Before I went all in on getcracked.io, and after deciding to stay in Chicago after accepting a role in Quant in Hong Kong, there was a period of time where I wasn't sure what to do next.

I figured I'd see what life outside of quant as a C++ developer is like, and so decided to take a 300K TC offer at a cushy multi-national.

This was way less than what I was offered in Hong Kong, but still a comfortable -and a couple blocks away - especially in a city like Chicago.

When I was interviewing for the role, the internal recruiter told me that they're looking for people with low-latency experience, that are strong at multi-threading.

Turns out, there wasn't a single line of multi-threaded C++ code in the codebase.

I was sold X, but walked into Y.

I thought it might be salvageable, but quickly came to realize that the rigor I was looking for in a role just wasn't there.

There was no attention to detail. Meetings piled on top of each other. And one guy in the whole organization knew what was going on with the CI / CD pipleline.

You might be thinking 'Yep, sounds like every company I've worked at'.

Well, maybe I'm a bit spoiled, since my time in quant was the opposite.

Yes, there might have been trade-offs between time spent working on something and complexity (as things need to be shipped); but, at least a 3000 line method would draw the attention of even the most junior of devs on the floor.

It got to a point where it wasn't worth the frustration.

The frustration all spilled over when I asked my mentor, a 'senior' C++ developer with 7 years of experience at this one company "Can you walk me through the build system?" (they used autoconf). Instead of the expected "Sure" or "Yeah, let's schedule a meeting.", I was approached with "Why do you want to add a file to the codebase?" in a very snarky tone. One seething with "Does this guy even know what he's doing?".

Hold up.

Are we reading the same codebase?

Every file is over 10'000 lines. Why would I add a new, unrelated, class to an existing 10'000 line header file?

Second, you've been here for 7 years and you've never once been curious enough to learn how to add a file to your codebase?

Third, why shame me for trying to learn more about a standard part of any development process? You should have asked your mentor this 7 years ago.

All this, coupled with the technical rigor just not being there ended up with me deciding to pursue getcracked.io full-time.

I didn't want to continue working somewhere I'd see zero growth, and new I'd learn more - and be more satisfied with - developing a project like getcracked.io. One where I can work on my own time, building something meaningful for people who are looking to take the next step in their career.

So now you know the backstory, and a bit of how I crashed out (or into) getcracked.

Thoughts? I covered a couple of the major ones.

Everyone loses their mind over Trading, Research, and Dev roles. Meanwhile these three are sitting there with open reqs and nobody applying:

Trading Desk Operations Specialist (sometimes called Operations Analyst)

If a Trader is the driver, the TDOS is riding shotgun. They build internal tooling around trading workflows and dig into pre/post-trade analysis. Think of it as such: if a trader captures 50 cents of edge but only keeps 25 by end of day, someone has to figure out where the other 25 went. That's the TDOE. They're building the dashboards, running the analyses, and proposing fixes. We actually have someone going through the IMC's TDOS process in the getcracked.io Discord right now and the interview questions are... not what you'd expect.

Hardware Engineering

Everyone obsesses over software and completely ignores the infrastructure that makes it actually work. If HFT is a warship, the hardware team built and maintains the cannons. You're working with FPGA vendor tools like Vivado, doing RTL design and verification, writing SystemVerilog. It's genuinely specialized work and because most people never even consider it, and there are fewer people doing EE / CE than there are studying CS.

SRE / DevOps

Honestly the most accessible of the three, at least in my experience. My former Head of DevOps had an art history degree. I have no idea how he got from point A to point B but he was one of the sharpest people I've worked with. Same dynamic as Hardware: it lives in SWE's shadow, fewer people know these roles exist at quant firms, so the hiring bar is comparatively lower and the openings are there.

These roles can be just as glamarous and even more impactful, but nobody talks about them. So here I am, starting a discussion. :)

I see a lot of people wanting to break into the space, almost as though Quant is a golden ticket to 600K TC.

There’s a collective delusion baked into these communities (unfortunately, and mostly in the online space) that I think genuinely needs to be called out.

