Do you have any advice on how a Java developer without public profile could try to get 700pd in the City?

Apply for finance jobs. If you can't get them, make yourself more attractive in future. How to do this? Some suggestions:

- Do you interview well? If not, improve this. Take interviews to practice.

- Banks prefer people with experience in finance. If you don't have any, join a consultancy or a company like LMAX that can get you that experience and which are more open to outsiders.

- Go to meetups. Make connections.

- Learn Scala.

I'd agree with all this, and if you don't have financial experience I'd suggest doing some Coursera courses that cover the relevant areas and putting those on your CV. At the very least it would show willing.

Thank you. Any chance you have a meetup in mind?

I would probably start with the Java meetup. I'm more in the Scala community, so my recommendations might not be relevant to you.

Drop me an email (see my profile) if you want to continue this conversation. It's easier than continually checking the comments.

Would it be possible to avoid the problem by storing scanned books in an encrypted form where the key is some words from random page?