Hudson River Trading Interview (Software Engineer)

Summary

The video provides a detailed account of the creator's application and interview process at Hudson River Trading (HRT), a top algorithmic trading company. The creator shares their experience, starting with the online coding assessment, which they found manageable, followed by a challenging phone interview that took a turn for the worse. Despite knowing advanced concepts like TLB caching, distractions like a knocking door and constant messaging sounds led to a poor performance. Though the creator failed the interview, they praise HRT as a great company and remain open to applying again.

Takeaways

• 😄 The intro of the video is a joke and unrelated to the main content.
• 📊 The video covers the speaker's application and interview experience with Hudson River Trading (HRT), a highly technical algorithmic trading company.
• 💻 HRT has a very high technical bar, and the speaker became interested in the company after attending a virtual event and through a smart friend who worked there.
• 📝 The speaker applied for the algo developer role at HRT and received an invitation to a Codility test, which was 140 minutes long and had three coding questions.
• ⌨️ The speaker solved the first two questions easily, including an array and a recursive string problem, but the third question was more complex and tedious.
• 📞 In the phone interview, things went wrong. The interviewer from the Chicago office asked a technical question involving memory operations, but there was a disagreement about the TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer).
• 🔔 During the interview, the speaker got distracted, thinking someone was knocking at the door, which led to them losing focus and performing poorly on the coding problem.
• 😓 The speaker was frustrated by constant notification sounds from the interviewer’s messaging app, which distracted them throughout the interview.
• ❌ The interview did not go well, and the speaker was rejected, but they still think highly of HRT and might apply again in the future.
• 🤔 The speaker ends by asking viewers if they’d like to see a technical challenge with their friend who works at HRT.

Q & A

What is Hudson River Trading (HRT)?

Hudson River Trading (HRT) is an algorithmic trading company known for having a high technical bar and strong computer science fundamentals among its employees.

Why did the speaker become interested in HRT?

The speaker became interested in HRT because one of their close friends, who is a highly skilled computer scientist, worked there. They also attended a virtual event and were impressed by the strong computer science fundamentals of the HRT employees.

What was the format of the online assessment for HRT?

The online assessment was a 140-minute Codility test with three coding questions. The candidate could solve the problems in any programming language they preferred.

What were the topics of the three questions in the online assessment?

The first question was an easy array-based math problem, the second was a recursive string-based problem with hidden test cases, and the third question was more complex, similar to a text justification problem.

What challenges did the speaker face during the phone interview?

The speaker faced multiple challenges, including an interviewer who disagreed with their correct response about the TLB caching mechanism and a distracting messaging app noise throughout the interview.

What mistake did the speaker make during the interview?

The speaker mistakenly thought someone was knocking at their door and left the interview during a problem description. When they returned, they had lost focus and struggled to solve the problem.

How did the speaker describe the interviewer’s response to the TLB caching mechanism?

The interviewer acknowledged that mentioning the TLB was a good insight but incorrectly claimed it was not relevant to the question. The speaker was taken aback by this and later confirmed with others that they were actually correct.

What was the nature of the coding problem presented during the phone interview?

The coding problem was a LeetCode-style medium problem, which the speaker had difficulty solving after losing concentration when they left to answer the door.

What distracted the speaker during the interview aside from the door incident?

The speaker was distracted by an incessant bird-chirping notification sound from the interviewer’s messaging app, which was going off throughout the interview.

What is the speaker's final opinion about HRT despite the bad interview experience?

Despite the negative interview experience, the speaker still holds a high opinion of HRT and would consider applying again, as they believe it is an amazing company.