1st round: 10-min HR call. Very cold and superficial. No question about my background, motivations or working style - only whether I agreed to do a coding challenge.
2nd round: take-home trading strategy. Feedback was limited to 2 single sentences from the HR person: “Thank you very much, the answer is correct. Could you please solve the second task.”
3rd round: another take-home strategy with unclear and incorrect instructions. After I pointed out multiple issues, HR acknowledged the mistakes and said they would follow up. They came back months later only to say they had moved on with another candidate.
I understand that algo trading interviews are demanding, but this process felt poorly managed and disrespectful of candidates’ time. It also gave the strong impression that the company was fishing for ideas rather than running a structured hiring process.
First step - Interview with HR. Some base questions about experience and tech skills, just to filter low level candidates
Second step - tech interview
There is 4 parts:
Questions about linux
Questions about protocols/traffic control
Questions about python
Live coding
Not sure that they really have any chance to hire somebody with current interviewer. I have more than 8 years experience and they request for very specific topics. Like searching logs of PID, or difference between HTTP 1 and 2. And the worst part that they expect that you should well know such thing (but it's irrelevant for 99.9% and do not useful just because a lot of companies use systems for monitoring and log collection). And even if you know the way of solving problem it would not count as a write answer.
At the live coding I solve task and give second analytical solution (without code because of luck of time), interviewer accept it and after asking of feedback said that it was correct solution and a lot of ppl failed that part. When HR give me feedback - he said that my solution was wrong and that's main reason to decline.
But that's okey, specific tech request is a normal thing. When I ask about working hours interviewer said that they expect for weekend work, work for 10-12 hours every day (and my question about work-life balance is a "rad flag" said interviewer). And that's the main problem. If company want to find really skillful person, who should be initiative and lead a lot of things you can't expect that such person do not have other opportunity of jobs with adequate schedule. So it was "rad flag" for me (I'd reject offer even if they made it) because it show me that they do not have right processes, enough employees and way of building team in QA department is totally wrong, because employee burnout is a way to lost the employee or his productivity and in long term such management way going to lead to big looses for company just because QA can't be concentrate while working because of regular extra hours (I'm currently QA lead and know what i'm talking about)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
difference between http1 and http2
we have some error at some server, how can we find the root cause of the error (ssh connect, ps aux, finding pid, ls -l /proc/PID/fd), remote debug
hand shake of TCP connection (ACK, SYN)
How to block traffic (ip tables)
what is TLS
difference between HTTP and HTTPS, how to read HTTPS traffic
Live coding - task about changing of quantity and price:
2 lists of tuples a = [(1, 100), (2, 101)] b =[(1, 100), (1, 101), (1,103)]
output like "added q 1 with price 103" "changed q of price 101 from 2 to 1"
First interview with recruiter about previous experience and to solve statistics problems.
Second stage - a home test task to develop a trading strategy.
The recruiter was without a camera, extremely slow and not focused, like he is sleepy, busy with other tasks or just not bothered to express his thoughts clearly.
He didn't discuss the way of thought through the task and only forced the right solution he memorized. Once he forgot that I already gave the right answer and started explaining the same thing back to me.
His replies sometimes were out of place and stereotyped as if he doesn't want to pay attention to what I'm talking about. Although in general he was polite and patient.
The test task is unclear formulated and is open to different interpretations to what they expect. It is related to the company business and is not paid. This way they perhaps gather free know-hows and benchmarks from the market as well.