welcome to the Jonah show the show where
we give you tips and tricks on how to
land a successful career in tech the
last video I talked about how I got my
first internship which was at Scotiabank
and I promised that I will make further
ones about different internships so this
is the second internship I had it is at
Citadel oh yeah I just want to say shout
out for the people who told me to to
make this video I guess a little bit of
context before I was a software engineer
or my first year in University of
Waterloo I actually did not want to be a
software engineer I want to work in
finance but you know you'll see later on
why I became more of a software kind of
guy than a finance guy and it's kind of
it's because of Citadel actually and it
was without further ado let's start it I
[Music]
just want to start off by talking about
the benefits Citadel not gonna lie
was my highest paid internship out of
all the other ones so what I got I think
I had seven point eight thousand seven
point eight thousand dollars a month so
it's kind of like forty five dollars an
hour you can say if you work 40 hours a
week and then you also have free housing
I had a I had a studio apartment and it
was sound like a penthouse it wasn't
really a penthouse but basically you had
like you know four windows and you could
see the lake and stuff and it was
amazing the view was beautiful was
gorgeous you get lunch breakfast and
dinner so you get to eat there if you
want yeah so out of all the internships
this one probably paid the most if we
combine like all the benefits and the
monthly paid together so yeah it was a
pretty good internship so alright let's
get to how I got the job in the first
place
so remember last time I said I went to
University of Waterloo so I was in coop
and then this was my second coop term so
I did the same thing I did the ranking
basically what happens in ranking is you
apply to a lot of jobs and then later on
you could see if employers want you or
did they rank you when they rank you it
means they don't want you like they're
not you're not the number one choice but
if the number one choice does not want
the job you might get this job so that's
how
you want really worse let's look at my
resume let's look at just like I why I
did okay so as you can see still using
my old latex format so I got my first
job experience which is that Scotia
capital from the previous video but I
think what got me the job was actually
my personal project and just how I
aligned with like the finance / software
type of guy so I'll show you what it is
so here as you can see prediction
trading bot this was the project I
talked about last time they really like
that because it's really to finance and
it shows that you can code you know it
shows I can quote Python and I'm scrappy
and basically you know I could make
something that runs and it doesn't die
so next project through I'm an
international training competition I
think this one mattered to not because
it showed my coding skills but showed
because I care about finance and at
least I would have liked you know
context like finance context so that
they don't need to re-explain everything
but to be honest most software
engineering jobs in finance or like
technical jobs in plants they don't care
if you don't know anything about finance
because they think they can teach you
they know they can teach you
you know finance stuff is easy but the
technical skills that's kind of hard to
teach and it requires more resources for
them they usually prioritize you knowing
your technical stuff really well rather
than you know into finance stuff and
then the other project smash player
database yeah I used to be really into
super smash melee and what I did was I
was really into I was into like a
Toronto community where I used to play
competitive smash alot I wasn't really
good I never got out of the pools by me
like if I play against a casual player
I'll probably beat the out of them
but I was really interested in like
ranking players I want to see who's
actually better than who so I want so I
made it like a ello kind of thing or you
could input like who'd you play it
against and then you know using me low
calculate your ranking and that's like
the first time I learned how to make
like a website that has like crud you
know create read update delete and stuff
like that but I use PHP which is like
like very old-school
by this you know I learned the
fundamentals and then yeah CRC robotics
that had talked about last time and I
can
in my resume so yeah so that was my
resume going in alright so let's talk
about the interview so how it worked I
had two phone interviews and then one on
site and on the on site I had three
interviews so the first phone interview
was was pretty easy because it was a fit
question basically you talk to the
recruiter and you talk about oh why do
you want to join Citadel what have you
done past you know what do you know
about finance so I thought she really
liked me because I showed a lot of
passion passion and then I also talked
about my technical skills and how like
you know I have a CS degree I learned
C++ which is perfect because a lot of
their codebase are in C++ and the reason
for that is because you know it's hyper
format you know they write you know
really high performing code you know so
they love it they like that the fact
that I use C++ the most so the second
phone interview is a technical one I
don't quite remember exactly what it was
because it was four years ago but I do
remember that I did not code because we
didn't open code pad or anything he was
asking me a lot of like theoretical
question a computer science question I
remember there was a question asking
about imagine there are multiple you
know it's something relate to this but
multiple threads wanting to change a
database like how would you make sure
that you know you don't have like
corruption of data like imagine if you
need to update one row and another row
but then at the same time another you
guys updating a row like transactions so
what would you do so then you have to
talk about the concept of locks they
want to make sure that you understand
what locks are because I think when you
work with it a lot its I said though or
