[pvarangot]

I got a unicorn senior RS offer without a PhD from a company that had mostly former FAANG top brass after interviewing without knowing it was for RS, I thought it was DS/ML. I declined because of "culture fit". Everyone has a PhD, they assumed I had one, I don't even have a bachelors. We still hang out and laugh about it.

I had been working in Attitude Determination and Control and Optical Systems Engineering for seven years before that interview and I just like, knew the stuff from the job. I've been back on pure-SWE roles for four years already and I don't think I could do it now. I have the intuition but I couldn't white board proofs for tree based algos and manipulate integrals like I did on that interview for sure.