Thursday, August 30, 2007

Typing while talking

Had a candidate caught up in this, should add to the list. And I blew it by not warning him. Client called "we're going to pass, we thought he was googling the answers." Googling the answers, oh, wait, that's because he's a compulsive computer note taker, he's always taking notes with his PC while he's on the phone with me! Client, "nice try Keenan."
Well, that got us to thinking -- when speaking to recruiters, I fingers are flying on the keys. Does that sound like we're not paying attention? Let me know

Monday, August 27, 2007

Second photo

That didn't work -- and thanks for NOT letting me know, blogger. So, upon further review, the photo must be less than 50k. Why?

Wait, that wasn't the problem. For some reason I need to have this address:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg48eRTPu-hfqGxysm3fQVKEe_9QXWDt1b8P-B_xQ9xq0LjiYy_49AGonCoRWSiVoB4J0NErka9Dh8fhAAzAF5XYb14W-158TgrR8VfYZzzoKEeoqLCfASY0GMb32Ay6l5hdl8/s320/jenandme.jpg

Instead of this
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg48eRTPu-hfqGxysm3fQVKEe_9QXWDt1b8P-B_xQ9xq0LjiYy_49AGonCoRWSiVoB4J0NErka9Dh8fhAAzAF5XYb14W-158TgrR8VfYZzzoKEeoqLCfASY0GMb32Ay6l5hdl8/s1600-h/jenandme.jpg

Very confusing. And again, on your profile, you can fill out a bunch of fields -- that are exactly the same on Orkut! Why Google? Why can't all your apps get along, this is simple stuff. Everything is attached to my Google ID.

What I look like


Man, someone at Google needs to start integrating these apps! To post a photo in your profile, you need to link to an existing web page! So, the work around is to create a post and then link back to the posting! Even though I already have my photo uploaded on Orkut. Don't you think they would just autocreate a picasa account for you? so weird.

That's me with my soon to be bride -- T-minus 12 days, 5 hours, and 48 minutes.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

You can call me JohnBhai

My brother in law just invited me a to a new social networking site (as if we needed any more!) It's called Yaari and is Desi based. It'll be interesting to see how well it takes on Orkut.

But, the best part is, I was able to get the user name JohnBhai, which is Gujrati for John Boy (I guess Hindi is more commonly transliterated as JohnBahiya). Sweet!

Friday, August 24, 2007

Cream rises to the top

My friend Ted sent this to me, I thought it fits into what we try to do -- smart people always find their way to the top (but I don't mind helping them out along the way)

Since you know this story ends well, you won’t be surprised to hear that he was editor-in-chief of the law review. At 45 years old, Sarles started at Mayer Brown, where he made partner in just seven years. “I don’t know if it was because my work was good or because the firm felt sorry for me,” he says.
You can read the whole thing at the WSJ blog

Fake it till you make it

In my acting days, one of my favorite sayings was "fake it till you make it." The idea is, you're on stage, you're not connecting with the character, don't just become emotionally unresponsive, relax, go through the motions until you get into the groove.

Hiring is similar. There is an arms race with technical interviews -- as candidates become better prepared, the questions become more asinine. Why? Risk management. No one wants to hire a liability and it is hard to figure out how good a coder is based on a short (8 hours) interview.

There are two major approaches -- the CS approach (used by GS most of anyone) is to ask a bunch of questions that you would get as an undergrad -- brain teasers, reversing linked lists, sort algos, reverse a string, etc. The idea here is, if you are smart, you will be able to pick up any language. Coding language is a tool, the programmer is the artist, he can work with any tool, a la Pablo Picasso.

The other line of thought is, we need serious depth in understanding a language -- the Morgan Stanley/Bloomberg approach. Being smart is great, but if you are really smart, then you will understanding threading, the garbage collector, the stack, the heap, the vtable, etc. If you don't have the depth of knowledge, we're not here to train you.

