I applied online. I interviewed at Two Sigma (New York, NY) in Feb 2017
Interview
Two Sigma is in the middle of a hiring acceleration, but their poor process and lack of communication both internal and external is going to cost them talent opportunities. The interviewers and recruiting teams failed in three major ways:
1. They didn't communicate with the candidate.
I spent over 20 hours onsite, including 11 hours on the final day, speaking with teams from low-latency trading and market making, portfolio analytics engineering, and numerous other roles. After this last interview, I received zero communication from the firm or the in-house recruiters.
2. They didn't communicate with each other.
After 20 hours onsite, the interview needs to be more about theoretical computer science. Incredulous of my success despite not having a degree, late into the second day they continued to ask a mix of CS 101 basic questions, finance domain-specific questions and djikstras problems.
After 15 hours of whiteboard coding, their interviewers ought to know if I can code or not. After 20 hours of whiteboard coding, they're just insulting me.
3. They didn't provide information about the roles.
Only one interviewer would actually talk about what they worked on and what would be expected me in the role. The interviewers asked me if I had any questions, which allowed me to ask them more specifics about what they worked on, but no one ever bothered to sell me on their roles or describe how their roles would intersect with my career goals.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Imagine a game with a sequence of numbers. Each player can take either the head or tail element on any given turn. The player adds that number to their total score. Assuming both players play optimally, what's the maximum score that can be achieved by any player?
Define an AI algorithm for a game where two mice on a board can move up, down, left, right to look for a piece of cheese provided the manhattan distance to the cheese on any given turn. Additionally, assume there are cats, dogs, etc. also on the board that chase in the natural order, and their positions are known on any turn.
first interview was 60 minutes long with a leetcode hard question. second interview was 2 back to back 60 minute leetcode hard with emphasis on data structures. each interview had a 5 minute introduction and 10 minute at the end to ask questions
Standard medium difficulty hackerrank. The question involved decoded an encoded string. It was not something I had seen on LeetCode before and I think was unique to the company. The question was not that difficult but I ran out of time right before I could finish answering.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Decode a string encoded using a specific encoding algorithm.
It started of with one phone screen, then if you pass you have 2 back to back technicals, then 3 1 hour behaviorals, hiring committee, and management committee. Standard Leetcode and behavioral questions.
