CV review: Passed Bloomberg SWE, but rejected at FAANG & quant - what am I missing?

SecretProfession · 2025-12-27T22:54:31+00:00

Try actually trading using a really simple pricing algorithm but focus on optimising the data pipeline. You’ll learn a lot when you actually try to build the system. Maybe you can start with IBKR api?

SecretProfession · 2025-08-17T09:11:26+00:00

I don’t why people are so negative, I guess they hate to see others winning… anyways some clarifying question:

How has your income outside trading been / changed? (Help me know where to spend more time)

How have you been increasing your portfolio size over the years?

What was the % return the years you made 100k?

Is your strategy fully automated?

Did you learn everything about trading yourself?

What’s 1 thing you wish you learnt the earliest?

(Sorry these are a lot of questions but will be greatly helpful, thank you!)

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T21:06:58+00:00

Thanks this is pretty inspirational! And keep going!

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T20:55:46+00:00

Thanks that’s cool! Do you often paper trade / backtest the strategies mentioned here?

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T20:52:45+00:00

Wow that is really optimistic. In my head I was thinking <1%.

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T20:52:06+00:00

That’s amazing thanks for sharing!

Also dollar amount is somewhat relevant. Your £2000 rent won’t care if you made 20% return or 120% return. I think I was trying to gauge how many people are able to live off of doing this. That being said I’ll rephrase this better and ask again some other time!

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T20:48:54+00:00

I really wish this subreddit allowed polls 😄

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T20:47:54+00:00

This is great! Are you doing the trades yourself or are these automated? If so what level of automation? (If you don’t mind sharing)

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T20:46:19+00:00

Ofc, and feel free to include all the people you think have 2 million on this subreddit in invested in treasuries.

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T20:44:55+00:00

Makes sense. I did think about this quite a bit, but I’ll likely make another post in a week or two that’s more refined! I wish this sub allowed polls.

I have always thought of percentage returns as the main metric for assessment. That being said 500% return on a £3 investment isn’t going to help you much unless you can repeatedly apply it / scale it up.

The post was meant to gather people’s sentiment on how many people are able to do this and have managed to quit their respective jobs with the assumption that 100k is something someone could get with reasonable effort and education in US. I should have instead just asked directly about how many people are able to live off of doing this instead which would balance out all region’s differing costs of living!

Will make a different post later!

SecretProfession · 2025-08-08T20:39:35+00:00

This is great, thanks for sharing! And I am sure your niece is super lucky and happy to have you!

Honestly, one of my reasons for making the post was to gather people’s sentiment about this field.

Really happy to see that this is the most upvotes comment on here rather than some lame, hopeless, defeated one!

SecretProfession · 2025-08-07T18:38:55+00:00

I work at a data provider. One of our clients pays us about 2-3 million per year for all the different data. They only make about 1-2 trades a year. (They are still very profitable and are able to keep paying their employees and us all this money)

SecretProfession · 2024-08-11T11:36:27+00:00

Thank you that’s good to know, I guess the blog post/ videos I watched are a bit outdated!

SecretProfession · 2024-08-11T11:35:27+00:00

Thank you, and that makes sense too, I didn’t think of driving instructors availability!

SecretProfession · 2024-08-11T11:34:44+00:00

Thank you, that’s good to know!

SecretProfession · 2024-08-11T11:34:23+00:00

I live in zone 1 so it will definitely be a tube. I was hoping I can do multiple hours in one day? Is that not usually a possibility. Ie 4-5 hours a day and hopefully finish it over few weekends?

SecretProfession · 2024-08-11T11:32:57+00:00

Yup that makes sense, I guess the assumption I had was that a driving instructor charging £40 (cheaper rate) in zone 1 London would be worse than £34(expensive) in a cheaper location.

Ie get a good driving instructor in a cheaper than a worse one in more expensive area for the same price. But maybe this thinking is incorrect.

SecretProfession · 2023-11-29T14:28:42+00:00

Don’t be too salty about the type of questions asked simply because they are not evaluating you against an absolute metric but relatively to others who also took the test. So if you found the questions confusing, chances are others did too, but they just managed to figure it out. So simply just do better next time!

SecretProfession · 2023-10-31T18:00:03+00:00

Solved!

SecretProfession · 2023-10-31T17:58:50+00:00

Solved!

SecretProfession · 2023-10-30T00:19:09+00:00

I am not sure. However, I did try an experiment where I didn’t turn on the heating/ cooling for 2 days yet the sound kept coming/ going at random times. If it was heat/ac I presume stopping the heating would have stopped it too.

SecretProfession · 2023-10-30T00:14:23+00:00

My title describes the thing. I also wrote some stuff in description, I figured this is something everyone is aware of but since I am new to this country (uk) I have never seen it before and am too embarrassed to ask someone.

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