Akuna Capital

Opportunity to learn about the high-frequency trading industry and its leading-edge HFT tech stack. Comfortable office with a full-service coffee bar, kitchen, and frequent catered meals.

Chaotic, unstable organization with very high levels of turnover, frequent layoffs, and insensitive hiring/firing practices (even a history of rescinding offers days before a new hire's start date).

Bonuses are on the low side compared to peers. Limited upside career growth potential.

Myopic, clubby leadership team that doesn’t invest in developing its people, preferring to favor a handful of insiders who were amongst the firm’s original hires when it was a start-up. Many of these people are unqualified to be in the leadership roles they occupy (CTO and CEO).

As noted in pros, Akuna’s tech stack is modern and leading-edge, as you would expect at a tech-centric HFT firm. However, the hundreds of repos and revolving door of engineers has produced a bewilderingly complex and fragile platform with a heavy technical debt load. Lots of support hours are required to fix code other people wrote who are long gone. Not fun!

Hiring strategy is centered on recruiting a large number of smart interns and graduates from top schools, most of whom need sponsorship. They work them hard, pay them modestly, and then repeat when most of those people leave to make more money elsewhere in 1-3 years. Beware of joining as an experienced hire, senior engineer, or engineering manager! You will be disappointed and likely looking for a new job in a year or two, perhaps involuntarily.

Don’t just pay lip service to developing, empowering, and investing in smart, talented, ambitious people. Pay people more competitively. And most importantly, treat people better!

Pay people more competitively!