Jane Street crypto pioneer: "imposter syndrome quietly weighed on me for years"
While the majority of Jane Street's modern hires come from its expanding internship and graduate programs, some of its traders had far more unusual routes in. Thomas Uhm, joined the firm aged 30 and spent 22 years there before leaving last year; he recently reflected on his time there via X.
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Uhm said he "often felt out of place" at Jane Street because he lacked the "background or skillset" of his colleagues. He spent his 20s pursuing a career as an actor in New York before joining Jane Street's New York office (initially as a clerk, according to a previous appearance on the FTX Podcast). He said on that podcast that he spent most of his Jane Street career "surfing the wave" and taking interesting opportunities as they arose. One opportunity was joining Jane Street's London office as it was being built. Another was leading its initial push into crypto in 2017.
Since the collapse of FTX and demise of its Jane Street alumni founders, Jane Street has been less bullish on crypto. Uhm said on a podcast last year that firm "had to scale back some of the digital asset business in Q2 2023;" he spent his last 18 months at the firm building out its exotic options business which was "very, very different to crypto." He left Jane Street to join the Jito Foundation, a non-profit supporting infrastructure on the Solana blockchain.
Despite his "imposter syndrome," Uhm said working at Jito helped him learn "that I’m more valuable than I realised, and, what's more, that others see me that way too." The firm describes itself as "extremely lean and relentlessly effective" in its singular current job opening.
Jane Street has been tentatively returning to crypto despite Uhm's departure. It reportedly tripled its crypto trading volumes in 2024, and was seen hiring from crypto infrastructure firms like Copper last year. It has also been investing in multiple crypto firms like the Kraken exchange and infrastructure firm Antithesis.
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