I think the opposite is true. An experienced engineer not as versed in interview prep might hear the question to design something, and go ahead and show how they would design it based on their experience doing it in the real world.
The leetcode grinder would almost certainly ask clarifying questions since it’s heavily emphasized as part of the rubric in pretty much all system design interview prep material.
Of course, the non leetcode grinder might ask those questions, but even the social cues that you’re allowed to ask clarifying questions might not be understood.
In my experience, I’ve seen a lot of people say that systems design test the seniority of a candidate, but then stick to a rubric that the leetcode grinder has memorized and the senior engineer might miss several important points on despite having the experience because they didn’t understand all the unwritten rules of the song and dance.
I’m certainly not denying there’s plenty of misinformation and far fetched theories floating around. I think there’s a big middle ground between “accept every half brained idea on Reddit” and “take a 300 word corporate blog post at face value.”
It is a fact that the relevant ticker symbols were hidden in Robinhood UI during the restrictions. This could simply be because the UI always hid symbols with restrictions, but that would be a strange decision in the first place (why not just always show the tickers info?) and in context is another oddity worth looking into.
My suggested middle ground is, call for investigation. Maybe there’s no smoking gun but if, for example, it was uncovered that a huge amount of institutional short covering took place during the restrictions that would be more hints that foul play occurred and justify more investigation.
In the future, if we don’t get answers , well connected players can manipulate markets by blaming opaque clearing house requirements unless more transparency is added.
My concern is that by being too dismissive of calls for investigation, we lose the political steam to at least try and get better answers that we deserve.
Conspiracies happen so frequently on Wall St that “conspiracy theories” should be closer to a priori assumption than irrational fringe ideas.
Were people skeptical of Moodys A+ ratings of subprime mortgages conspiracy theorists? And that’s far from the only example of financial fraud . There’s a lot of money at stake.
Citadel is most of Robinhoods revenue, they put money on the opposite side of the trade via Melvin, and Robinhoods decision to restrict trading benefited the short position of the trade . The stock markets been around for over a century and online trading around over 20 years, with many volatile stocks and bubbles, yet restricting trading in one direction has no precedent. The conflict of interest Robinhood had is crystal clear and at a minimum calls for a deep investigation. Accepting their PR, which has barely explained anything is about as far from rational as possible. They described the collateral requirements as “opaque” and “pretty technical” with no real clarity, and never explained other details such as why they restricted fully cleared non-margin cash accounts or why they removed tickets from their search bars.
I’m not saying with any confidence there was foul play, but there’s more than enough conflict of interest and unprecedented behavior to call for an investigation far more than what we’re getting. Especially with regards to who was buying when so many retail traders were unable to.
Financial markets should be open and transparent. They are not supposed to be casinos with arbitrary hedge funds playing the house. To resign yourself to that idea is far more irrational than calling for openness and investigation into the many unanswered questions around what happened.
The leetcode grinder would almost certainly ask clarifying questions since it’s heavily emphasized as part of the rubric in pretty much all system design interview prep material.
Of course, the non leetcode grinder might ask those questions, but even the social cues that you’re allowed to ask clarifying questions might not be understood.
In my experience, I’ve seen a lot of people say that systems design test the seniority of a candidate, but then stick to a rubric that the leetcode grinder has memorized and the senior engineer might miss several important points on despite having the experience because they didn’t understand all the unwritten rules of the song and dance.