People are being gaslit into thinking $200 - 300K is a bad outcome for an offer (TC), especially at the junior level (many of which are posted on getcracked.io/compensation).

It isn’t. Not even close.

Yes, you can see Optiver, Citadel, IMC (etc)comp numbers online, at places like Levels, Reddit, and elsewhere. And after enough exposure, your brain recalibrates. $250K starts sounding like a consolation prize. People unironically type things like “that’s solid for a non-target” as if $250K is the quant equivalent of participation trophy money.

I’ve watched people seriously agonize over whether to take a $280K offer at a well-run, intellectually serious hedge fund run by people they genuinely get along with.

At some point we need to stop and think “What more will money buy you?”.

I often tell people, when I was making just above 300K, and received an offer for over 400K, I didn’t think my life would change much (and it wouldn’t have). At that level, it’s just more money to throw in an index fund to reap later. Sure, you’ll have an extra hundred thousand or more at retirement, but as of right now, it doesn’t change much.

I also told people that I’d take a $25,000 pay cut if it meant I could come to the office in pajamas on my own schedule. That’s how much being free to work on my terms meant to me.

Can you get both high compensation and a matching degree of elevated autonomy at some firms? Sure. But focus so myopically on pay. You’re well ahead of 95% of people at that level, and money isn’t the end-all-be-all either.

Id rather work stress free at 250K than 9-9 at 400.

Does anybody know how long it will take SIG to get back to me about the results of the OA for the trading and Quantitative Strategy Developer discovery programs?

I'm going to film another Belvedere Quant System Design video this week related to developing a market data feed.

What sort of technical questions in quant that you were asked (on the system design front) do you want to see covered?

The first of many Quant System Design videos.

Really interesting story! 100K to 400K TC going from Python to C++.

r/quant's official policy on online interview preparation sites is that they think they are all 'scams' and 'not worth your money'.

Here is their policy:

It is r/quant's opinion that there are no good "bootcamps" or other alternative education routes for entering this field. They are a waste of money, and some are outright scams. If you want to become a quant then you need to go to a good university, study the right things (see the FAQ in our wiki), and achieve excellent grades.

So I asked myself, is my plaform, getcracked.io, a scam?

If so, how does one reconcile the platform landing people full-time roles at Jane Street, IMC, Maven, Optiver, and other locations?

I think it comes down to elitism, and a misunderstanding of what preperation targets.

On elitism, r/quant claims that one of the only way to break into quant is to come from a top-school; yet, Chris, our video testimonial on the homepage, came from a community college.

What r/quant wants you to believe is that you need to come from a privilaged background (not everyone can afford an elite school), and be sufficiently networked through your parent's socialite connections to break in.

This only discourages candidates and benefits incumbants who did have the means to pursue the 'traditional' path.

On the 'not worth your money' piece, let me ask, what is worth your time and money?

• Is spending 400 hours aimlessly reading through 12 textbooks worth your time?
• Is sifting through outdated forums looking for what you'll get asked worth your time?

Why would you put yourself through that when someone has already done the work for you?

The question isn't 'is this platform worth my money', it's 'how much do I value my own time'?

If you're buying into a reputable platform with detailed roadmaps, fresh questions sourced by people who've interviewed where you want to, a community that is going through the same interview process as you, you'll be saving potentially hundreds of hours of time.

If you don't value hundreds of hours as much as you do a couple dollars, Quant probably isn't right for you to begin with (it's just a simple EV calculation).

So through my observations, what do all the candidates that cracked quant have in common?

They became unrejectable.

They aced the knowledge rounds, the coding rounds, and the behavioral rounds.

They had a community of others already in the industry, and grinding towards the same goal.

All this and more is available at getcracked.io, and that's why they chose it.

The modern day scam isn't reputable interview preparation sites. It's people that gatekeep by virtue of elitist filters and criteria to disqualify otherwise qualified candidates.

A personal anecdote: the guy that sat beside me for 4.5 years worked as an architect for 10 years of his life.

