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You get a text from your Jane Street interviewer. It's your 7th round.
"Meet me at Panda Express. Southwest corner of Penn Station. 5 pm.
"When you arrive, you see a guy in a quarter-zip Patagonia. He's staring intently at the menu behind the counter. Without breaking his gaze, he says: "You see the person scooping rice? What's the implied vol on his allocation per serving?
""I don't know his variance. ""Sample size of two weeks, 10 shifts. Standard deviation is 25 grains of rice. Annualize it.
"You mentally crunch the numbers and spit out the answer. You get it wrong. No offer for you. The quarter-zip heads for the door.
You drown your sorrows in a heaping plate of black pepper sirloin steak. No, this did not happen. It's a made-up, exaggerated scenario. It's my attempt to tap into a viral trend where the punchline is how zany and mathematically difficult Jane Street interviews can be.
The meme started earnestly enough, with an X post from Deedy Das, a partner at the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. He posted about Jane Street's reported record trading haul, and — more crucially — shared his own harrowing and ultimately futile sixth-round interview. The internet public took it and ran with it. Each subsequent viral quote-response seems to be more absurd and seemingly fake than the last.
Some of my favorite highlights:Each tribulation ends with the subject not getting an offer — unable to meet the lofty mathematical standards of the interviewer and Jane Street. So what's the big deal about Jane Street? Why is its interview process such a lightning rod for imagined hilarity?
First and foremost, the firm's $40 billion in trading revenue last year was the most ever, beating out every single A-list Wall Street bank. It functions as a market-maker, matching up buyers and sellers across all sorts of asset classes. From ETFs to bonds to stocks, the firm greases the wheels of trading activity. Second, Jane Street employees get paid.
A recent analysis from Bloomberg found that the firm distributed $9.4 billion in compensation in 2025, more than double the previous year. That comes out to $2.7 million per employee, on average. Oh, and did I mention that entry-level employees get salaries in the $250,000-to-$300,000 range? With pay like that, it's easy to see why the firm is so selective and demanding when recruiting.
Land a gig, and you're financially set. And maybe one day you'll get to conduct your own madcap interviews. Now if you excuse me, I need to go meet my Jane Street interviewer at the M&Ms store in Times Square. I think they're going to ask me how many individual candies can fit inside a Boeing 747. Click here to read more about Jane Street's viral moment.
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