My strengths – quick but more than superficial learning of (in random order):
- finmath, financial jargon,
- Comp Science practical topics:
- OO fundamentals
- algo, data structures,
- threading
- basic tuning of DB + others
- language fundamentals (more respected in the java, c++, c#, SQL than python communities)
- versatile in many important languages
- relative familiarity with scripting, unix, SQL, but not IDE, version control etc
- relatively quick whiteboard (not compiler) coding
This strength turned out to be extremely valuable on Wall St consulting market.
My key weakness identified in recent jobs (not counting the IV defeats):
- learning local system
- large existing codebase – AutoReo, GS
- superfast GTD