Jane Street INSIGHT in NYC 💼💡✨

Let me start from the beginning…

Before the event, I really didn’t even want to go. I had already attended a bunch (just 3 lol) of other programs earlier, and I was like, “Okay, that’s enough. Too much. I should be chilling right now.” But something in me was like, “Valary, it’s New York. Again. It’s Jane Street. Again. Prestige. Flex. Vibes.” You know what I mean? And so I went. Whatever. (Also, Chilling? As an international student? Please. What’s that😆) 

✈️ Flight: Off to NYC (in the wrong shoes)

 Funny story: on my way to the airport, I realized I was wearing my friend’s shoes instead of mine😭. Me and my friend bought matching shoes, just different sizes. I visited her before my trip, and when I left her place, I accidentally wore hers. I didn’t even notice until I was at security like, “Why are my shoes coming off so easily, so often? Are these not the right socks??” And then it hit me: THEY WEREN’T MY SHOES.

They were slightly bigger, but I survived. Shaky start. 

Also, a rare miracle happened: my flight was at 1pm, not the usual odd hours - 4am or 5am like the chaos I’m usually booked on. A normal, human departure time…Thank you, Jane Street logistics team🙏🏾.

At the airport, I got myself a $5 Dunkin’ meal, just because I’m a loyal Dunkin’ stan. French vanilla cold brew? Elite. (Also, I really needed to use the bathroom on the plane but had to signal four times before they let me go. Not me fighting for my life just to pee.)

🚘Arrival: Chauffeur Things

I landed in NYC and Jane Street had sent a whole chauffeur to pick me up😳

He was driving a black sedan (I forgot the car brand, but it gave luxury). He texted me as soon as I landed, asked where to meet, and picked me up so smoothly. There was bottled water in the back. He asked if the temperature was okay and offered me gum. I felt like royalty😌

I also somehow turned this whole ride into a deep convo about his past life as a restaurant chef👨‍🍳. I don’t even know how it happened. But we talked about dishes he used to make, restaurant culture in New York, and food recommendations. I didn’t understand half (honestly all) the recipes he mentioned, but I listened, like I always do. And honestly, I realized something:

I think I really have good people skills, like, I just connect easily. Whoever it is, I find myself turning small moments into real conversations. I think that’s something special, about me😉

Anyway, we got to the hotel (Marriot Downtown.) It was really nice. Let’s fast forward.

Day 1: OCaml Confusion 💻🧃

We (no, I) headed to the Jane Street office early. Breakfast was served. I was excited to grab what I thought was a pork sausage patty (my fave🤩), but it turned out to be some MorningStar veggie patty nonsense😭. It tasted so weird, but I ate other stuff that saved my plate. Still, violation!😭

During the welcome session, I asked the very first question.

That’s something I love to do; it helps you stand out, and once you ask the first one, people remember your face. So you become that girl who asked “the first” question.

Then we dove straight into learning OCaml. Not just talks or panels like most events, But actual teaching, learning and hands-on. It was a lot. There was this lovely software engineer guiding us through slides: syntax, data types, intro-level concepts. One of my favorite things was pattern matching, (I’ll demo for you)…

But first… chaos!

So the night before, I had set my laptop to update overnight like a responsible tech queen. (Also someone once told me to always do updates)

Except… it did not finish updating

So when we were told to open folders and start coding, my laptop decided to take a 5-minute power nap. Just sitting there. Spinning. Rebooting. Blinking.

And me?

Sitting. Panicking. Smiling through the stress.😭 I got left behind for a few minutes and genuinely thought:

“That’s it. I’m done. Just send me home.”

But I caught up eventually. Grace. Thank you God!

let is_zero x =

  match x with

  | 0 -> true

  | _ -> false

let describe_number x =

  match x with

  | 0 -> "zero"

  | n when n > 0 -> "positive"

  | _ -> "negative"

This felt way more elegant than writing endless if-else statements. You see - the jazz!! I was impressed.

Every few slides, we’d pause and do actual hands-on exercises to practice. It was fast-paced, but effective. Like, “Here’s a new language. Go go go!” - pov: She was so fast omg😖

We had snack breaks 😌✨ Jane Street knows how to feed a girl.

And then we had a debugging workshop where they gave us printed OCaml code and we had to spot the errors, figure out logic, edge cases, and fix it on paper. Very mental gym.

Codenames

Finally, game night. My group played Jenga and Codenames. I almost skipped it (social battery was low), but I’m glad I stayed. It was fun. But like, why is it so difficult to find common links between such wildly different words just to give a clue?? Lack of exposure? Maybe. Or just different backgrounds shaping how we think. I realized: what seems “obvious” to me might not be for someone else and vice versa.

We lost. But We laughed (lol😂)

Day 2: Snake Game, Networking Game (😵), and Code Quality 👩🏾‍💻

Started with breakfast (real pork sausage this time 🙏🏾), and continued working on OCaml exercises and the Snake Game we were building from scratch.

We did pair programming with peers and with TAs (who are actual Jane Street engineers). I explained my logic, what I’d done, my next step, all of it. It felt so validating. Like, “Okay, I do know how to talk about my work.”

Then came the networking protocol game. Whew.😭)

It simulated how messages are sent and received across networks using encoding. Each team had an inbox/outbox. We created a protocol, (rules for sending our 8-digit messages and decoding them). It got more complicated because TAs would intentionally “drop” some messages, so our protocol had to handle retries and loss. Very real-world.

I was so confused at first 😭 I didn’t know anything about network protocols - I basically “learnt on the job.” Later I watched some YouTube videos and it all clicked.

Growth!

