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Comment by jb775 | Hacker News Reader

Wonder how he'd hold up in a modern programming interview.

I'd say 75% chance he'd be thrown an obscure curveball and be completely written off by the hiring company.

Nah, the IMO gold medal on his resume alone puts him into a different category. Unless the hiring company is completely clueless, he’d get special treatment from the start. People like him are not like you and me.

This is wrong, for a programming interview FAANG and friends care greatly about mitigating legal risk and would not treat them any differently. Interviewers typically have their own questions and may have only glanced at the resume.

This kind of candidate would be handheld by a very specific part of the recruiting team who would no doubt realize that they are dealing with someone VERY exceptional...

This is not to say that they would get preferential treatment in getting through the interview, but this person would not be interviewed like a regular SWE but by a specialized committee (one probably filled with more research-minded engineering staff)

Similarly, the questions would be tailored differently because the expectation of a research mind would NOT be strictly coding features / fixing bugs, but probably doing research

There are very specific coding expectations for applied scientists and research interns at these companies. They are not going to allow someone to skip these.

There is no legal risk for fast tracking exceptional people.

I won a Silver medal (a few points to Gold) at the same IMO as him. Not a citizen of anything good, so maybe it's not relevant.

As an undergrad, I got cold emails from the following companies: Jane Street, Citadel, Two Sigma, and several less known hedge fund/quant stuff.

Those were all for trading/analyst positions. Western companies never reply for software internship applications.

Google mails me every year and as if I want to interview for full-time, but they don't interview me when I apply for internships.

I got an intership offer from a big non-Western company, but I didn't get a work visa.

Depends on where. Some hedge funds like DE Shaw are known to hoard olympiad talent.

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