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Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

technologyreview.com

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Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#111

Post by Gustomaximus »

gthippo wrote: post #92
tomelders wrote: post #4

A agency that I once worked for was asked to create a presentation of the future of trading for a well known trading platform. It was the typical fluff around voice interfaces, augmented reality, VR and all that drivel. But we all knew what the future really meant - taking people out of the equation - but we also knew that the people paying for the presentation didn't want to hear that. When people talk about the ris…

The terrifying thing is that you don't even need to reach human-level performance to cause structural unemployment. As a hypothetical example, if automation can make top-performers in your field 10x more efficient, that makes 90% of people in that role redundant. This feels a lot scarier to me since as a ML engineer, I rarely see applications where we can reach human level performance easily but the idea of making ex…

This is nothing new. I work marketing side running customer acquisition for 12 countries across 3 brands, with budget significant enough to bring in ~3% of a countries population annually in our higher coverage markets. And this year we will add additional countries and brands.

We are a team of 3. There is no way this would have worked 10+ years ago. Maybe in another 10 we will be 1...

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#112

Post by stale2002 »

lsaferite wrote: post #49
onion2k wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because when you can write a computer program with an AI you can make the AI write the AI and you have general AI There doesn't need to be a single AI to create the entire app. An AI to model data structure, an AI to build an interface, an AI to consume external APIs, etc. We already mostly bolt libraries together to make software; it doesn't take a huge leap for those libraries to be generated by machine learning. B…

I have a feeling someone said the same thing 10 or 20 years ago.

They DID say the same thing 10-20 years ago, and they were CORRECT.

Ever try to build a web application in Assembly language or C? It would probably be pretty difficult. You don't have to do that anymore.

1 web developer can do more work today than 100 assembly developers could, from 50 years ago.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#113

Post by branchless »

lovich wrote: post #50

The article talks about the number of traders they replaced with engineers. Assuming that other investment banks are on the same trend, where are these traders going to get new jobs? Are they just retiring because they made enough money while trading?

They are going to take their amazing wealth-creating skills out into the wider world and we are going to see a second industrial-revolution. Exciting times are ahead...

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#114

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

tomelders wrote: post #70
roymurdock wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your job is to look at data and make decisions based on that data, you're gonna be the first to go Depends on the type of data, how it's collected, how it's aggregated, etc. I'm a market researcher so I look at data all day. Thing is - I look at both qualitative and quantitative data from a ton of different sources (financial filings, surveys, macreoconomic organizations, vendor briefings, engineer interviews, e…

We shall see. My money is on the machines. Or more specifically, mathmatics.

Pretty soon all trading will be an elaborate form of corewars.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#116

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

SilasX wrote: post #76
chollida1 wrote: post #3

....where the time frame involved is 17 years from 2000 until now. It's also weird that they don't mention the about to be dismantled Dodd-Frank Act (Volker Rule) that forced most sell side firms out of prop trading. I guess the headline, "computers replace humans for the most mundane and rules based tasks" doesn't grab headlines as much:) One other interesting tidbit > Some 9,000 people, about one-third of Goldman’s…

>>Some 9,000 people, about one-third of Goldman’s staff, are computer engineers. Is that right, or is that just a confused journalist? Computer engineers? As in, hardware design so they can shave off nanoseconds here and there? Or do they just mean programmers of any kind here?

Confused journalist, although all of the major firms do employ EEs and CEs to develop HFT hardware.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#117

Post by pzh »

gthippo wrote: post #92
tomelders wrote: post #4

A agency that I once worked for was asked to create a presentation of the future of trading for a well known trading platform. It was the typical fluff around voice interfaces, augmented reality, VR and all that drivel. But we all knew what the future really meant - taking people out of the equation - but we also knew that the people paying for the presentation didn't want to hear that. When people talk about the ris…

The terrifying thing is that you don't even need to reach human-level performance to cause structural unemployment. As a hypothetical example, if automation can make top-performers in your field 10x more efficient, that makes 90% of people in that role redundant. This feels a lot scarier to me since as a ML engineer, I rarely see applications where we can reach human level performance easily but the idea of making ex…

I guess they can all become Javascript developers and fulfill the big tech companies' dreams of having hordes of cheap engineers on the labor market. That would help save some of the money poured into various initiatives like 'Dolphins who code', etc.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#118

Post by jasonkolb »

eru wrote: post #57
teachrdan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another obvious example is actuaries and any number of other analysts in the insurance industry. According to Google[1], actuaries earn an average of just over $97k/year. While this may not strictly be an "investing area," it's a clear target for automation. 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=actuaries

Actuaries have quite a high regulatory wall protecting them from other human competitors. But probably not from computers. (I don't know about the legalities, but the laws requiring companies to have a actuary sign off on stuff probably can be satisfied by having on part time actuary shared between multiple companies sign off on computer generated analysis.)

I assume they will need to sign off on the model... I expect to see a lot of this in the future.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#119

Post by Gracana »

zepto wrote: post #104
Gracana wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of high-earning people tied up in managing money is pretty inefficient for society, though. Maybe those people can switch to factory jobs and help reduce the cost of common things for the common person.

I can't tell if that's meant as sarcasm or not.

It's kind of a joke. People getting rich off moving money around is kind of silly, and it would certainly be better if those jobs could be eliminated by machines.

Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers

#120

Post by grzm »

Gracana wrote: post #119
zepto wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if that's meant as sarcasm or not.

It's kind of a joke. People getting rich off moving money around is kind of silly, and it would certainly be better if those jobs could be eliminated by machines.

Oh, don't worry. People will still get rich off of those transactions.
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