We ended with a code quality talk from a chill, older engineer who said things like “Why five lines when one will do?” (Sir, respectfully, my code is readable first🥹)

🌙 Free Night: 9/11 Memorial & World Trade Center Walk

That night was a free evening (Wednesday), and instead of going back to the hotel right away, a few friends and I decided to take a walk. And honestly? I’m so glad we did. We visited the 9/11 Memorial, and I took some pictures, it looked really beautiful. There were trees all around and the atmosphere was so peaceful. It gave… park energy. Peaceful, quiet, reflective. Something about it just stuck with me. Then we stopped by the World Trade Center, which is this huge, uniquely shaped building that kinda looks like a dinosaur? Or maybe not a dinosaur. I don’t even know what animal to call it 😭 but it looked so good. We walked inside, took more pictures, then came out the other side and walked back to the hotel.

Simple but special.

Day 3: RPCs, State Machine Replications, Async, Sexps, Functors, Cramps, and “I Don’t Belong” Thoughts📝

We continued with OCaml exercises, more Snake Game coding, and then had breakout groups to learn real-world applications of OCaml:

• My group learned about RPCs (Remote Procedure Calls), where systems talk to each other like, “Hey, you do this task for me.”
• Other groups learned about state machine replications (systems that manage changing states consistently across multiple machines, like keeping three ATMs in sync), async (asynchronous programming; letting your program do other things while waiting for a task to finish), functors (think: module factories - you give them a module that meets certain rules, and they return a fancier one with more features), and S-expressions (short for “symbolic expressions” - a simple, readable format for storing nested data structures like lists and trees) and continued exploring async code handling (how to run tasks in parallel or without blocking other tasks).
• We regrouped after and taught each other what we learned. I loved that; it made us all sound smart 😌(Lemme say “it made me sound smarter”)

Boring session 1: Then came the incident simulation.

It was basically, “This service is down. Fix it fast. Be the incident chair. Record time stamps. Delegate tasks.”

Not gonna lie, I was bored. Also I had cramps, and I was moody. I skipped the Lawn Club social that night. Prioritized rest.

Day 4: Panels, Mock Interviews, Intrusive Thoughts (but I stayed) 💭

Started strong with a new hire panel, where Jane Street engineers talked about their journey. And yes, ofc I asked the first question, again. And the most questions. The woman handing out mics literally started saying, “Oh, Valary? Here you go.”

Let me tell you something, though.

I felt like I didn’t belong.

Everyone else was from MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, name them! Deep CS and math backgrounds. People who had been doing competitive programming since before I knew what Python was…

I was the only Black student on the dev track. The only one from Northwestern.

For a second, the intrusive thoughts won:

“You’re not smart enough to be here.”

“They probably made a mistake inviting you.”

But I called my friend and we talked about how I was feeling. How the pressure felt high. How I was second-guessing everything. And she said:

“Give them the Black girl magic! 🖤✨”

So I stayed. I participated. I asked more questions. I proved to myself that I do belong, even when it’s hard.

Fast forward to that evening: I called my mom, just to check in and share how things were going. I had casually sent her a few of the group photos we’d taken during the program, nothing special, just some snapshots of the team, of me smiling through it all. And then she said, gently but directly:

“Were you the only Black student? I couldn’t help but notice it in the photo you sent. Did you cope okay?”

 And I said, confidently:

“Yes, Mom.”

Because I did…

Because I held my own…

Because even when it seemed hard…

Still, I tried!

Boring session 2: We then had a session about the interview process and timelines. I was tuned out tbh, but yes, ofc I asked the first question, yet again😂

Mock Interviews: I just wanted to explain everything…

• We had 15 minutes to study a question and act as the interviewer
• Then 15 more to switch roles and be the interviewee

POV: When I was the interviewer, I was torn. Like, I really wanted to help my peer, just explain things so they’d stop being confused, but I wasn’t supposed to give away too much. I was like:

“Okay, she’s struggling… but she didn’t ask a question yet… but I could help her… but I can’t give too many hints…but…”

It was crazy.

I just tried my best to steer her in the right direction without crossing lines.

Her question was LRU Cache (classic).

Then we switched. I was now the interviewee, And WHEW. My question was intense; it was about designing a class where machines could send and receive information from each other. A whole graph problem.

I won’t go into the details, but I did the thing😎:

• Asked lots of clarifying questions ✅
• Talked through my approach ✅
• Communicated clearly ✅
• Kept calm under pressure (kinda ✅)

Boring session 3: Then came the most boring session of all: Estimathon.

 You basically guess numbers for random stuff:

“What’s the total revenue, in dollars, for the Golden Gate Bridge in 1980”

Sir, what??? Who made this up? I’m not a walking trivia machine. (I still don’t understand why it was so hyped up by the other students)

We wrapped with a Q&A with software engineers.

Guess who asked the first question, again... Exactly😌

🥩 The “Last Supper” (Solo at Morton’s)

To celebrate, (or should I be upfront: “to use Jane Street money to the fullest”) I went to Morton’s The Steakhouse, alone. Just me and a table for two🫂. I ordered a bomb steak, a sad salad (I took one bite and said “God forbid”), and the best French dessert that I don’t remember the name of. It had a French name. I should probably go back to Duolingo💚😖.

But, I was happy.

Final Thoughts:

• Even This Counts💜
• This program stretched me.
• It introduced me to a new language.
• It pushed me out of my comfort zone.

It reminded me that I’m worthy of being in the room, even when the room is full of Ivy Leaguers and imposter syndrome whispers.

I stood tall, even when the room felt unfamiliar.

I asked questions; always among the first.

I made friends.

I got better.

I kept learning.

I kept trying.

AND THAT COUNTS FOR EVERYTHING!!💜