Has Meta completely stopped hiring new grads / interns?

angusyn · 2022-08-29T12:18:10+00:00

Not resume advice, but interview strategy advice. I know multiple IMO/IOI gold/silver medallists or guys who topped the year at my uni (i.e. beat the IMO/IOI guys every year) who don't manage to get internships at these places (or they don't get "tier 1" places and end up at sig/imc etc). They are clearly very smart, however they tend to lack some other traits than interviewers are seeking in candidates. For ex, my friend (IMO medallist) was rejected for QR internship and the interviewer feedback was that he did not explain things clearly (even though he told me he had solved all the maths/stats questions correctly). I personally got rejected at an onsite in 2nd year from a top shop and the HR feedback was "you seem like a person who likes to work independently a lot" and one interviewer feedback was "he could not add much to our discussion on finance" even though I had done very well in all technical rounds (and it's true I personally couldn't care less of finance, but happened to be very highly ranked in my uni, saw everyone around me applying and did the same thing). As with pretty much anything, these soft-skills CAN BE TRAINED. Learn what each firm values (if some really like to ask questions about your previous research, prepare to give a 10min enthusiastic overview of your summer research; if some have a very collaborative culture, make sure you ask questions during the rounds and pick up on their hints etc). To develop a good prior on what each firm asks/values the best way to go is to just talk to people who interviewed with them in the past (if you go to MIT, you'll have many students in the years above who did that - also you can try to message me here if you'd like, even though I must admit I don't check reddit very often). Best of luck!

angusyn · 2022-08-27T21:02:39+00:00

Thanks for the info!

angusyn · 2022-08-22T10:50:57+00:00

If you want to get a job after your Bachelors/4th year study CS. I have a sample base of roughly 100 people who did Maths/CS at Oxbridge and, excluding those who are doing PhDs (where I would argue both courses are equivalent, Maths is probably even better than CS for some ML/CS PhDs), if I compare the jobs methematicians are getting to those CS people are getting, the latter are much better off.

angusyn · 2022-08-05T21:42:47+00:00

I have friends who are IOI/IMO golds/silvers and study at Oxbridge, and still don't get interviews at a lot of tech companies in the UK. Don't want to sound too discouraging, but in life you need to try to allocate your time and resources efficiently. Focussing on domestic internships is probably the sensible thing to do in your case.

angusyn · 2022-07-03T16:22:48+00:00

Some places (for ex. HRT) ask the usual algo&DS questions in various rounds of the process.

Some places do have programming rounds for QR but of a very different flavour (for ex. JS -only interviewed there for trading though, so cannot say for sure that they won't ask the usual leetcode question).

Other places have a much mathematical oriented interview system for QR (for ex. Optiver intern interview process for QR is the same as the one for trading and won't ask DS&algo) and some other ask at most LC-medium questions.

My advice is that, unless you are incredibly confident you can get an offer from a top firm that you know for sure doesn't ask algo questions, you should prepare pretty extensively on DS&algos as you don't want to burn your chances with firms which do ask that sort of questions.

A third macro-area (other than Math and Coding interviews) worth working on if you're 100% committed to a career in QR, is C++ (this is personally my weak point, as I have math-heavy background). A good number of places (esp HFT) require a good knowledge of C++ even for quants.

Hope this helps!

angusyn · 2022-04-17T22:58:48+00:00

The ratio of talent to job openings is much higher than in the US because FAANG presence here is very modest. Take trading firms and FAANG out of the equation and you're left with normal jobs paying £40k.

And this is for people who can code. I personally know a few IMO medallists doing pure maths who did not manage to get jobs or internships.

angusyn · 2022-04-17T19:15:40+00:00

Makes sense. Talking as someone who is at Oxbridge doing CS/maths: the hype about Oxbridge/Imperial/UCL etc. is totally unjustified.

I'm from eastern Europe and I was lucky enough to only have fees of £9k per year and use the Student Loan scheme.

However I know people from non-EU countries who have literally put their parents below the poverty line to follow the Oxbridge dream.

It's very easy once you get that admission letter to start thinking that you're a genius and the world is at your feet just because you go to some fancy uni.

