The Tradebook team is very good and genuinely interested in finding out how much subject matter you know.

The interviews consisted of two phone interviews, followed by an in-house four-hour interview with several people.

The interviewing style was 2 on 1. There were lots of deep C++ and logic questions.

I went through this successfully and was invited for the final round with the Group Head of Tradebook Technology on another day.

This job requires a lot of "ancient C" and probably some Fortran babysitting as well. But they asked deep C++ questions, and I was not happy about the "false advertising."

Anyway, this Group Head interview went nowhere.

Key points from that interview:

• They told me that IBM and DoubleClick (places I worked in the past) are not as much technology houses as Bloomberg is.
• They kept irritating me with a "12 Coin puzzle" to find a counterfeit coin with three weighings (I gladly did these kinds of logic puzzles in the first in-house interview, by the way).
• Any person can go on the web, find the answer, and parrot it. The question should have been, "Why does it take three measurements?"

Anyway, the upshot is: BEWARE if you are going in for this Tradebook interview.

It will be quite pointless and a waste of a sick day, so be warned.

In my opinion, they want someone with around 7-10 years of experience. If you have more, and/or have changed jobs a few times, don't even bother.

They are scared that you will come, stay for a couple of years, and take that experience to some hedge fund or trading platform startup.

Sequence of numbers in random order, and 1 of them is missing. How to find that out?

5 adjacent parking spots. What's the probability 2 cars are next to each other?