I don't really blame them for not picking me, clearly whatever they've been doing has been working. I'm not entitled to a job from them, obviously. I don't really know what a "top tier" university is, but I can say for sure that my undergrad (WGU) wouldn't count as that.

The PhD I'm in is from a more prestigious university [1], and I guess FAANG experience isn't enough to snag an interview with them.

[1] University of York, though I don't know if that counts as "top tier" either.

I've heard stories of professors getting letters in the mail from RenTech totally out of the blue. They pay so well that I'm surprised they even accept applications. Don't feel too bad about not passing their bar. What they've accomplished is essentially unheard of, and believed to be impossible by a lot of market theorists.

If it makes you feel better, my CV isn't even good enough to get a FAANG interview..

Really?

Google harasses anyone with a live linkedin profile.

Getting to an onsite interview is a different matter though.

I know 3 people at google, all senior, either SE or people managers.

None had brilliant academic records.

One took almost 10 years to finish his sociology adjacent undergrad.

He's the most "successful" and has been there for almost 15 years, 10 in the states.

The others have been there for like 5.

Make of this info what you wish...

I forgot to say, none were technically amazing, just good, one not even that but not awfull either.

None had impressive intelligence either.

I worked at Apple as a college dropout, and got an offer from Google I didn't accept also as a dropout.

Both of them only really cared more about work history and my ability to solve whiteboard problems. Pretty much all the interviews ended up "what's another clever way to use a hashmap?"

I read you do not apply, rather you get recruited.

That is what they said about Google....

And RT has been around for about twice as long as Google. Has a headcount of around ~300.

It's truly inspiring that they've been able to keep their headcount low over a long period of spectacular success.

Most organizations would have choked themselves on tens of thousands of bad hires long ago.

Probably because it was run by mathematicians who I assume have no love for managing lots of people.

Combine that with how most the company spend all their time thinking about making money and that's probably why the company never succumbed to bloat

I think you're right.

I also think they have sufficient career progression (in terms of problems solved and $$$ earned) that nobody feels the need to build a big team. Pure speculation though, I know nothing about RenTech except that the pay is... generous.

That's one thing I find interesting about hedge funds and (some, not all) finance organizations: their ability to make huge amounts of money with small staffs. IIRC RenTech's revenue per employee is something entirely absurd, in the millions.

It's just leverage. You can leverage people, capital, technology. Many companies were built leveraging large numbers of people. Many companies leverage technology. Many companies leverage capital. Gotta lever up.

Yep, they don't have products they need to maintain. Just enough infra to figure out the next profitable trade. Once heir models stop being ahead the curve, they can be just scrapped.

The incentives at rentec favor low employee counts. The main fund is both limited to insiders and limited in total capital, so every new hire is judged by how much they can improve returns, if they cost more than they improve, than they're a pure net negative.

This is different from most orgs who can grow revenue through expansion of some sort, in which case the incentive often favors adding new employees. Not to mention the tendency for people in tech to be evaluated by how many people are in their org, further incentivizing adding headcount to signify your importance.

We had leaks from even the NSA...But never from the RT fund.

There are leaks.

Could you share some?

From Wikipedia: “Employees: Classified (est. 30,000–40,000)”

Obviously the number of people working on the super secret stuff is smaller, not to mentioned each project has a compartmentalized staff, but keeping secrets at this size is going to be a tough ask. They seem to do a pretty good job, but we know they’re not infallible at it. I imagine RenTech at 1/100th the size would have a vastly easier time.

That and I believe RT has a low turnover rate.