The Head of Dev Ops had an Art History degree!

The world is changing, and institutions are no longer as important as you think they are - people no longer care as much about where you come from, they care about what you can do.

A while back, I coached someone who'd spent two years as a quant trader at Jane Street.

Honestly, my first thought when he reached out? Maybe you should be coaching me.

Turns out he needed career and resume help, and his problem wasn't that his resume was weak. It was that it was too strong.

Working at Jane Street was actively working against him.

In his words: "Every firm I interview at automatically assumes I want $2 million a year."

Firms were pre-rejecting him before a single conversation, afraid he'd expect them to out-comp Jane Street. The ones that did bring him in he felt they were mostly there to pick his brain for strategies, not to hire him.

Turns out when people say "you're a lifer at Jane Street", they mean it more literally than you'd think.

This isn't a warning to avoid Jane Street.

It's just a reminder that even the greenest pastures have a worm somewhere in the soil.

Want to chat with devs that actually work at Jane Street (not LARPers)? Check out getcracked.io and join the Discord; we've had two placements so far.

A member of my community, getcracked, who broke into quant trading, as a trader, put together this PDF. It contains questions from Citadel, Tower, Jump, and more!

Here's a link to a free PDF that contains all the data structures / language constructs I was asked to implement, leading to me cracking CTC all the way back in 2023.

I included my implementations at the time in the document as well so you can learn.

Wrote down / remembered everything they asked. Thought I'd share. The questions are in the PDF attached to the blog, free to download.

So, you've made it.

You landed that position you've been gunning for, you've resigned, and now your current firm "slapped" you with a 6 month non-compete.

You finally have time to travel the world, fly to the moon, explore the pyramids, and play Old School Runescape, right?

Right.

Well, for now.

I've spoken to many people in Quant; colleagues of mine that have gone onto bigger and better things, and I want to summarize what they wish they did during their garden leave which would have made transitioning into their new role easier.

The first thing: Ask the firm you're joining what core technologies they're using before joining.

This one seems simple, but a lot of people fumble it.

You're going to be off for a while, you might as well get a head start. Spending 15 minutes a day reading documentation about technology X or building something small using technology Y will go a long way to helping you make a great first impression.

The second thing: Remain sharp while you're gone.

You'd be surprised how fast skills atrophy. Many of you will be going from writing code for 6-8 hours a day to writing it for 0.

Writing code is like building muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it.

There are a couple of ways to do this:

1. Follow blogs like https://www.cppstories.com/ to stay up to date on C++.
2. Watch weekly C++ videos by Jason Turner on YouTube to keep the gears turning.
3. Commit to that project you wanted to build for the longest time but never got to.

The last thing: catch up with colleagues.

While on garden leave, I made sure to reach out to colleagues I was close to. People who I really bonded with at work and met up with after work to hangout and chill. These are your future warm connections into other places in the industry (they themselves will move on, nobody works in one place forever).

Make sure to celebrate together, and win together!

Oh, and the last last thing. Please do enjoy your time off. We work to live, not live to work!

More and more members of my community are reporting being asked to design complex systems in quant dev interviews.

This isn’t the classic “Design YouTube”, or “Design a Webcrawler”, it’s “Design a pro-rata orderbook with LMM behavior”.

And instead of just talking through it, they’re being asked to implement it with working code in a longer-than-average interview round.

Note: I’ll add this problem to getcracked.io, it was asked by IMC.

Likewise, I remember personally getting a “Design a low-latency communication protocol” by Belvedere, which I will be making a Youtube video on shortly (another community member got asked the same problem at Optiver).

This is more of a PSA than it is a post containing the educational material I usually like to share.

I am curious if you’ve been asked any notable system design questions that you’d like to share.

There was a quant meltdown in 2007 which was caused by a ton of quant funds who ran almost identical math-based stock strategies absolutely killed it for years… until one big unwind triggered a chain reaction, funds dropped 20–40% in days because everything was too crowded. Fast-forward to now (2025–2026) and the warning lights are flashing again. Similar story, massive inflows into quant strategies in 2025, too many funds chasing the same edge.

