On Sept.5 ’06, I was recruited by DE Shaw and Co. for a ridiculous sum of around 9 lpa, thereby becoming one of the most highly paid guys I my class at roughly the end of our main placement season.
The run-up didn’t look very promising. Almost everyone was looking forward to this company very eagerly (for the salary alone, I think. Nobody had much idea the profile-not that it would have mattered anyway. For 9 lpa, I’d have cleaned toilets!) and I do not count myself anywhere even close to the college’s smarter people. IBM-ISL junta was still going to be allowed to sit and when that gang includes the likes of Bharat Garg, Shruti Tewari and Sandeep Singh and with the company self confessedly out to take only the ‘extraordinary geniuses’(I’ve been called that, but each time the speaker has been excessively drunk), I wouldn’t have bet on myself. The only reason I had a semblance of hope was because I had been told that the company laid a lot of stress on a strong CV, and on that count I am confident to beat most guys of our college. And because for some weird reason, I’d been consistently clearing writtens which had a strong Aptitude component (CAT quant style questions), when some of the worthier CAT aspirants of my class had failed (e.g. The Inductis Test. Rishabh Gupta flunked it and I got through.).
The written comprised of three sections:
1. Aptitude section (20 questions in 30 minutes)
2. Tech Section (30 questions in 25 minutes)
3. Programming section (1 algorithm in 15 minutes).
I wasn’t happy with my performance in the aptitude part, so for the first time in the placement season- I craned my neck and copied 2 questions off Sandy’s answer sheet and then 2 more off my neighbour’s , fervently hoping them to be correct. The Tech section too had me stumped until I decided to attempt questions in the reverse order, which turned out to be a good decision and I was able to do 36 questions out of 50 in the objective part of the paper.
The Algorithm part was easy and I think everybody was able to do that program. Then it was off to the canteen for lunch and waiting for the result.
When I received the sms telling me that I had an Interview call, I can say that I was surprised. Jasleen , Bhuvnesh and Khurana also had been selected.
I was the first person to be interviewed (This seems to be a lucky charm- for Flex too I was the first person in the Interviews.). A panel of 2 awaited me in the Green Room. They began by asking me to introduce myself which I did. After that the grilling began:
Interviewer-1:Tell me about this Online Counseling Software of yours.
Me: *Ramble On*
Interviewer-2:This Workflow Automation Project that you have done, how many levels does it have and what is the backend?
Me:* Ramble On*
I-2: Do you know DB?
Me: Sir 3 points on a scale of 5 for me.
I-1: So tell me what is Normalization?
Me: *I hadn’t studied DB at all so start telling him what I remember from doing my projects*
I-2: No. Take an example and then explain.
Me: I took a bad example without realizing it and soon they had my normalization procedure tied I knots and looking more useless than Maru’s running shoes.
I-2: Ok. What are your fav subjects?
Me: Sir C, DS, OS...
I-1: What is a b+ tree?
Me: Told him.
I-1: Why do we use it?
Me: Sir so that if we want elements sequentially we can get them straightaway without having tom traverse the tree.
I-1: Why would we want to do that?
Me: *Scratch my head and look stupid*
I-2: Where does memory for a linked list come from?
Me: Heap.
I-2: Why?
Me: *I dunno why man-ask Ritchie!!!* Sir ‘coz heap has these automatic garbage collection mechanisms so that we can’t over-allocate memory at runtime.
I-2: And stack doesn’t have these mechanisms?
Me: no sir*Or does It???*
I-2: Local variables are on the stack right?
Me:*I you say so*Yes Sir.
I-2: Then if I have to access an element at the bottom of the stack, then areall the elements above it popped and pushed everytime?
Me: no sir.
I-2: Then why is called a stack?
Me:$#%^@%^@%
I-2: Tell me about storage classes?
Me: Sir I haven’t a clue about what you are talking.
I-2: WHAAAAT? You’ve never heard about extern, static…
Me: Ohh yessir yessir.Then I told him whatever I knew.
I-2: If I have a static global variable in one file, ca I use it as extern in another file?
Me: Yes. (It turns out you can’t)
I-2: Are you sure?
Me: yessir.
I-1: Ok. Do initialized and un-initialized variables lie in the same segment in C?
Me: yes sir (No they don’t)
I-1: Where do you see yourself 5 years down the line?
Me: don’t know sir.
I-1: Whaat?
Me: Sir right now all I want is a good techie job. 5 years later who knows if I might get interested in management, or interested in some specific and end up doing MS in that field, or remain interested in earning piles of money and stay in the Industry.
I-1: Ok what about 1-2 years down the line?
Me: I see myself in a technical job where I have a responsible position and I have a bigger picture view of the aims and objectives of my team’s and my own efforts.
I-1: What kind of work at DE Shaw would interest you?
Me: sir work on the vast distributed system you mentioned in your PPT or work which allowed me to play with information.
I-1: Elaborate please.
Me: For example you have people in all corners of the world who want stock market data from all over the world in real time. So I’d be interested in designing systems which collect this info process the gathered info into a form which is more intuitively useful for every specific request and to render the processed info compatible to platforms ranging from desktops to mobile phones.
I-1: Ohkay…Write me program to reverses a string.
Me: I do it using two pointers.
I-1: *pokes enough holes hole in the program so that it sinks to the bottom without a fight* Ok thank you, we will get back to you by about 9 in the evening.
Me:*Bhago!!!!*Thank you sir.
After I came out and discussed the questions, I realized I had screwed up every question that could possibly have been screwed. With not much hope remaining, I went to DC with Adi to have a fruit beer at Bercos and a couple of burgers at McDonald’s.Back at the flat, I started watching ‘Swades’ for the second time (A really good film, dunno why I had ignored it till now). Around 9:30 I got a call from Budhrani telling me that I had been selected. I don’t remember my heart beating so loudly without physical effort ever before. I ran over to the Audi but the post-selection photo session and all the congratulatory speeches etc. were already and I caught The Shaw team coming down the stairs. I met them and they were all smiles and congratulations. I told I-1 and I-2 that I thought they had killed me in the interview and that I had left for a movie. I-1 told he had done the exact same thing after his own Shaw interview!
There were hugs and high fives and demands and promises of treats all around. I called up my home and as expected, everyone was totally ecstatic (I later learnt that my mother didn’t sleep that night!)Then I had a call from my teacher (it being teacher’s day) and she too was extremely happy at the coincidence. The flatties were all intending to go to my home and demand a huge sum of money from my parents for a party.
Now I can’t walk 100 meters without someone asking for a treat!!! Relatives I didn’t know I had have been calling to say proud I’ve made them. The best part is that now I can shove my half hearted CAT preps up IMS’ ass. No need for solving FLTs, Quant section tests….AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! Relief. But I can’t help but feel this strange kind of vacuum within me, a lack of purpose. There is nothing to do now but wait for the mid-sems to come and devastate me, coz no-one has any clue of the syllabus, and half the teachers have already decided to fail most of us. And I do not feel like preparing anyway. Most of the junta has taken up the CAT challenge in all earnestness again. That too is gone for me.
So what else is there for a man to do? Sit around, watch highly rated movies (Akiro Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ sucks, by the way!) and write too long blog entries like this one here.
And btw, since I mentioned at the beginning of this entry that I got whatever I moaned about not having at this blog, let’s try that one more time:
BOOHOOHOO! I don’t have a girlfriend!
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