Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off-topic: Is it common to get paid every fortnight in America?
Yes.
And you still get checks?
Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
71–80 of 147 posts
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point of his comment is to see that viewing trade as zero-sum leads to absurdity.
Certainly, but assuming it can't be zero-sum leads to absurdity as well. What about high frequency trading? Most of it is zero sum, first one to arb the difference wins. The economy doesn't derive any higher value from it if the difference would've been corrected within a couple seconds (or a few minutes) anyways. It's not the same as buying a burger.
Oh, if you by a burger and sum the benefit over, say, Burger King and McDonald's it's probably constant.
If you sum the benefits of arbitrage over the high frequency traders, it's possible (close to) constant, too.
But the rest of the world can still benefit (or perhaps suffer in the case of a burger).
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#73As it turns, my kid likes to eat. So, in my oh-so-unique case of having, uh, responsibilities, it would be better for me to have a paying job (even at Goldman Sachs) than to found a startup with zero revenue.
Of course, that's assuming they are XOR, which they are not.
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had a number of people tell me this system is why GS won the financial crisis. During the financial crisis, GS knew their positions and their risks. They could also calculate the side effects of proposed trades as quickly as their computers could calculate it. This meant the people at the top could actively plan what to do next during the day. In contrast, MS and JPM can only get information like this a few hour…
If you know and can speak about enough to do a blog post on this, could you consider it? I'd love to hear more about the different systems capabilities and how that affected the different big houses' ability to trade effectively in a storm.
I don't know much more than what I put into my post, which is more or less standard industry knowledge.
One more thing I should mention - this isn't a purely IT-driven story. Goldman doesn't simply have better IT than Citi or the Morgans. Citi has had many mergers and acquisitions (e.g., Vikram Pandit came onboard when Citi bought his hedge fund), whereas Goldman is mostly homegrown. Even if Goldman's geniuses ran Citi, they would still never be able to do what Goldman did.
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#75i view such stories (emphasizing on controversy) more as link bait than anything else. There are several folks who are perfectly happy working @ GS and other big firms. Dont make bold and brash statements simply for the sake of it. Its a 'To each their own' world out there.
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#76"There were other characters in this drama. The sales guys were complete tools, with a total IQ, summing over all of them, still safely in the double digits. The traders were crafty and quick-witted, but technically unsophisticated and with the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers." Ok it seems perfectly possible to make a lot of money while being a complete idiot. I'm getting an MS in e…
Don't take that description too literally. I really doubt you get to be a trader at GS without having a good brain in your head. Sales is more about working and building relationships than sheer intelligence, but to do it well still requires a lot of work and talent in that direction.
EQ vs IQ.
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#77So. This is funny. I actually work at Goldman, work in the system he talks about, and have been doing so for 5 years. You can get numbed by the experience of working here, but you don't have to be. I've become friendly with some of the best hackers I know, and for us, finance always takes a backseat to writing amazing code. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail, but we try to never say, "Meh. Good enough." Wall Str…
I also work at a bank, but don't like people who think it's just a job. They make my life more difficult and make it harder for the bank to make money.
Our department doesn't hire people like that.
(Also, pretty much nothing in the article applies to most banks these days. Sure, someone may have a burger-eating contest from time to time, but it's not like it's work-sanctioned. It's just a bunch of dudes with too much testosterone. There are bonuses, but it's silly to count on them for anything. Ask for the amount of money you want as your base pay -- they'll probably give it to you. Then enjoy the 20% or whatever as a fun extra.)
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#78that was very well written. "It got to the point that some papers had no authors, and had apparently written themselves. So it goes. No longer with the firm." slightly vonnegut-inspired?
Yes! Glad someone spotted it....
Do you mind enlightening me? I've only read a few of his works but don't recognize it.
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#79That's quite interesting: " At the risk of getting sued, let me throw you geeks a bone and part the Goldman veil a bit. The Goldman Sachs risk system is called SecDB (securities database), and everything at Goldman that matters is run out of it. The GUI itself looks like a settings screen from DOS 3.0, but no one cares about UI cosmetics on the Street. The language itself was called SLANG (securities language) and wa…
I've had a number of people tell me this system is why GS won the financial crisis. During the financial crisis, GS knew their positions and their risks. They could also calculate the side effects of proposed trades as quickly as their computers could calculate it. This meant the people at the top could actively plan what to do next during the day. In contrast, MS and JPM can only get information like this a few hour…
Another issue the other banks (and maybe GS, who knows) have is "internal arbitrage". This is what happens when each desk has their own pricing system; they go out of sync, a trader notices, and then sells from his desk to another desk with an out of date price. The bank loses money, but his desk makes some.
For that reason, creating a system like SecDB is a high priority these days.
Re: Founding a startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? Quality, not quantity. An hour with my wife is more meaningful to me than half my day at work. No job will make up for that, unless I'm changing the world. So yes. It's just a job. Your (not you specifically, but anyone) startup is just a job.
So because your wife give you a 100 happiness factor(tm), you are now indifferent when choosing between jobs that give you a 20 or 80 happiness factor? Or are you saying that your meaningfulness bar is so high that no job can possibly clear it? What if you and your wife worked together? For the most part, we get to choose our lives. I reject the idea that time spent working can't be meaningful.
Or maybe he's saying that access to his wife is dependent on the Goldman Sachs job.
If he loses the 20-factor-job he loses the 100-factor-wife.