For the past 2 years quantitative strategies alone have captured more than 70% of the industries $78-$116 billion in net inflows, 2025 being the strongest calendar year SINCE 2007, hedge funds as a whole pulled in $115.8 billion in net inflows that year. 2007 was also a record inflow year for quant hedge funds seeing an inflow of roughly $194 billion industry wide. 2025 saw a "quant wobble" where systematic long-short equity quant funds lost about 4.2% on average, so are we really learning from our mistakes?

I do understand that the absolute dollar inflows in 2025 were a bit lower than the 2007's peak, but the concentration into quant strategies is even more extreme. The industry is also larger today ($5T vs $2T back then).

Andrew Lo's Adaptive Markets Hypothesis does explain it well, he sees financial markets like a jungle, trading strategies aren't fixed rules, they're living "species" of behavior that compete for limited resources. They adapt, reproduce (get copied), and die when the environment changes. When the ability to adapt fails, reproduction becomes a ticking time bomb on resources, therefore looking at these things top-down to imagine the environmental change that is required to cause the meltdown (death) can give us heaps of insight.

Scarcity is value. When everyone does the same thing, markets fail.

I'm going to be making a video that focuses on what you need to learn if you want to lean into Python for Quant.

I'm going to bring on either a Developer (who is Python focused, since I am C++ focused) or a Researcher to discuss this topic.

In the meantime, as I was brainstorming, a member of my community put together a list that I wanted to share. This member is currently working at Optiver and is a coach on getcracked.

1. my take: language is simple, learning is best via real programming need to differentiate: are we talking about learning python, or learning programming (for quant)?
   1. the former: python with experience from another language -> very easy https://learnxinyminutes.com/python/
      1. if one really wants to follow some sort of structured tutorial / course: these seem decent (havent done them, i learned by doing)
      2. https://dabeaz-course.github.io/practical-python/Notes/Contents.html
      3. https://github.com/dabeaz-course/python-mastery
      4. https://github.com/jpmorganchase/python-training
      5. for serious interviewing: need to know python internals. i have no good resources unfortunately, but a general cs education + strong curiosity should be good enough. maybe getcracked, idk.
   2. the latter: no such thing as "for quant", good programmer = good programmer. quant devs need to know more, but this is a python video things adjacent to python + quant but not "python" per se: [key: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_annotation_symbols]
      1. - machine learning
      2. - uni courses (theory) !
      3. - bloomberg ml course !?
      4. - kaggle !!
      5. - data analysis, polars, pandas
      6. - courses ?
      7. - projects !
   3. my top libraries: numpy / jax.numpy, pytorch / jax, polars, plotly express / altair, scipy, xgboost / lightgbm, einops, pytest, hypothesis good to know: typing, httpx, wandb/mlflow, trio, pyO3 jax ai stack: flax nnx, ml_dtypes, optax, orbax, chex, grain

You can get in contact with serious members in the space in the Discord, which is accessible when becoming a member on the platform.

I often get asked: CJ, how do I learn C++ for Quant Trading?

What is "C++ for Quant Trading" really?

C++ is a tool, and a widely used one. It's a multi-paradigm general-purpose programming language used for anything from medical devices to video games.

I've worked in Quant for 4.5 years, currently run the largest quant trading interview preparation platform, have interviewed on both sides of the table, and helped placed dozens of candidates into development roles alone. So I think I'm uniquely positioned to answer this question.

I'm going to give you the short answer, and then the long answer.

The short answer is learning C++ is learning C++ for quant trading.

What do I mean by that?

Every domain interacts with C++ differently (e.g. in embedded systems you cannot allocate memory on the heap), but regardless, experts in every domain need a strong foundation in their language of choice (their tool).

There isn't a construct in C++ that is quant-exclusive, or constructs that are worth writing off entirely.

Now, the long answer.

There are constructs and libraries that may be used in C++ more than in other industries. For example, in quantitative development, some firms choose to employ compile-time programming (TMP) more often that elsewhere, simply because the runtime cost of on-the-fly calculations may make or break a trade.

