Interview for experienced hires

[JDMe]

I am curious as to what the quant denizens have to say about something I have been munching over for a while.

I am experienced commodities quant and I know my stuff very deep. So, deep that I have forgotten all the graduate school brain teasers and I have no interest in wasting time reading it all over again. I feel the real life quant thinking is not very aligned with green book brain teasers.

Recently I have started sending out my resume due to regular reasons. My commodity and quant side interviews go great until they start using brain teasers and I get really lost in trying to remember the answers from grad school. Another issue I face is I code in Python but they will start asking esoteric questions from C++ for instance. It's not that they use C++ but they will still use that for some reason.

I have decided to just remind the interviewers politely that (1) I am extremely skilled at what I have put in my resume (2) I would like to know what they are being challenged at their real life jobs and hence drive the conversation away from irrelevant gunk.

 

[vertigo]

Wow, you are an arrogant fool. It's usually students who are arrogant and moronic but you have out done them all.

If you feel that 'Real life quant thinking is not very aligned with green book brain teasers' then you are a fool and I hope all interviewers ask you brain teasers - you will be immediately spotted for the crap candidate that you are. If you don't understand why this is true, ask somebody more experienced than you about why brain teasers are used.

It's not about remembering answers from graduate school - the questions act as litmus tests to see if you actually understand stochastic calculus, derivative pricing, models, etc... If you are having to remember, then you still do not understand - it is that simple.

I am not going to address the rest of your reply - if I interviewed you I would fail you on the spot - not for your lack of technical skills, but for an awful personality. You need to grow up and be more mature in how you approach these things.

In fact, I think you may be lying. Experienced quants don't talk like that.