I realize the irony of this comment: But Marty Chavez is one of the few openly gay, latino Wall St. execs. Great, diversity, progress... This wasn't mentioned in the article and to be honest, that is rare and it was cool to read on article focused on Marty's skills as a professional banker (a good one) without feeling the need to bring up his personal life.
Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
131–140 of 155 posts
Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Build a JS app today is extremely complex.
I think that's more a sign that we want more from web apps than any increased complexity in the apps themselves. Building a web app now isn't any more technically difficult than building a Linux app was 20 years ago. The only difference is that the tools aren't as mature.
Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#133A 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…
> But of your job is to look at data and make descisions based on that data, you're gonna be the first to go Manufacturing and agricultural jobs have already been automated away, while data analysis jobs are only just now starting to feel the pinch - and then only in companies with very deep pockets working on a niche problem. 'First to go' has missed the mark by many years.
The difference is in marginal cost. Industrialization was a relatively gradual change. AI can make whole professions almost redundant basically overnight.
Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#134Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
until software becomes available that makes programming 10x easier...
Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
until software becomes available that makes programming 10x easier...
This idea has been around for over 10 years but I still don't see that many signs of it happening. I mean what interesting projects are around that actually make it possible to for example, let a non-technial person point and click develop a python or Java application? It happened with HTML/CSS and Dreamweaver/WordPress etc years ago but it's much easier with web stuff and I don't really see it elsewhere.
Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
until software becomes available that makes programming 10x easier...
This idea has been around for over 10 years but I still don't see that many signs of it happening. I mean what interesting projects are around that actually make it possible to for example, let a non-technial person point and click develop a python or Java application? It happened with HTML/CSS and Dreamweaver/WordPress etc years ago but it's much easier with web stuff and I don't really see it elsewhere.
I think we're in the early stage of automating web development but sites like Wix have made impressive strides in making UI design accessible. I'm working on something in this field myself and I've done enough research and prototyping that I think it's definitely achievable.
Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
No doubt. The last people to be replaced are going to be software devs (because when you can write a computer program with an AI you can make the AI write the AI and you have general AI), cleaning ladies and probably police investigators.
The world's oldest profession will be the world's last profession.
Not if those weird Japanese robot sex toys take off.
Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment is spot on. The work Goldman Sachs does is relationship driven. As a corporate client of GS, I don't need data. I need advice. Don't confuse the work that investment banks do with the work that NASDAQ does or with high-frequency trading. In addition, the reason why GS has less traders and more developers is more to do with government regulations preventing GS from doing certain types of trading. Not beca…
> I don't need data, I need advice. And you will get better advice when that advice is data-driven. And you need the data because it's GS's proprietary data. If you're paying for a relationship, all you're really paying for is a smiling human face to read the numbers on the screen to you.
But for many markets, data isn't readily available. Liquid equity markets have tons of data, but if you need to price bonds for highly illiquid bonds of private companies, valuation cannot easily be done by AI. Especially when factors such as the behavior and reliability of management play a role.
Re: Goldman Sachs automated trading replaces 600 traders with 200 engineers
#140....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…
Having 1/3 of headcount in tech is completely normal for most banks and other financials (except retail banking). If you count all contractors and outsourced areas it'll probably be closer to 40-45%.
But most of that will be maintenance, rule checking, data entry, implementing regulatory changes, etc. Only a tiny amount of those will develop algorithms or work close to trading.