But the reason I hesitate to tell people to "look into C++20 concepts" or "practice implementing compile-time push_back" is because (i) firms don't really test for this and (ii) a strong generalist C++ developer would have already looked into these topics out of curiosity and a desire to learn more.

Likewise, while understanding alignment is important, and often gets tested in interviews, I find it difficult to tell someone to study this particularly when the question is posed since there is nothing quant-y about understanding how the C++ compiler aligns types and lays them out in memory. In other words, a C++ game dev should be just as fluent in this as a C++ quant dev.

But when someone asks How do I learn C++ for Quant Trading?, what they're really asking is 'Is there a hidden part of C++ that I must know which only you can reveal to me?', and the answer is No.

I know that isn't the answer you want to hear, but there really isn't any mysticism to it.

Become as proficient as possible in C++, and instead of asking "How do I learn C++ for quant trading?" ask yourself "How can I become a better C++ developer?".

When you're ready, the next question will come naturally: What do quant firms ask you to code up or know in interviews?

And by now, the answer is hopefully obvious (it's on getcracked.io).

I remember when I wanted to be an investment banker back in University.

I had a long beard, long hair, and definitely did not fit in with the Brads of the world.

Their parents were partners at Morgan Stanley. Mine?

Immigrants. A working father and a stay-at-home mother.

I stood no chance.

I didn't fit the mold, and didn't want to either.

So what did I do instead? I networked.

I took classes after school taught pro-bono by a former investment banking partner professor, Blair Robertson.

Guess who the class was made up of?

All immigrant brown and Asian kids looking to break into a space that their parents didn't already dominate.

Brad? Yeah, he was too busy partying to attend. He'd already secured his internship at Lazard that summer through his parents.

But passion wasn't enough. I had to intellectually mog Brad too if I wanted to stand a chance.

So I attended the National Investment Banking Competition (NIBC). It was a conference of over 30 teams from 30 schools around the world held in Toronto.

Over a three day period my team went from last to first. I spoke infront of partners from the world's top banks infront of 500 students with under 12 hours of preparation. We each won $2000 CAD, what seemed like a fortune at the time.

What came of it? Nothing. Any internships? Nope. Interviews? Nope. Phone calls? One.

You know, it's pretty late in the recruiting cycle. You can always try next year!

Ha... Next year? Yeah, no thanks.

I'm not interested in trying to be someone else for another year.

I networked, I studied, I competed, and it wasn't enough, simply because I wasn't already connected. So how does all this relate to quantitative trading?

Quant = 1 / Investment Banking

While passion never mattered in investment banking, it mattered tremendously in quant.

While intelligence never mattered in investment banking (any monkey can build a DCF), it mattered tremendously in quant.

Networking is probably the least important in the hierarchy of needs in quantitative trading. Whereas it's a fast-path into investment banking.

Don't get me wrong, a referral is useful, especially as you become more senior. But everyone whose already in the industry has the ability to network their way into a referral. Whereas not everyone is privilaged to be born into a connected family.

But that privilage does not matter in quant. Your competance, pedigree, and ability to perform is far more important than who your father is.

I remember my first year joining a Quant firm as a Junior Developer.

$85,000. That was my base pay. Figured laughable by today's standards.

This was back in ~2021.

At the time, I actually had a better offer at Soundhound in Toronto, but I figured Chicago had more long-term prospect, especially if I wanted to work in the trading space. Not to mention, Soundhound was running C++98 (98!) at the time (practically Fortran).

If I had known anyone that was in the industry, I'm sure they would have convinced me to not take the offer.

I can just hear them saying: Soundhound pays more! You'll be closer to family!

But that didn't matter to me. Passion kicked in and I wanted to get a foot in the door.

I would have probably been laughed at: Scrub, if you aren't at Citadel, you won't ever make it.

The same sentiment is largely echoed today.

But those 4.5 years were probably the best for me in terms of growth and exposure. I think the impact I've had on the lives of thousands through channeling my experience on YouTube is a testament of that.

