How I landed two quant dev job offers (interview journey)

[@CodingJesus]

I published my 2023 interview notes to all my Patrons (and made them available for purchase) here: www.patreon.com/posts/117040205

[@jimmybrooks5902]

Ngl he preaches luck. He was a business major for chrissake. In 2019 everyone could get into data science. Post pandemic tech industry is hunger games and he would never make it as a fresh grad. But then u have a snowball effect, he worked some, got some experience and now goes to selling 'courses on how to get into most competetive stem industry' type of snake oil. I mean every job can be taught really, given enough time and resources. But just having the opportunity to do what you want in life is a really big luck game, not a skill issue.

[@slimjimjimslim5923]

Also in engineering it’s much easier to get a job interview through connections than just blindly applying online. It was that way in 2015, and the same in 2024. With connections, I can land an interview in 3days time. Blindly applying eventually something will come after 6 weeks

[@codephil]

I can just tell I would hate working with this guy. you think he makes people call him coding Jesus at work?

[@kaspearo955]

He was a business major? So I have hope?

[@jimmybrooks5902]

@@kaspearo955 not really in the 2024 market. Harvard Mathematicians can hardly land the entry position, gl to everyone else. It's the single most competetive field for STEM ppl.

[@I61void]

I agree on the first part but not on the rest. From my knowledge, everything he has said makes total sense and is good advice for each individual. You say it’s luck and I agree but you say skills don’t matter, which is false, the skills are needed for a chance at that luck. A person without skills will just never ever get an opportunity. I would know because there are graduates that have applied for a year and are still jobless, why? Because I, a first year math major know more and am more skilled than them. I don’t know anything yet I am more skilled in their field. These people will never get in and they make the job market seem saturated. The interviews are gonna filter you out from those people. If you are exceptional in all aspects, your resume, knowledge, presentation, luck will not be a factor at all. In some cases it would be best for them to just start a business, why work for someone else if you have everything you are. Also going back to some of his older videos he says programming was something he never cared about, his father was a swe and he didn’t pick it up until he wanted to career switch. Maybe he just wants to make money on KZbin selling his advice, I don’t see him as a snake, all his videos make a lot of sense and are useful. I haven’t came across ones where he sells courses just I think 1 on 1s and patreon but who tf uses patreon? He preaches consistency and hard work if anything

[@v-7815]

Tip for the future that even the best usually forget. Update your resume as you complete projects/achieve milestones in your actual job! Set a reminder to ping you maybe once every 1 or 2 months.

[@optimizedpran1247]

Great stuff CJ. Glad your interview process panned out well.

[@malachiwhite5955]

Great video ! Right now I am still working as a Associate Software Engineer, but I am grinding leetcode because I just don't feel like I still have that master I really want, really like your other video on design systems.

[@tl6420]

I appreciate your work on youtube ❤thanks very much coding jesus

[@mezzela00]

great stuff mate, thanks for sharing❤

[@Sauce-ke]

The problem is that even if I wanted to do interviewing, companies are already rejecting me without giving me a chance to get interviewed

[@yashvaibhav925]

If you're Indian and in hopes of breaking into quant trading WITHOUT an IIT tag (target school), your best bet would be to first move to another country and then try a quant firm. Being sharp is not enough here.

[@zweitekonto9654]

What about a dev position? (I'm from a top NIT)

[@yashvaibhav925]

@zweitekonto9654 I got my way into brokerage firm and then the opportunity for quant dev arose. Head hunters will find you if you have the right keywords.

[@Aditya-ne4lk]

what is the job market like for C++ vs Python? i am a python dev, but wondering if its enough

[@CodingJesus]

More Python on the sell side than the buy side. Many hedge funds have exclusively Python roles.

[@Aditya-ne4lk]

@@CodingJesus why do you think that's the reason?

[@capedbaldy1046]

I think for selling options you need good speed as margin falls in matter of seconds. So they might use Cpp.

[@YTJones]

What do you think went wrong for the offers you didn’t get? No diserespect at all, I know getting just one of these offers is a huge accomplishment, but it could be very instructive to see if there’s something you could’ve changed in hindsight to improve your chances on the missed interviews in the future 😊

[@akialter]

I'm thinking of dropping my master and study those. My concentration is comp arch and distributed system but I feel like the pace is still slow + side project that doesn't even relevant. Thanks for those book recommendation. Better just pay my tuition on those books.

