Is 10% really that bad?
If it's the bottom 10%, it should actually improve company's performance.
Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
11–20 of 49 posts
Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#12This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds. I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.
I avoided going to a tech interview there, because I knew they'd never have me no matter how sharp my Unix chops are. No degree. But I was laughing a couple months later when I was working across the hall at Akamai ...
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Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. At my interview, I had the guy who wrote the O'Reilly OpenSSH book asking me to derive Fermat's little theorem. Fun times ... IIRC, even the HR person I spoke to had a PhD (russian literature, I think). They are a very impressive firm, and I hope they recover from their recent misfortunes.
As pg mentioned above it is better to channel this talent to startup world :)
I don't know about that ...
DE Shaw & Company takes its very smartest people (and a non-trivial portion of their profits) and puts them to work at DE Shaw Research, where they work on protein folding and other computational biology that could help cure cancer and HIV. I think that's a pretty worthwhile use of talent :-D
From what I was told, David Shaw is spending most of his time on the research group these days.
They ostensibly don't consider themselves a finance firm - they consider themselves a tech firm that will use their skills wherever they can to increase efficiency and make money.
Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#14This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds. I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.
i'm not convinced they're smarter than anyone else. i'd rather invest in renaissance or citadel...
my coworkers at morgan were all physics or cs phds. and a consulting expert got a nobel prize while i was there. amusingly, i interviewed at google around the same time, and some of the engineers were condescending about the quality and education of my coworkers.
Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#15This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds. I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.
i'm not convinced they're smarter than anyone else. i'd rather invest in renaissance or citadel... my coworkers at morgan were all physics or cs phds. and a consulting expert got a nobel prize while i was there. amusingly, i interviewed at google around the same time, and some of the engineers were condescending about the quality and education of my coworkers.
Why condescending? What is there to be condescending about when it comes to physics/CS PhD's?
Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
i'm not convinced they're smarter than anyone else. i'd rather invest in renaissance or citadel... my coworkers at morgan were all physics or cs phds. and a consulting expert got a nobel prize while i was there. amusingly, i interviewed at google around the same time, and some of the engineers were condescending about the quality and education of my coworkers.
Why condescending? What is there to be condescending about when it comes to physics/CS PhD's?
it was just an offhand remark. "if you came to google, you'd get to work with mostly phds, instead of who you work with now" -- without even asking about the kind of people i worked with.
Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#17This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds. I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.
i'm not convinced they're smarter than anyone else. i'd rather invest in renaissance or citadel... my coworkers at morgan were all physics or cs phds. and a consulting expert got a nobel prize while i was there. amusingly, i interviewed at google around the same time, and some of the engineers were condescending about the quality and education of my coworkers.
Renaissance over Citadel. If I'm not mistaken, Renaissance is purely automated trading. No traders or trading floor in the conventional sense. Plus they weathered the fallout of 08 much better than Citadel.
What's sad is that these smart people, including ones I've met while working as a SysAdmin for a Prop Trading firm often don't have access to the capital to start their own shops. This is due to the incestuous nature of the Finance world, where it's a lot more about who you know than what you know.
Sadly, they're often in the employ of third-rate CEOs, who always get a cut off the top, and pay the producers a mere fraction of what they made for the firm and their clients.
Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#18This is sad. Founded by a computer scientist, DE Shaw is perhaps the most tech-focused among hedge funds. I once had a very challenging technical job interview there. Several interviewers had PhD in Computer Science.
i'm not convinced they're smarter than anyone else. i'd rather invest in renaissance or citadel... my coworkers at morgan were all physics or cs phds. and a consulting expert got a nobel prize while i was there. amusingly, i interviewed at google around the same time, and some of the engineers were condescending about the quality and education of my coworkers.
granted rentech probably has desco beat (at least in terms of recruiting toughness - the only metric I'm really in a position to judge by). But I don't think anyone would deny that desco is part of that top tier too.
FWIW, in my experience the handful of citadel programmers I've interacted with aren't quite in the same league as shaw/rentech/getco/jane st/etc. I have no idea how that reflects on their returns though ;-)
Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#19Is 10% really that bad? If it's the bottom 10%, it should actually improve company's performance.
Unless of course you follow that argument to its logical conclusion...
Re: Quant Hedge Fund D.E. Shaw Fires 150; 10% of staff
#20Is 10% really that bad? If it's the bottom 10%, it should actually improve company's performance.
Unless of course you follow that argument to its logical conclusion...
That's exactly what companies like GE and Intel do.
I personally think it's terrible management practice, but it seems to work for them, and there's always fresh young blood coming in at the bottom.