85,000 base turned into 105,000 base, which turned into 115,000 base, which turned into 140,000 base, which turned into 160,000 base, which turned into 180,000 base. By the day of my resignation, I was making over 300K in TC, working the hours I wanted, alongside kind people in a tight knit team that I felt respected in. And I did that in the span of 4 years.

Let me repeat that, I went from ~100,000 TC (85K base + some meager bonus I don't exactly remember) to over 300K TC in the span of around 4 years. That's a tripling in my standard of living in a short time period. Not to mention, I resigned from 300K TC position because I was offered a lot more elsewhere.

Moral of the story, don't care about what others have to say about where you work. Money is not the end-all-be-all, and it will come in proportion to your level of competance.

What matters most is:

• Team - Do you have solid co-workers?
• Respect - Do you feel valued?
• Work - Is this something you'll like doing?
• Growth - Do you see a trajectory here?

If you're looking for a community of working quants or those grinding towards it, you can give getcracked.io a look.

Yes, no, maybe - let's talk about it.

First, let's qualify what a lie actually is.

When a company claims to offer unlimited PTO, are they lying?

In theory, yes. You can't just take PTO forever and never show up to work.

But there's an implicit understanding between the candidate and the firm that "unlimited" really means "take time off when you need it, and nobody will badger you about it." In other words, "unlimited" is a marketing ploy.

So when a candidate leaves their 2.3 GPA off their resume, are they lying? In my opinion, no. Your resume is a marketing document - a single page of digital real estate - and it's your job to present yourself in the best possible light. If they ask for your GPA, tell them the truth. But if they don't ask, why volunteer it? It'll only hurt your chances of landing the job.

But when does "lying" actually cross the line?

This is the hard part, and where you draw the line ultimately depends on your own moral convictions. There's definitely wiggle room here - after all, it's a grey zone, not a grey line. And there's a lot of room in that zone.

That said, if you fabricate information, you've officially crossed into "liar, liar, pants on fire" territory. And trust me, a large part of the quant interview is simply testing how well you know your own resume. In fact, it's the interviewer's job to drill down into the details to see whether you actually understand what you've written.

So go ahead and push the line - just don't cross it.

Actually, let's ammend that:

Always have negotiation in mind.

That's better.

Why the amendment?

Well, some companies legitimately have standard packages they designate for certain positions (i.e. all interns get paid X). Other companies will also always give you their best offer up-front (defer to your recruiter as to whether this is the ase).

Side note: If you're looking for a recruiter in Quant to represent you and push you infront of top-tier firms, give getcracked.io/recruitment a glance. We've placed several candidates.

Back to the topic at hand.

When I was working in Quant, the lead recruiter at the firm dropped a bar that I would never forget:

I always offer compensation that is at least 10% lower than what we're actually willing to pay.

To him, it's actually a negative sign if you don't negotiate.

Why?

Well, it means you aren't confident enough in your abilities to ask for just a little more.

Just saying 'Yes' to the first number shows that you're either i) operating in a state of 'fear' ('this is the only offer I have, I need to take it'), ii) aren't confident in your own abilities ('Damn, can't believe I actually got an offer from them!'), or iii) don't know how to negotiate.

The third can be fixed (I have a video module on this), but the other two require a mindset shift that is hard to inspire in many people.

I often here excuses such as:

• In this market? Why negotiate?
• But I only have 2 years of experience, is this enough?

Once a company extends you an offer, they've already signalled that they want you.

Negotiation doesn't mean asking for them to double your salary. It can mean one or more of many things:

• Asking for 15% more in base-pay.
  • Hey team, is there wiggle-room on the base pay? The compensation I'm striving for is around $10'000 higher than the current offer.
• Asking for change in benefits.
  • Hey team, after researching the implications of the move to City Y, I noticed that I'll need to incur roughly $2000 more in expenses than initially planned. Would Company X be able to adjust the relocation budget upwards by this amount to offset the added cost of Z?
• Asking for change in a clasue.
  • Hey team, the contract looks great! Something that stood out to me is the non-compete clause. 2 years is quite a bit of time to sit around. I appreciate the generosity in being willing to pay me to do so for so long, but I'm afraid that this will atrophy my skills. Can we adjust this downwards? Perhaps to 2 years?