at least my team I was pretty surprised
that I got the on-site interview because
I didn't think my phone interview went
that well cuz I don't know I was scared
that he saw through my and I
didn't know what the I was talking
about when I was talking about locks and
stuff but you know I guess I tricked him
because I got an on site now funny thing
about the on site this is this is a
funny story um 140 on site before going
there I went to Montreal furs because
that's where I lived all the other
candidate that had on site they went
from either Tehran or Waterloo so did
took the same they took the same plane I
was the only one that was taking it for
much
so the funny thing is when I went there
for my on site no one else from my
school was there no one I wore earlier
was present so then I was like oh
then I just get like lucky and then I
probably just got the job because I was
the only kind of date that's not true
because apparently they they flew them
out later on but I do think that me
being there first had an advantage
somehow and then the interview process
it was you do three interviews during
the day the first interview this guy was
more of a probability kind of guy so
this guy asked me like two brain teasers
and like one probability question or it
was like two probability questions one
brain teaser and then a second interview
second interview was I think it was a
hard one this interview I would cart
like C++ theory or something like that
basically I asked like what is the order
of like deletion and Sophia I was very
C++ related and then I think he asked me
about locks too like how it works are
like semaphores so make sure you know
your your C++ theory or I guess like you
know concurrency stuff because I think
that's really important especially in
like a high frequency kind of firm and
then the third one the third one was
pretty sure that there'd almost like a
classic classic interview where you know
first he would ask you to you know make
a class a design to design a class that
was serve a certain purpose and that
purpose for me was like imagine you have
a you have a portfolio what would you
want to keep and then after that after I
design a class the second question it
was like a simple coding question I was
pretty excited and I thought I did all
right
but I didn't have any expectations
because I didn't want to keep my hopes
up but when I went home they called me
and they said like oh you know we
everyone liked you we want you to work
for us and here's the offer and during
that time I had other offers too for
example I was thinking about one of
Bloomberg because I also got an offer at
Bloomberg but I was pretty happy that I
didn't accept it because you know like
Citadel ended up being a lot higher in
pay so that's cool let me show you um
what my job offer or like the ranking
looks like in Waterloo in case some of
you I I'm wearing the Waterloo shirt but
anyways in case some of you
in case some of you want to you know
maybe join Waterloo in the future it is
what looks like okay yeah so here you
can see the job titles the employers and
when it says offer it means they offered
you when it says ranked it means that
you're not the best candidate but if the
other people don't take you then I'll
take you so this is how it looks like
get you interview like those were the
only interviews I got I got ten
interviews and then five of them
accepted me so yeah so then that's how
that's how it works okay I guess I'll
talk about how it was at Citadel I
worked out the options market making
team so it was it was pretty coding
intensive because you know it's like
high frequency it's it feels more of a
business then kind of like gambling
because some teams you know they just
gamble on oil or like they just gamble
on certain assets but like market making
is like you have you know you have
regulations and then you have deals with
the exchanges so you know it feels like
there's more of a business and like you
know a low-risk kind of kind of team so
yeah so to work
we worked you something hard people work
pretty late compared to Facebook you
know it's around the same I feel like
it's not crazy when I worked there I
mostly worked under C++ code base so it
was a lot of C++ I learned a lot
actually
before this internship I didn't know
about anything because of this
internship I learned about networking
you know TCP UDP kind of thing I learned
about you know OS stuff I learned about
processes I learned about
multi-threading I learned about blocks
semaphores and all these good stuff so
this was a very good internship because
I learned a lot about like CS
fundamentals and then it made school
like a lot easier so like an example of
what I did there I probably can't say
much but in some ways I roll my own web
server you know like I'm not saying like
oh you just install nodejs and put
Express and stuff like that no I
actually wrote like a server that
receives a TCP connection and then
receive HTTP request/response
and then follows a www like
specification and then received it and
then I spit out a string back to that so
it was very low-level
in addition to that I also wrote my own
web socket layer so I don't know if you
guys know what that is but like it's
pretty popular now so I'm pretty sure
you guys know what WebSockets are but
basically instead of using that HTTP
request you could do a WebSocket which
means it's actually one TCP connection
with the server that does not get killed
and you send messages to each other
there's actually old technology
you know because how HTTP works is like
you send an HTTP request so that means
you open TCP connection you send the
thing and then you close the TCP
connection and then when you send
another HTTP connection you do it again
you close it so there's a lot of
overhead WebSocket takes care of that
it's just one connection stays on and
you send message to each other next time
I see you I'll be talking about LinkedIn
and how I got a software engineering
internship there so if you want to see
what's gonna happen or how I got that
job don't forget to Like and subscribe
oh I forgot to mention the startup
series
yes it's still going on don't worry
about it the next episode is coming