Mind going more into this, since you named a specific person? Did he make some prominent statement?
All they've ever done for anyone but themselves is work on the OCaml ecosystem which is not exactly the biggest or most innovative.
I instinctively hear a reply to this in Jeremy Irons’s voice, “We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price”.
Reacting faster than others to markets is not front running. Seeing someone else's order and putting yours in front of it is front running. Traders on the NYSE Floor would hear a big order is coming in, and put their ticket in front of it- that is front running.
In a computerized world, front running has essentially ceased to exist- the last major enforcement actions I could find are from 2003, when there was still quite a bit of trading done not by pushing buttons on a computer but by making phone calls. Trading on inside information is alive and well, but this is not what JS does at all, that's the realm of hedge funds that have traders that still click on buttons.
I never worked at JS, but have worked in MM.
I don't mean to disparage JS and don't necessarily think one way or the other of their actions.
However, you should make yourself aware of their doings in India especially before trashing HN.
https://boringmoney.in/p/jane-street-prefers-arbitrage-manip...
Whether you agree with what they do or not, they have had a sort of mystique about them (tons of money, quant vests, _and_ a niche functional programming language as a daily driver??? Sign me up!) that HN likes.
eg: https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releas...
> The cross-market manipulation involves buying and selling stocks at a loss, allegedly for the purpose of moving the prices of corresponding options, so that Avalon could make a profit by trading those options at artificial prices.
> The Court found that the two alleged manipulative trading schemes-if proven-would violate Sections 10(b) and 9(a)(2) of the Exchange Act and Section 17(a)(1) of the Securities Act.
They were also "banging the close," a common illegal practice: https://www.steel-eye.com/news/jane-street-fine-566.3m-marke...
In general - I am wondering how engineering interviews change in the age of LLMs, Jane Street, tech-wise is a "thought leader", at least having opinions, sharing them is part of how they recruit "the best", i think oxide does this too.
So in some way, in this time of change it makes sense that they are noisy... It also makes sense that the noises they make may filter down...