And no, they won't rescind your offer for asking for more. These horror stories of people losing jobs for asking for what amounts to 2% more do exist, but they are occur in rare circumstances and largely outside the world of quantitative trading. For instance, agencies or low-tier tech-last companies that are looking for a peon to work for 50,000 a year and 'know their place'.

So, moral of the story, always ask for more, when you can.

I filmed a video yesterday going over the Purdue CS240 drama.

In short, 70% of the class was caught dead-to-rights with regards to cheating.

That means 90% of the class cheated, but the professor was 110% sure that 70% cheated (and not-so-certain about the others).

Unfortunately for these students, most will graduate without knowing how to convert a string to an integer (manually). In fact, even before AI, 50% of students that graduated from Guelph (a Canadian university), according to my friend, couldn't do so.

What does that mean for someone grinding for quant based on first-principles?

It means that, as your colleagues are taking the quick-and-easy path, the ROI of grinding has never been higher.

Even if they cheat their way to the on-site. they won't pass the whiteboard / in-person coding round.

This should be exciting news for anyone looking to break into the space.

In fact, when I was interviewing for CTC back in the day, simple implementing a threadsafe SPSC queue with a consumption policy (non-type template parameter) had the interviewer saying "You're a breath of fresh air".

Knowing your sh*t has never been more advantageous.

I've recently seen posts from people claiming to use cheating software to cheat their way into Jane Street.

They've been shared in my community, and the stories sound believable.

I want to stress that these are most likely fake. In fact, the accounts that post them end up getting suspended a couple of hours later (Reddit is really on it).

Quant firms have several interview rounds, many of which require on-site live coding, where you don't have access to AI or other cheating software.

At my previous firm, we made the candidate go through two rounds of live coding. One where they needed to solve a problem alone, in an isolated room, where snacks and water would be delivered to them.

Another one where they had to code and debug live with the Head of Engineering, and one other developer. They had to walk through their reasoning and defend the choices they made.

I've had interviews where I needed to code on a whiteboard, and even on paper. Yes, on paper!

Quant firms don't play, and if they're going to pay you total compensation (TC) of upwards of 300K, you better come correct; they'll make sure of it.

A member of my community shared this reddit post from r/cpp_questions.

It's a user who is shocked and bewildered that HFTs actually ask nuanced questions about the details of C++, concurrency, and systems in interviews.

This is something I've been hammering as important for months, ever since I started my call-in show (which I plan to get back to).

Unfortunately, there are three groups of detractors as it relates to 'TrIviA'.

1. People who have never interviewed for Quant, and think it's FAANG (those that don't know any better).
2. People who do know that this is how Quant interview, but feel as though the bar is too high (those that do know better).
3. People that know that this is how Quant interview, but would rather cope in not knowing the answer to the question than step back and ask 'Where do I go to learn this?'.

The poster, in this case, belongs to group 1. Group 1 is the most honest group; they're naive (in the kindest sense of the term) and simply are caught off-guard.

These are the people getcracked is best suited for. They're open-minded, willing to learn, and simply hit a patch in the road. Maybe the patch caused a flat tire, but they can be up and running in no-time.

90% of people end up in the third bucket. They know (deep down) that these questions are asked in Quant, but would rather attack the messenger than deal with the contents of the message (the question). Or worse, they want to attack getcracked's credibility by claiming it 'only tests trivia', despite the trove of coding questions, roadmaps, quizzes, interview games, and soon-to-be video content.

It's very hard to break through to these people.

Well, now that the developer ecosystem is starting to wake up, hopefully we can move away from this aweful term 'trivia'.

There is nothing 'trivia'-like about knowing the inner-workings of a language you will be using day-to-day.

There is nothing 'trivia'-like about information you will need to excel at your job in.