considerations are important. I will agree that salary is not everything, but I figure it’s an important signaling effect for the firm offering it. It’s no coincidence the salaries tend to be highly correlated with the quality of people at these firms. It means they’re more confident in their ability to consistently pay their employees a larger amount because they’re more confident that employee will be worth it, and would rather have him or her be comfortable outside the office so they can kill it every day they’re inside the office.

Just don’t think ONLY in terms of the salary or where you’d be “relatively” better to others... only relative to YOURSELF.

5y

5y

4y

Was this firm Virtu?

I recently got an offer from them that was similar to the one you just described