I always supply my candidates with a 4 page list of questions to expect. I don't care if they've done much threading or know the garbage collector or have worked with 30 STL containers. I want to know if they can learn enough, fast enough, to pass the interview. Listen, if they are not smart, then they will never be able to pass. But if they are smart, they can learn something and be able to pass -- that's what I think clients are really looking for.

It's always funny when I speak to people -- they'll have done a couple of interviews, been embarrassed they didn't know something trivial. The smart people take it as a challenge, study my questions, and get to really know the language they have been working with. Firms hire more people, my people need less interviews, and they feel like they've learned something. Makes you wonder why nobody else is doing it.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

I don't get no respect


So, I wanted to join up a Meetup group b/c I thought it would be fun to hear about how people are using technology on the street and I pride myself on being more knowledgeable than the other recruiters in the marketplace. I figure, what's the harm, the list of members of public, so it's not like I would recruit from the meeting. Plus, I know half the people there!
"However we're trying very
hard to keep this meetup ultra-techy and focused towards
collaborating on realworld issues"
I would understand, but of course the firm that hosts the Meetup also has their recruiters as members. Of course, they are just hosting the Meetup, they aren't using it for any other reasons :)

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Incredible Site

Of course, it is down right now, but YubNub is incredible. This article from Slate surmises it better than me.

The best alternative search engine I've stumbled across, YubNub, isn't a search engine at all. It calls itself a "command line"—a term familiar to DOS and Unix junkies—and serves as more of a Google-enhancer than a Google-replacer. YubNub gives you the tools to make searching with Google or Yahoo more efficient. Say you want to look for pictures of Paris Hilton in Google Images. You type "gim"—the site's shorthand for Google Images—and "paris hilton," and it takes you right to the page. Same goes for Google News ("gnews"), Wikipedia ("wp"), IMDB ("imdb"), Slashdot ("/"), Digg ("digg"), Dictionary.com ("d"), and a gajillion others.
Oh yeah, it is very, very cool.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Leverage

This note is a bit alarming. There are three ways to make A LOT of money. One, pick stocks well (Warren Buffett and James Simons. The second is starting an incredible software company. And the third way is real estate -- see what Mort Zuckerman has accomplished.

What they have in common is leverage. Suppose you have a sharp eye and know a good deal -- you buy a piece of property for 100,000 and put 10,000 down. You make some minor modifications, you market the property better, place increase 25% in value in one year. You sell for 125,000. Now your increase on investment is not 25%, it's 250% (your 10,000 is now $25,000). Nice.

I think what happened here is a bunch of hedgies bought MBS securities with two ideas in mind -- one, they thought the MBS securities would give them a nice steady return. Two, they thought the securities could be used as collateral to increase the amount of leverage in purchasing equities.

That's why we see patterns emerging where at some point during the day, a bunch of equities are sold. And then, later in that day, there is a huge rally. The sell off is occurring b/c as the MBS securities start to lose value, the banks are demanding the funds put up more collateral. Plus, I bet the banks are tightening their margin rules and asking for more in the bank to cover the loans. So then you are a hedge fund, you need to have cash on hand to keep your leveraged positions around, there is limited liquidity in the credit markets, so your safest (only) option is to drop your equities.

Now on the other side, I'm a trader -- there is nothing fundamental in most of the market to justify the sell off of these equities. So I start buying up.

The next day, same thing happens, funds need to sell to cover -- so I sell too! And then at the end of the day I buy back the shares. Nice!

Somebody is making a lot of money right now.

Excellence

A candidate asked me a question last night that gave me pause (not unusual as one of my weaknesses is not being exceptional quick witted). "You're only interest in this is the fee. If you were my friend, you wouldn't be asking me to do this interview."

Hmm. I was caught. I couldn't say the fee didn't matter, of course it does. But it really why I was being so persistent. So -- why was I being so persistent.

Excellence -- I don't want to wax to philosophical, but one of the attractions of platonic thought to me was the idea of excellence -- to do the best that you can do. To turn it around -- why do you write code? To help people? That's what people say when they come out of school. It idealistic and it's unrealistic. Who does more good for society, the person building an efficient trading system or the person building MS Word? How many millions (billions) of people are impacted by an efficient trading system -- do you have a 401k?

