It has been six months since my last interview at Optiver, and I've spent a lot of time trying to forget this frustrating experience. Here's a little about myself: I am a junior at a top CS school with a GPA of 4.0+, and I have interned at two other well-known companies before.

The interview framework is listed below:

8:45 AM - 9:00 AM CST: Recruiting Welcome 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM CST: Technical Interview 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM CST: Design Interview 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM CST: Break 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM CST: HackerRank Discussion 12:00 PM - 12:30 PM CST: Group Info Session - with our Leadership Team 12:30 PM - 12:45 PM CST: Recruiter Wrap Up

Technical Interview:

This was essentially the same as the OA question at Akuna. However, the interviewer was super unclear about the specifications and kept changing them all the time. When I asked for clarification, he answered, "It's your choice to decide." While I was coding, my internet was out for around five seconds, and I dropped out of the Zoom meeting. It took me another ten minutes to get back because I was stuck in the waiting room. When I contacted HR (the Zoom meeting host), it took her forever to reply.

Design Interview:

I met the rudest interviewer I've ever encountered. I have to admit that I'm not great at system design interviews, but the disrespect I received from the interviewer was beyond acceptable. I could see him rolling his eyes multiple times during the interview, and he kept walking around the room, making the camera shaky and the audio disturbing. Also, he once asked me if I was familiar with TCP/UDP, and I said no (yes, I didn't know what they were at that time). He then proceeded to ask me a question that I couldn't comprehend. What's the point of asking a TCP/UDP question if I don't even know what it is?

HackerRank Discussion:

The interview was nice compared to the previous two. The only problem I had with him was that he looked a bit sad and miserable. However, I haven't figured out if it was because of me or if he was just having a bad day.

Group Info Session - with our Leadership Team:

I had a talk with the CTO and two other candidates. The CTO was extremely rude. He asked us questions, and we took turns to answer. One question was, "Why did you choose Optiver?" I said something like, "I haven't interned at a trading company before and would like to see how it compares to other traditional tech companies." He then proceeded to say their bar is quite high and they usually don't hire a lot. Honestly, I just didn't get the point of saying something like that during an interview. Also, he completely ignored me for the last two questions, meaning he didn't wait for me to answer at all.

Overall, I will never consider an internship at Optiver and would not recommend it either.

A coding question about trading, and sending an offer to the exchange.

A system design question.

Hackerrank discussion