C++ Programming for Financial Engineering
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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pavlos Sakoglou" data-source="post: 219798" data-attributes="member: 27941">Dear prospective students,I recently signed a contract with a top Investment Bank for an Associate C++ Developer position in the Securities Technology Division in New York. Three years ago I had very little programming and math knowledge, and non-relevant work experience. I was just another business admin graduate with ambition to make it in Wall Street one day. Sounds familiar?Here's what happened:I came across the <a href="http://quantnet.com/cpp" target="_blank">C++ Programming certificate</a> in one of my searches for MFE programs in New York, and decided to enroll.The intro certificate covers a lot of useful stuff, like implementing important data structures such as vectors (dynamic arrays) and stacks (adaptor containers), Object-Oriented hierarchies for polymorphic behavior, and of course several algorithms for file processing, string manipulations, and more. Additionally, it introduces templates and generic programming concepts, libraries such as STL and Boost, and hands-on applications, like Monte Carlo option pricing systems and standard financial derivatives pricing. This is already equivalent with two semesters of C++ at an average U.S. university, in my experience.It took me two months to complete the certificate with distinction. A few months later, I had the first opportunity for employment by a big Investment Bank that you definitely have heard of. An in-house recruiter reached out to me and asked my availability to talk. He asked me questions about the course, and was mostly interested about the Object-Oriented and Generic programming part. Although I didn't get the job at this point, I was already getting the attention of the big players.About a year later I took the advanced C++11/14 certificate. It was one of the most challenging courses I ever took, but the results were amazing. Once I listed it on my LinkedIn profile, making sure to have specified parts of the syllabus, I was literally having 2-3 recruiters every week reaching out and suggesting software engineering jobs for me. I wasn't even trying to get a job at that stage.I gained deep intuition about all the concepts needed to land a job throughout the advanced course: multi-threading, advanced memory management, complexity analysis, how to look up documentation of new libraries, debugging, software design patterns and testing, optimizations and efficiency, edgy modern C++ techniques, systems engineering, and more.And guess what. When I started going to interviews all my interviewers were asking the exact same things that were exactly taught throughout the certificate: smart pointers, design patterms (Singleton, Strategy, etc.) STL algorithms, multi-threading and thread-safe techniques, and more.The C++ certificates here are an excellent opportunity to become a master-level and employable C++ programmer from scratch. Looking back, that's exactly the path I needed to take. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />I hope you decide to enroll and write your own story one day!Pavlos</blockquote>

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