The next stage is, I'm in it for the money -- my wife went to law school and that must have been the motivation of 50% of her class at her firm when she graduated -- make money to pay off my debt so I can get the job that I really want. That's soulless, and it gives you an empty feeling at the end of the day. I don't know anyone who can stay in business every day where the goal is money.

No, money is a result, not a goal. It is a way to measure one's excellence. This is not semantics. Your motivation is to be the best -- being compensated well is a reflection of how good you are.

That's what I am seeking in recruiting -- excellence. To be known as the best technical recruiter in New York City. Yes, it's arrogant and it has a fair degree of hubris. But does anyone enter Major League Baseball to be "pretty good?" No, you want to be the best. That's what I want to be, the best recruiter in the business. That's my motivation -- I want to place you at my client because I think it is the best position for you. If I don't believe that, I won't do it. Simple as that.

High Frequency Trading

This is a cool article on high frequency trading that a colleague sent me. Take a looking

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The New New Recruiting model

We're doing some pretty exciting stuff over at Continuity Partners these days. Basically we're trying to blend some "old school" recruiting techniques with some of the newer methods. Here's how:

One of the biggest misconceptions people have about recruiters in the finance IT space is that we know most (all) of the hiring managers. Not true. Most recruiters try to fake it with dropping names here and there -- "I'm going to introduce to Peter Carr's group" or "Has anyone spoken to you about Rohit D'Souza's group." Sometimes people know a particular company particularly well. Or the oldest trick in the book -- "You work in equity derivs at Citibank. Do you work for Tom Jones (a fake manager name)" and then the candidate responds with the actual manager's name and you recruit him.

We're going to change all that. Now that the tools are available -- Google, databases, etc. -- we are going to get to know every single person in front office technology at every major bank and hedge fund. Think about it. Who would you want to work with on a job search -- a recruiter with some knowledge of one or two clients or a recruiter who knows every front office person in the industry -- both managers and your future coworkers? That is what is going to set CPI apart from every other firm in the business.

For the next 20 weeks (that's how many we have left in the year) my goal is to make contact with 50 new people every week. That's 1000 new contacts who I can help either today or tomorrow or years down the road. So, if you get a call from me at work or at home or you get an e-mail from me, I just want to get to know you.

Let's talk.

Monday, August 13, 2007

How ghetto is Orkut?

If Facebook is a lexus (clean design, fast), LinkedIn is a Cadillac (big and powerful), what is Orkut? It's ugly, it's has the equivalent of roll down windows (have to manually write e-mail addresses to invite people, no tool to import addresses from your contacts and compare to current users!) and it has the lamest color palette this side of the year 2000.

On the other hand, unsurprisingly, the search is really good. And there is good representation among the Desi population on Orkut.

Quant funds being hit

This article for the NYTimes is very interesting. Basically, it says that the major quant focused funds have been hit by the down turn in the equities and structured products market. What is interesting, is that you would think the funds would have models set up to anticipate this correction and would have shorts out to cover their losses. I mean, it's only 800 points that the DJIA has lost! Plus, in general, volatility should be good for a fund as they can make the money on the speed of the execution. You'd expect the mutual funds to lose money.

I'm going to ponder this a little more ...

Links!

I have not been diligent enough about putting up a blog roll. Shame on me, that is to be corrected immediately.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Conversations I am tired of having

If you have ever recruited in NYC, this could be funny.

1. If you are not yet a VP, I cannot get you a VP title.
2. Listen, salaries are capped, I cannot get you a 150k base.
3. You can take the tie and jacket off when you get to the office.
4. No, they will not write the bonus amount on the offer letter, that's not how it is done.
5. They are not going to buy you. They're going to make you a reasonable offer.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Doostang, you're insane

More idiocy from Doostang:

Hey John,

Thanks for your email – we’ll let a few pass through (like your’s). Basically our members aren’t coders – mostly finance/entertainment/consulting etc people.