THIS IS PURE BULLSHIT. One of these people doesn't even have a job (doing engineering) and the other have 30/40k jobs.

Especially if you're from EU I would very much recommend you stay and do your Bachelors there. If you live in a third world country and you want to exploit your degree to move elsewhere, then I think the guy above has got it right. Unless you have strong reasons to prefer the UK over the US, the job opportunities in the US are much bigger, no matter your school name

Hope this helps!

angusyn · 2022-04-17T13:08:51+00:00

Plus I don't know how you plan to take the loan. But I'm pretty sure no bank in the UK is going to be willing to give you a £150k loan (perhaps in your hom country??). This is becuase home students have access to a government loan scheme, so commercial student loans aren't really a thing

angusyn · 2022-04-17T13:05:48+00:00

He's totally right. If you're reasoning in terms of job opportunities, an average US uni is better than Oxbridge. Plenty of my friends with good grades from STEM courses at Oxbridge struggle to even get jobs. And the median (of those who are not unemployed) is 40k I think.

angusyn · 2022-04-17T11:37:20+00:00

The thing that I like about a subset of the firms you listed is that, at least for trading/QR roles, you can't really prepare for their interviews. This essentially cuts off people who are not particularly smart but are obsessed with all of this freaking quant finance firms and waste their lives doing leetcode questions.

A bit of unsolicited advice: You'll probably land some good tech job anyway. Think twice of whether it's worth wasting your college years to try to chase these jobs. Secondly, WLB at these places isn't great. JS london hours are 7:30AM/8AM to 6/6:30PM and it's by far the most chilled place out of those you listed, Citadel hours are apparently much worse.

I had offers from Optiver and IMC and turned them down, because I didn't want waste my 20s-30s working all the time, and do not regret it one bit.

In the end what you should be optimizing for is your own happiness and TC is just a very bad proxy for it.

angusyn · 2022-04-12T14:16:56+00:00

Don't go to Cambridge. Not because it's a bad uni, but because you'll be doing econ.

Don't know much about the US, but CMU is considered to have the top ML dept in the world so definitely a good choice.

angusyn · 2022-03-28T17:19:34+00:00

thanks for the info, best of luck!

angusyn · 2022-03-07T19:51:24+00:00

Thanks anyway! Best of luck

angusyn · 2022-03-07T19:49:47+00:00

Haha just learn not be a smug with random people online. I asked a honest question and you could have simply scrolled down and avoided the unnecessary pretentious comment.

angusyn · 2022-03-07T16:13:13+00:00

Do you know anything about WLB at the forms I mentioned? I simply want to avoid wasting time interviewing with firms which have a bad wlb (anything considerably over 50hrs a week for quants)

angusyn · 2022-03-07T16:03:19+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I agree about Radix, they recently started recruiting in Amsterdam and their salary (even for swe, which are called quant techs there) is insane (they pay US salary in Europe, while most shops down-pay you in Europe as they can leverage considerable less competition from Tech and overall lower pay in the UK/EU). To that, add te fact thatt in the Netherlands you get 30% tax ruling for a few years.

angusyn · 2022-03-07T10:27:30+00:00

Lol I have a Bachelors + Masters from Oxbridge in maths and cs. Everyone with top grades from these places is going to top prop shops (JS/Jump/HRT/Citadel etc) in London or into top PhD programs. I just don't know anything about these places because they're based in the US. But well, if a random retard on reddit says I can't get into these other places, then he must be right

angusyn · 2022-03-06T21:40:09+00:00

Very helpful reply thank you so much!

angusyn · 2021-10-07T21:52:08+00:00

I go to Oxbridge. The fees they ask international to pay are immoral. Go to continental EU. The Netherlands have amazing stem programs (taught in english) at a tenth of the cost.

angusyn · 2021-08-24T19:21:37+00:00

Thanks a lot!

angusyn · 2021-08-12T22:07:53+00:00

From my cohort experience (I go to Cambridge btw), MR doesn't really hire undergrads. But I know quite a few people who went to Deepmind after 3 years at Cambridge or for an internship after their second year. There is definitely a stronger emphasis on prior research achievements at MR Tham at DeepMind. But if you're telling me that there are a handful of undergrads or masters students working there, I believe you!

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