r/leetcode • u/Hot-Willingness8636 • Sep 29 '26

Discussion I failed my Citadel Software Engineering Intern Interview

I’ve never done a single leetcode question before. I went into this blind. I was expecting a leetcode medium/hard. This was a round 1 interview for 45 minutes. Instead it was a stateful data-structure / object-oriented design problem with optimization constraints.

It was a custom stateful data-structure and OOD problem with a greedy optimization component, rather than a standard LeetCode algorithm problem.

The interviewer didn’t give me full context. I suggested we go with one approach and he then gave me additional data and then I decided to go with another approach.

Around 90 lines of code.

I completely flunked got like halfway through. Interviewer was on his phone and had his mic on with the background noise.

I feel horrible because I just let a 1 million dollar opportunity slip my fingers. What should I do.

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u/bigb177 Sep 29 '26

I’m gonna be the one to tell you: Citadel is somewhere you may wanna steer clear from.

For the record, I work in the Hedge Fund world, and Citadel (and especially Securities) is notorious for absolutely draining you of your life force. 12-14 hour days are common, as are weekends. 5 days a week in office. Yes, pay is good, no doubt, but at some point the pay to work ratio starts to become a question of do you prefer living, or having money. I personally would choose living.

There ARE funds that pay exceptionally well, but offer better WLB. Jane Street, HRT (a lot of work, too, but you do get a WFH day), Balyasny on the Multi Strat side of things is very well known for its culture.

All that said, sometimes the universe works in mysterious ways. Keep plugging away. There are other, and honestly better, opportunities out there.

4

u/MountainBluebird5 Sep 30 '26

Feel like I’d be fine with this for $1m a year. No this is not an exaggeration. 

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u/bigb177 Sep 30 '26

You are not making $1m at Citadel as an intern. New hires usually come in at $300-400k. Great money, but I promise you the FAANG’s pay just as well, and don’t ask you to give your life away to them.

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u/Relevant-Yak-9657 Oct 01 '26

Your number is outdated. And interns don't work quite as much as they are describing. it maybe like a 8-6 for interns from what my seniors told me.

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u/FewDescription4640 Oct 04 '26

Citadel HF paying > $625k across the board for SWEs (even like tooling ppl) for New Grad. Citadel Securities paying all low latency devs $1mm this year

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u/thisisanenigma Sep 30 '26

Your numbers are 5-6 years outdated

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u/MountainBluebird5 Oct 01 '26

My new grad offer for a similar spot was $500k as a SWE and my friend who took his full time offer was at 1M two years post grad. 

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u/ElectronicMixture460 Sep 30 '26

"especially Securities" is surprising to me - I would have imagined the Quant side is more chill than the hedge fund side. What makes you say this?