Thanks,

Mareza

Funny, if you run a search for developer or "software engineer" you get more than 1000 hits. Funny that Doostang posts developer jobs on their site. I think it's a condescending attitude -- there are plenty of people in finance and consulting who are coding and providing value.

I'll probably get my profile deleted for posting this, but so what. Doostang isn't going to much a service with ridiculous and illogical rules like this.

No developer jobs on Doostang?

Maybe this is why I got kicked off of Doostang in the past:

Hi John,

I hope that you are well. Please note, Doostang is currently not accepting tech/developer jobs. Since you are a new member, we’ll keep it up for you, however, please do not post such positions in the future. We’ll hopefully be able to handle these in a year or so.

Thanks,

Mareza

I wrote to Mareza to ask why no developer positions (he's the CEO, after all) so hopefully we will find out what the story is.

In case you were curious

The new job is working out quite well -- smart people and a ton of contacts. Can't ask for anything more.

Friday, August 03, 2007

C++ reading list

I just created this reading list on Amazon, if anyone has any recommendations on books to add, let me know!

I'm also going to create a list of C# and Java books.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

More on the state of the market

It is strange that I am reassuring people working on trading desks at major wall street firms. But here's how I see the market:

1) Earnings at US companies continue to be strong
2) Consumer confidence is high
3) the housing market is slowly unwinding -- yet there has not been the predicted fall in consumer spending
4) The dollar continues to be weak, which means that US manufacturing still has room to grow
5) Low unemployment
6) The main non-US economies are very strong -- India, China, and to a lesser extent the Euro zone.

What is going to change any of that? The subprime market was made up of 4 people -- people who were poor trying to buy a house; people trying to flip houses; shady loan shops; wall street speculators betting on subprime using MBS.

The first group, it's sad that they are losing houses, but they don't make up a huge percentage of the population and they were poor, so they weren't spending much money in the market in the first place (harsh, but true). The flippers could be more concerning -- markets need flow to keep them operating and that's what housing flippers provide -- a steady stream of inventory for regular buyers to compare and contrast. I wonder how many flippers were in the subprime market. Or how many people are trying to flip right now, flipping goes counter when inventory stays on the shelf (I wonder if we could come up with a metric for that?)

Now, onto wall street. They shady loan shops (american home) are gone, out of business. People are going to lose money on that (like in your 401k) but I think it's a situation where it's dispersed throughout the market -- everyone subtract a nickel from your portfolio for the loss of American Home shares. Now the wall street speculators who were buying up the securitised products, that will be interesting. B/c now we know you won't be getting the cash flow they were expecting in the future. On the other hand, they were booking that for the next 30 years, i.e. say a loan portfolio was worth 30 million. That's 30 million gone, but the owner of the securities would be looking at it as losing one million dollars every year for the next 30 years. So again, that's a drop in the bucket to most banks.

I don't think it will effect the wider market, it's similar to when Amaranth blew up b/c of their natural gas positions.

In fact, we should call these funds -- Amaranth, Sowood, Bear Credit Strat -- anti hedge funds b/c there was no hedge involved! These were guys playing roulette with their funds. Bizarre.

No, I guess I was right

Nothing to see here

Caxton in trouble

Maybe I spoke too soon ...

State of the Market

Everyone is asking me how the market is, I'm not seeing any issues.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Staying Fresh

Complacency is a terrible temptation and one we deal with every day. You get accustomed to doing things a certain way and then wham, you interview and people are doing things a totally different way and you are caught flat footed. I remember when I knew that I wasn't a great developer -- we were working on an application, spending 12 hours a day coding Java code, trying to optimize our code so that we could get decent response on 56k connection. While we're all trying to cut down the data (to reduce packets), one of the guys on the team said, hey, why don't we do everything with XML/XSL. We were confused, what was that (this is 1999). He'd been reading up on it after hours. Basically, the XSL would be downloaded once and then every subsequent time it would reside on the users cache. Problem solved. That's the mark of a great programmer.