[drc500free]

My first interview out of undergrad back in 2004, at a bank to write trading software. The recruiter told me I didn’t need to know anything about finance.

The first round grilled me about bond coupons and asked why I would apply to a bank if I didn’t know what that was. Completely flustered, I was handed a pen and paper Java assessment, and I completely froze up. Not even algorithms, simple stuff about scoping and how primitives and Objects do or don’t retain mutations after you return from a method. I bombed. The last interview was a clearly coked-up trader making fun of me, calling me an idiot, and asking me “how the fuck you got into MIT.” I cried on the way home.