I'm happy to have the offers I do have, but I just feel bad for people who are unemployed with no offers who have to go through this. Especially like that other guy who said he was "junior" and had no luck. Some of these interviewers are really nasty. Some interviews ask me questions and they see my logic and understand what I was doing, and others don't see it and are critical. When you get to the PhD level, the discussions get theoretical; therefore, I find that what counts on the interviews depends on whether that person has looked into what you've already researched and has a mental map of what you are trying to do or accomplish. There are interviewers who literally go out of their way to try and beat you up personally. Some of them launch personal attacks, even. One guy was trying to sell himself as a high-frequency shop that isn't the fastest, so I made a comment about how they were like an Ace-Jack offsuit shop while their competitors were like pocket rockets, and the guy told me I was an asshole. Then he went down my resume and trashed every firm I worked for. So far, the Chicago firms have "gotten it", at least over the phone. I tell them what I see/saw in my research in the markets and they usually mirror what I say. I find this to be promising. They don't tend to make the distinction between quants and developers, and they have a flat management structure. The more I think about what I want to do, I think I'd be better off going to a place with solid infrastructure and management that knows the big picture. The groups with split off IT and the groups with heavy MBA concentrations just strike me as the wrong kind of people.
You're insulting a firm, with a teenager's poker-analogy, at which you're being interviewed? Ostensibly for a position you were seeking, correct? I think you failed the logic component.
I just re-iterated what he said with a simple hold'em setup to clarify the point. If he can't handle his bs boiled down and fed back to him, it's suggestive of the fact that he has a mental problem. If the guy has to sell me on his firm's inferior technology by telling me he can't win the speed game, I can only assume he can't get the fill rates or to the front of the queue as fast as he wants. What else am I supposed to assume? He's basically saying he's a loser in the game he wants to play. Ace Jack offsuit occasionally beats Ace Ace, but you'd rather have Ace Ace, or at least Ace King suited. Particularly in the ll-HF game. Now go tell every player at the table (the interviewees) which hand they want, without candy-coating the story in BS. If they tell you they'd rather have AA, how practical is it to bash them on every poker game they've played before? To me, that's a sign that the company is about to get fucked. ... And that's what all the low-tier shops do. They all claim they have a predictive advantage because they can't win the arms race. So, given the choice between firms who're getting 80-90% fill rates when removing liquidity vs a guy who has to cover-up his inferiority, the choice is obvious where the candidate should go. The only issue is whether the candidate can become the part of the team of the better players, as opposed to having to work with the low-tier players. These hedge fund managers need to get over themselves, especially when someone calls them on their crap.
One more thing: the more inferior they are, the more risk they carry. Stat-arb isn't riskless, so if you're that sloppy arber not on the inside then the guy who got hit on the inside will know what's going on in the market before you and fuck you up the ass. Getting fucked up the ass = "smart predictive technology" in these interviews. The only thing these 5-millisecond bozos can predict is how hard they are about to get fucked.
I asked myself the same question in the first 10 minutes. Wish I had a phone screen first. These recruiters write down what you want to do and then pitch it to some manager. If the manager likes, they send you a summary. You go in, the guy tells you about his firm. You ask for clarification, what they do, blah blah. They usually tell you what their deal is, or say nothing if they can't say anything. You can't really know in advance, can you? I google all these firms, but the more secretive they are, the less there is to google. Wilmott is scant on details in many situations as well.
I'll protect the firm's anonymity, since I don't have anything good to say about them. They're not a big player, considered mid-sized. They could bankroll an arms race with the right people, I think. However, the guy interviewing me said there was a mix of people that they had to strike a balance with and I got the impression they were just a dysfunctional group of people.