[@tl6420]

I just wanna know 1) All Essential skills for quant research/trading 2) Which strategys/ models should Learn to land quant job 3) suggest some resources for studying quant

[@JamilaJibril-e8h]

It's just a broker license nothing fancy

[@Cavz001]

It depends if you want to take the dev route, just learn c++ and work on leet code. But if you want to be grounded in quant stuff and even build your own trading systems while learning, You need to study math (linear algebra, statistics, calculus, probability theory), learn programming (Python & C++ but start with Python), then learn data science/machine learning.

[@Pram6969]

@@Cavz001 hey can you elaborate the "quant stuff"

[@thetruth65756]

i've heard that quant trader requires a phd or masters in math, cs, or physics. swe is different, but still requires top qualifications

[@AdamFiregate]

@@thetruth65756 In Hungary's Morgan Stanley office, that was the case 20 years ago. But for 10 years, you don't need any degree at all. You need to prove your practical skills at the interview. You don't need any university or college degree at all.

[@AnthonyAllGood]

Congrats!

[@dzadzadzadza]

Hi, I have a question for you today CJ. CJ, my question for you today is, how do you keep your eyebrows, eyelashes and beard so pretty? Inquiring minds want to know. Really appreciate your time today. Stay flexing that TCP bitwise header and TLB cache hit and page fault knowledge.

[@sassofrasso4655]

you didn't say the area of the role, I don't think many details mentioned are useful for people that want to apply to quant research/trading

[@666frank8]

why reading "Elements of Programming Interviews" on top of leetcode grinding?

[@jaimebenhamu1861]

does that mean we are getting a tone of videos because you are gonna be in garden leave hahaha?

[@namnguyenhoang8208]

Why do they ask you leetcode if you already have experience in the field?

[@nathanhughes8354]

I have 25+ years work experience doing software dev, i still get asked leetcode questions. It never ends.

[@harvelian]

It is pretty much the only tangible way to say who passes the round.

[@1000timka]

I think quant dev is one of the fields where leetcode is actually relevant to the work you do.

[@daddybruce8084]

if they don’t ask leetcode, they’ll ask you brain teasers

[@akialter]

yeah, just every optimization opportunities matter when we talk nano seconds differences on trading

[@AmoghSarangdhar]

what do u mean by "working with a recruiter?" where did u find him? did u hire him or something like that?

[@CokefishR]

Sometimes they find you, they reach out to you over LinkedIn.

[@Maximus98245]

What is the ideal language to solve leetcode problems in during the interviews? Assuming quant dev role entails c++ but leetcode is much easier to do in python. Does it reflect negatively if I use python?

[@exoneuromancer1672]

Choose one language and get extremely good at it

[@Maximus98245]

@@exoneuromancer1672 the chosen language is C++. as a quant dev, I didn't have much choice to be honest. The questions is, did Coding Jesus use C++ to grind Leetcode or did he use python.

[@thomasjames-h4f]

How did you find a recruiter? There's so many recruitment agencies but idk which one to go with (in Toronto)

[@ivanzaytsev6559]

What makes you constantly search for new jobs ?

[@noobmaster69jr]

Moni

[@aminamarih9397]

Yes, effectively..

[@giancarlokuosmanen9723]

He loves that word. I stopped after 2 minutes in.

[@rydmerlin]

How similar to leetcode questions were your interview questions? How did you decide between the two offers?

[@NishantPakhrin-b1w]

can you make a video on Pet projects ideas that actually stand out? And tell us how many is enough?

[@dogzrgood]

Hey man, did you encounter any requirement for AI/ML development experience in Quant jobs?

[@simomsymos4111]

Please recommend a roadmap for quant developer

[@ufukyarsan2149]

does it worth it? your ideas?

[@Abdul-hy4cy]

Are you doing anything to keep your skin healthy? Looks very healthy. Do you eat sweets or McDonald's?

[@CodingJesus]

5 - 6 part skincare routine. Cleaser -> Toner -> Moisutizer -> Under-eye Creme -> SPF

[@Abdul-hy4cy]

@@CodingJesus what a sigma ! but, do you eat junk food ?

