Why Jane Street plays musical chairs with its traders
The culture at electronic trading firms thrives upon quick and easy communication. Inciting conversations on the trading floor isn't an exact science, however, and Jane Street CTO Ron Minsky recently revealed on his Signals & Threads podcast that the firm experiments with its seating plan just like it experiments with trading strategies.
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Minsky says working on the Jane Street trading floor means having "lots of people, all physically close to each other," in order to make it "really cheap" to have a conversation with them. The closer they are, the easier to talk, of course, so Minsky says "we periodically reorganize where people sit and move groups around."
Small tweaks, he says, can have a "surprising" impact. By moving certain groups closer together, and two groups further apart, "it changes the communication pattern in a really surprising way."
There's also a logistical element to it as Jane Street expands, but it seems like hiring has slowed a little. Minsky says Jane Street has 2600 employees, which is roughly the same as they had at the start of the year.
UX designer Erin Murphy, Minsky's interviewee in the podcast, says people at Jane Street are "really receptive to communicating and having casual moments." While you're more likely to speak to people that you're sitting next to, she says it's also very easy to go and visit someone's desk.
Jane Street also looks to optimize communication through technology. Murphy said that Jane Street has a new Slack channel alerting you to how far away your colleagues are. You can be told a distance in metres, or that "this person is two floors above you."
Despite Jane Street seemingly slowing its pace of hiring, UX is an area it's looking to grow. Minsky says Jane Street is "actively looking to add more people to that team."
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