The vibe I get is that it isn't character they're really trying to judge. They're really trying to calculate whether a person is palatable to downstream players. I think there's likely some market risk associated with various personalities and they need to address it somehow even if there's no quantitative approach.
A wild experiment would be to test their judgment system by planting a few charming serial killers in their "character judgment" sample pool. My hypothesis is that the charming serial killers would pass at a higher rate.
Are you getting fills against the fake prices? If so, take liquidity from the fake world and hedge it by taking liquidity from the real world (on another account) and wait until the spread reverts by Robinhood coming back to reality. ;-)
Can you toss out a few use cases where I'd kill to have you guys over a traditional bank?
I'm curious how you pitched yourself to YC. Did you say you were going to be a sort of venue for people looking to build custom financial services on top of your API?
Some of it is mental, but ultimately it does get recorded into a record-keeping system of some sort. It's too hard to always pull out the record-keeping system and keep things in it. However, when the record keeping system looks like it's running on empty, I tend to brain dump into it.
Just tell yourself to have a one-track mind and make your list and record keeping system your life. Never deviate, and just always do little steps always. Every big picture should always be made of thousands of little pictures.
Break the project up into lots of little pieces. Attack the little pieces. Don't do little pieces from other projects until the little projects in your main project on the way to a major milestone are done. As someone who had your problem for a long time: Trust me, it's this simple.
Try using some issue-tracking service to keep things organized to help you plan. JIRA may be overkill, but there are other systems that help.
I prefer the contract-to-hire model, but I say this as an employee. It's hard to know whether I'll like a place, but if the place is open to 3-6 month contracts, I can find out and can make it work. Unfortunately, this isn't the way things seem to work.
Also, the duration of 6 month is short enough that, even if I don't like the place, the incentive is there to put the best foot forward to get the best recommendation possible to go somewhere else.
I like template metaprogramming a great deal. I'd like to get so good I could be on the level of the guys who know the standards in and out, but that seems like a very difficult pursuit. :-)
I like the concepts behind this framework, even if the '@' symbol is debatable. I think, combined with something like CodeSynthesis' ODB ORM (which apparently supports migrations now), something like this could be used to create some really efficient, light weight web applications that give frameworks like node.js a run for their money.
I like the idea of running a light C++ application on a crappy $5/month VPS and squeezing out every last drop of performance, built on top of the idea that modern C++ developers can crank out solutions as fast as Ruby or Python developers. From interviewing and talking to people, I don't think the vast majority of developers really understand how far C++ has come in the last 15 years.
The real PITA with web frameworks is how they interact with the database. Now that C++ has some decent ORMs, an improved feature set, and some strong renewed interest, I think we can make C++ a "web language".
Even if an order type like that existed, there's still the concept of "there's no such thing as a free lunch." A cost of doing business in trading is the spread between the bid and the offer. If liquidity providers take too much adverse selection, they'll just widen the spread tomorrow. So, sure, you help the liquidity taker today at the expensive the maker, and tomorrow the maker will increase his prices.
2.5 hours, round trip, car+train+walking (1/2 mile one way walking.) Most of the train ride is productive, but I hate walking when there's snow and ice. The summer is awesome though.
I try for remote if I can get it, but can live without it.
Maybe whenever someone advertises remote, the pool of applicants is just huge and can't be sorted reasonably. I think the other commenters are right. Reach out to businesses and create the situation once you've established that you're a responsible, reliable programmer who can stick to development schedules.
I apply to everything as well, but don't land anything. However, historically, nothing I've gotten that's remote has come from job ad postings. I've always gotten remote work because I know somebody who knows somebody. However, the market's gotten tight in my field, so I'm in the same position you are again.
It's much harder for me, also. I'm a C++/obj-C/C/R/python/ruby guy who only dabbles in web technology. I try to pitch web people on letting me learn, even at a short-term discount, and that doesn't work either. I thought putting out some iOS work would improve my remote-ability, but no go.
Funny thing is, before reading this post, I would've guessed Rails people had it much better than me. :-)
If you truly lived in the moment, I'd assume your behavior would be like a random walk. The truth of the matter is that your behavior is conditioned on the past.
Maybe take a course on stochastic processes to clear your mind. (I'm joking, for the record. But hopefully the point has been made.)
A wild experiment would be to test their judgment system by planting a few charming serial killers in their "character judgment" sample pool. My hypothesis is that the charming serial killers would pass at a higher rate.