[@Anuj-es3yr]

I am a java developer looking to break into this industry. Should I learn C++ or are there roles for java?

[@rosepainting8775]

Hi Anuj, where do you work?

[@gsurtos6588]

yes u need to know c++ if u want to break into the Quant industry. or u can learn fullstack with javascript/python and be skilled at building up a website since some of these quant firms do hire full stack to maintain their websites and tools. obviously quant dev c++ will probably get paid more than the full stack dev since they will work on the software that will power the quant trading application. so those are ur 2 options. u can join in as a full stack and than cross over to quant dev in c++. but just being a java developer is very INSUFFICIENT as it has no immediate applicable skills in this industry. it is what it is.

[@Anuj-es3yr]

@@rosepainting8775 I am in final year college.

[@vaibhavpatel9861]

What does he mean by a recruiter? How did you find him? Does he takes a part of the salary 🤓

[@CodingJesus]

No he doesn’t take a cut from me. Presumably the firm that he’s referred me to pays him a finders fee of some sort. Didn’t ask, not my concern / business.

[@seanyamamoto8757]

How did u choose ur recruiter? They reach out to me but idk who’s good

[@FatherPhi]

If they have pulse, they are good enough.

[@3rdWorld2LibertySpeedrun]

no tc range shared?

[@MyKneeHurts]

bro i lowkey look like you. I just have thicker eyebrows lol

[@Daniel-hc7kn]

What level role were you applying for?

[@CodingJesus]

3-5 YoE

[@bigmactominay9795]

Moging Jesus🗿

[@terry2221]

very well spoken

[@ZakTheCreator]

Is a degree needed? Can I become one without one?

[@anax9070]

Without a degree, probably not. Sounds very negative but thats the reality of the field, you may not need a CS degree but having no relevant degree at all makes your chances extremely slim

[@GregAbendroth]

I haven't worked as a coder for over a decade but having been through a formal programming course at university I found that almost all self-studied coders lack formal A&DS training which is hugely important because pretty much all these leetcode questions basically depend on picking the right algo for the given scenario. Of course you can self-study that, but I found most self-learned programmers skipped that component. That meant they were trying to reinvent the wheel on-the-spot rather than just doing recall in a tech interview.

[@thetruth65756]

no, definitely not

[@ZakTheCreator]

@@anax9070 even if I have experience as a software engineer for 3 years?

[@anax9070]

@@ZakTheCreator Different in that case. My message was more-so under the pretext of "no degree at all and no relevant experience". But again, quant is much more competitive than typical SWE so who knows

[@berryronin6882]

if you have to work this hard to have a sliver of a chance for a swe job, maybe I should switch fields..

[@visheshmangla8220]

I interviewed at a few places for cpp role and was asked the following questions 1) How to you print Hello World without a for loop in cpp. 2) What is the memory occupied by class A {} int main(){ A a {};} Nobody asked implement the vector, unique ptr or find gcd by templates. Nobody was like interested in templates etc. What to do? Answers to those are 1) class A{ A(){ cout

[@CodingJesus]

1) Why would you need a for-loop to print "Hello World"? 2) An object without any data members needs to occupy at least 1 byte of space, otherwise two objects of the same type allocated on the stack would exist at the same address and that's not allowed.

[@visheshmangla8220]

@CodingJesus Thanks for the reply 1) I know it's obvious once you see the solution. 2) I didn't know that and even people on IRC were fighting at various answers and not sure of it . He didn't give main and just wrote the class so how am I supposed to know that some compiler optimization won't remove it? Btw where did you learn these? Idts they are in the cpp book by Bjarne( red colour book). Also I have never heard of this 1 byte thing before the interviewer told. He was anyways having 10 years of cpp experience and I did some cpp for learning purposes/ optimize my python code by c modules.

[@Швырина]

Appreciate the detailed breakdown! Just a quick off-topic question: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?

[@trmnatr21]

Eye makeup on point, bro

[@bbsara0146]

grinding leetcode isnt the move bro. go build something real

[@JohnVandivier]

Leveraging prior interview cycles is a pro move 🫡