This experience felt like amateur hour with a few minor red flags.

Aside from the traders, there's perhaps not a single person at Akuna who has traded a security. Their compliance policy is very restrictive and bans trading. I've been trading options and other securities for the last 7+ years and follow markets daily. Akuna basically dissuades anyone like me who makes money from trading and has practical market experience. This suggests that the only ones working there are either dispassionate about markets or have a very academic view of them.

The team seems very new. I asked the team a couple of basic questions on how they manage risk, and they appeared uncomfortable, dismissing the topic by saying, "looks like we're out of time."

As someone who has built technology for traders and someone who trades, they didn't ask me anything trading-related. I've had various other interviewers ask me about this. Their process consisted of a bunch of sophomore tech questions, followed by a LeetCode-like problem.

They have a real-time, mission-critical application written in Python. They mentioned they are trying to refactor it because it's falling minutes behind (wtf?). I asked why they don't use C++. They said no one in that department knows C++. As a C++ and Python developer, I offered to rewrite it for them in under 2 months, but still, no offer was made. Clearly, your economic value to them is measured by how well you perform on their LeetCode questions.

The position I applied to was remote, but I was asked repeatedly whether I was open to relocation. This suggests that the role may not be remote in the future. I also had 2 other offers in hand, which were standard salaries for someone with my experience, but they indicated they might not be able to match them.

Anyway, I wasn't serious about joining given their compliance policy. However, it was a good learning experience and allowed me to see what it's like at a "professional" trading firm.

Misc tech questions and LeetCode/HackerRank