Received a call from a Recruiter, the phone call lasted about an hour. I then was scheduled for several interviews at BA within a few weeks. Prior to the interview I was asked to read Ray Dalio's three part Tome about himself and what it takes to be more like him and thus be a huge success. While an interesting read it was very redundant with more emphasis on regurgitating why these 200+ Principles are important. The underlying Dogma is that by embracing a culture such as BAs, you will grow exponentially as a person and your career will flourish. The inherent message is that he knows more than you will ever know and thats why he's a Billionaire.
The Interviews were rather interesting. They start by saying "Do you mind if we record this?", as if you could say no. The first one was with two people who asked me a question that was rather ambiguous trading question. As I probed and asked whether they meant "This or that" and what variables needed to be considered, they seemed to get frustrated at the level of details of my questions. They could not answer questions about systems and when I probed further they said "We have all of those" No reason they could have said what system they used. At one point they stopped and said ok how about if it we change the question to make it simpler, I told them I still needed to know about their systems and other details. It appeared that their adherence to the BA principles only applied to employees, not to the candidates. They asked more ambiguous questions, all of which led me to believe either they didn't know what the "real world" outside of BA was like, or they were just play acting. My answer to one of the questions led the senior person to laugh, but when I expanded on the answer it was clear they misheard me and paused and said, oh, ok thats what you mean.
The second interview was kind of sad. The interviewer was almost apologetic and seemed to have a hard time asking questions. It seemed to me he was doing his best to follow the principles but admitted that he had a hard time with them as well. The more I probed him, the more it seemed he had been brow beaten into submission and had probably been ostracized way too many times in the last year to have any decent opinion of himself. I started to feel rather sympathetic to the interviewer and was quite honest in all my answers. I felt he was too, but in a more "I don't want to do this" way. I am sure this interview will be played back to him in a dimly lit room, and will lead to him being even further ostracized.
The last interviewer was with the most senior person, and of course he had the most swagger. He had no interest in what I knew, just wanted to find out "What's true". He was so interested in "What's True" that he mentioned it a lot in the interview. This individual oozed the BA Principles and I knew the game was on. I had numerous questions for him when it was my turn to get inside his thought process. It was less of a dual and more of a formality for both of us I guess. I liked this individual, but I assume I didn't pass muster. Perhaps he felt if I did join it would be hard to ostracize me for a year.
I was told by the recruiter there was no interest, and I guess it was a good thing as I am fairly sure it would have been a difficult transition for me and them. I'd like to make the point that at no time did any of these people really want to know what I would add to BA, only whether I thought like a Bridgewater Associate (or a member of the Party). What I do know about BA is their technology was built by people with no experience in the market but who thought rather logically and despite recent success, are way behind the 8 ball as to where they need to be over the next 5 years. The market is not logical, thus you can still make great trades but you will lose a lot of alpha. It will not last as long as they keep hiring quants from the best schools but who have no idea what happens to their executions. With more than 30% turnover for first year employees, its readily apparent this process is a bad one, but again until they start to see drag on performance, no one will change. While this idealism costs them millions in bad hiring decisions, I guess they can afford to do this so more power to them.
BTW HR promised they would send me my test scores in a week and never did, once again the culture of 100% transparency only applies to the members of the Party.