News flush

Finally some word from the monsters who toy with my destiny like so much fluff.


Thank you for coming back in to see us. Unfortunately, we are not able to offer you a position with our group in London at this point, however, if you are interested in working in New York we do have a potential opportunity there. If this is of interest please let us know, we can arrange video conference interviews from our offices in Sydney.


WTF? I fired off the following abrubt email to my man on the inside.


Here's (names)'s response. What does it mean, i.e., is this a pass or a
fail on the interview?


The following reply wended its way through the wires to me, and lay gasping at my feet.


I heard about this the moment after I emailed you yesterday. Trust me, it is excellent news for you!

mate, how do you feel about working in Manhattan, NYC??!!

We are full up in London at the moment but we generally find it harder to get decent people in the US, so we are thinking about sending you over there. In fact, the position is in my own group - Credit, and (name) is my line manager, sits next to me, and is global head of credit in GMAG. You would be working with me!

Basically it is a scrape-through pass on the interview - but the NY guys may want to interview you in the video conference - or they might just want to talk to you to see what you are like, I'm not sure how it works from here as I have not seen them do this before.

Unless you have major issues about working in the Big Apple rather than London I'd give a very positive response to (name) and (name) and get the ball rolling. Ask them if the vid conf will be a technical interview, so you know what to expect.

NYC would be great mate, I'm actually thinking of asking for a txfer over there at some point in the future myself (but that's between you and me)

well done mate, nearly there,


So now you know all that I do, and can ponder over what's said, what's left unspoken, the choice of phrase. Only I will be privvy to the original formatting.

What say you, o internet?

Weasels ripped my flesh

Update: Ok, so they've got back to me:

"We would like to invite you in for a second round of interviews. Will you be available to come in on Friday at 1pm?

In the first round you did quite well on the implementation side but we were hoping for a stronger result on the maths/problem solving side. Friday's interviews will put more focus on maths/problem solving."

Also, I got the following random email from Google:

Hi (Dr. Cok),

Your name came highly recommended to us to contact for Engineering opportunities, so we would like to invite you to submit your resume and transcripts or course list for consideration. We're looking for exceptional students with strong programming skills, excellent algorithmic and analytical skills and a strong aptitude for building high-performance, scalable computer systems. We offer a very challenging technical environment in a collegial atmosphere. More details about working at Google can be found at http://www.google.com/jobs/great-people-needed.html.

We are actively hiring for our Sydney R&D office, so look forward to hearing from you soon!

Hmmm.... Having gmail account, personalized google search, a google blog, etc, makes one worry about privacy, eh.



Still haven't heard back from Numbnuts inc. about the job interview, which is frustrating. Some friend of a friend of B-roq's, whom I met on Saturday night, works for HR at another big investment bank, so I sent her my CV on Monday. She's passed it on, and we'll see where that leads. It looks like I'm going to have to do some temporary work as a Walker and Turner (Dad joke: (requires Italian accent for maximum groan-inducing hilarity) walk around the corner and turn around the corner).

pop77 has a new mix, new site layout, and the promise of resuming weekly mixes.

Went out on Saturday night with B-roq. Predictably, we ended up at a massive gay club mid morning the following day. There were so many people, and they were all looking great. As things normally get exponentially seedier after daybreak in Sydney, it was strange.

Bugger me gently.

My niece and nephew. A photo I uploaded a while ago, but haven't had a chance to use.

I shall use the modern miracle of bullet points to explain my wonderous and harrowing journey so far.

• I spent most of the time in Chicago pretending to work on the book chapter, by making superficial changes to it and rambling on with reassuring technical nonsense when quizzed about it. In the interim, I was furiously swotting away on learning the theory of options pricing. Also decided that Chicago was a gay place to do a postdoc.
  
• More recently, I discovered the above probably warrants as a paragraph, but grimly pressed on.
  
• I flew to Trondheim in Norway for a postdoc 'interview'*, and gave a seminar. Loved the place, learned a lot of fun facts about Norway that I shall use to both amuse and bemuse people in bars.
  
• Flew to Oslo (also in Norway, duh) to have an 'interview' for a position in Nice (which is in France). START THE CONFOUNDERON 5000.
  
• Flew to Nice to have a look to see if I like the place. I was also meant to meet someone there, but this fell through while I was in Chicago. Chia picked me up at the airport, and we had a look around and visited the offices. I decided Nice as a city is crappy, that the position is too bound up with French beaurocracy, and that the pay was crappy.
  
• Spent a few days with Chia driving from Nice to Rome, while still cramming for the finance interview. Had a fabulous time. I dropped a whole load of bling on an Italian suit in Siena for my interview** in London.
  
• Got to London yesterday, rolled up to B-roq's, got a haircut, bought a shirt and tie. The shirt turned out to be some sort of clown suit which required cufflinks (A fitting room assistant at Marks&Spencers has been added to my "People to send to forced labour camps when I'm ruler of all the known multiverses" list). Thankfully, B-roq had an appropriate shirt.
  
• Went to the finance interview today. Which is where we resume our regular format.
  

The interview went from 1pm to 6:30pm and involved 5 people. They rode me 'round like an drunk, unconscious hooker in a distopian, post-apocalyptic, seedy bar movie scene. The questions involved brain-teasers, calculus, probability, and some basic option pricing stuff. It was nerve-wracking, and a little surreal to be sitting around in a luxurious interview room, dressed up like a funeral director, pondering over some silly question about arranging marbles, while being carefully observed by people with doctorates in physics, mathematics, engineering, computer science, and finance. Strangely, I nailed some very difficult questions, and fumbled around like a buffoon with some very, very basic ones. I honestly have no idea how I went.


Footnotes:
* Not so much an interview as a sales pitch. The positions are mine if I want them.
** Not so much an interview as statutory rape.