Ivanisms

While doing some research this morning I found a nice article today about recruiting A candidates and the dangers of B candidates. I always am seeking the A candidates, but this really summarizes why I stay away from B Candidates:

B players, on the other hand, are the bad hires. They are good enough that they often get things passably done. They may be sloppy or incomplete, but they always seem to have an external excuse. They are usually likeable enough (you hired them!) but there's something about them. They are the people who won't admit when they don't know something, and won't ask questions for fear of appearing dumb. And they are the people who start politics in the office. Because they can't keep up, because they're not an A player and know it, because they think economics is a "zero sum game", they start breeding discontent and negativity.

He's got another good article on retaining employees as well.

But I don't have any finance experience

Yeah, and so what? There is an interesting rule I've noted in finance recruiting -- the better the group, the less important finance knowledge is. Wait, isn't that backwards? No, the better the group the less important is finance knowledge.
Why? Because the best groups need the best coders and realize the true scarcity of engineers at this level. Some of my biggest deals this year have been placing out of industry, out of state developers into front office groups at Morgan Stanley, Lehman, and Goldman Sachs for just this reason.
So if you are a great developer, let's talk.

Strategist Search

Very exciting news, one of our clients is a building a strategy team in Fixed Income. For those unaware of what a strat is, it's a role created at Goldman many years ago for essentially a developer who gets paid from the business, rather than from IT. The idea is that if a developer is paid on the business, their interests are more inline with making money.

Very exciting search, so if you are a quant with strong coding skills or a coder with strong quant skills, we should be talking ...

C++ Program Trading

You wouldn't think this would be a hard search. I have a well known bank looking for 5 C++ developers to add to their program trading team (just placed someone there). Why? Because they are rewriting the entire system.

So why can't I find anyone!!!

Feeling better

Well, feeling much better now -- I was hit by a case of shingles which is essentially a recurrence of Chicken Pox (so it's a lie your mom tells you when she says it won't come back). For me, it wasn't so bad, but one of the side effects is intense anxiety -- so much so that I actually felt the anxiety in my spinal column and head! Talk about being aware of your moods.

I'm getting better, so we'll get so more postings up on here.

Sorry, I've been sick

I'll spare the gory details (well, there aren't any), but I came down with a case of Shingles which is essentially a recurrence of chicken pox. It's not serious, but it's been a major energy drain.

Your not begging ...

... your dispensing favors -- they're talking about college's asking for money, but I think the thought is applicable to any sales role:

It helps considerably to think of yourself not as a beggar but rather as if you’re “doing that person a favor,” LaMorte says. “People joke with me, ‘Oh no, here comes Debra, look out for your wallet.’ But I have to feel as though I am helping people focus their philanthropy in a way that gives them meaning and that will enhance their lives.

Great linkedin story

on my honeymoon, but I can´t resist this. I was bugging my friend andrew who is a free lance writer to use LinkedIN more because I thought he might get some work ...

Andrew,

Howdy. I was just browsing Linkedin, looking for people who could write feature stories for Wired, and you popped up. Seems like you've got a lot of Wired-esque clips and experience.

If you're game, we should talk on the phone, or you should stop by the next time
you come through New York.

Cheers * Nick

Senior Editor> Wired Magazine> 4 Times Square> NY, NY 10036

Did I tell you I was getting married

Well I am. So there. Wish me luck!

!!!!!!!

How often do you use the ! in e-mail??? I find myself using it all the time, at first I thought it was some kind of iconoclast usage, a rebel against my English teachers who abhorred its use. then I read this:

thee authors, astonishingly, come out in favor of exclamation points (“ ‘Thanks!!!!’ is way friendlier than ‘Thanks’ ”), abbreviations (“Is LOL . . . really inherently more opaque than FYI?”), and emoticons (those smiley faces and the like may “bug many people but they make us smile”).

Sichuan HotPot

if anyone is interested, I'm organizing a hot pot outing here in NYC. Must like very spicy food!

Place is called DuoYi, it's on 39th between 5th and 6th. I got the name from a guy from Sichuan. Hopefully it will be good.

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

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.

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!

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.

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 :)

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.

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.