Live data from Hacker News

I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

efinancialcareers.com

181–190 of 193 posts

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#181

I’ll give a very simple job security lesson. A small resort I worked for had a guy that had been there from the very beginning. He knew where every single water line was on the entire resort. A map was never made of those water lines. When a new general manager was hired years later, he wanted to fire the guy who always showed up late for work, and was considered lazy. The owner of the of the resort said, “you can’t…

This is the strategy that failed when the TFA's author was fired 48 hours after the system was rolled out.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0. risk is the risk all businesses take when they invest. It's why low-risk bonds pay low interest, and high risk stocks (potentially) give high returns. No savvy business is going to invest in a high risk endeavor with poor expected returns. You don't need a book to tell you that. 1+2. the higher the risk a business takes, the more profit it needs to justify the risk 3. Note how I said if the business underpaid the…

Your argument is based on a perfectly spherical economy. Edit: is that the Austrian or Chicago economics? In the real world, there are asymmetries, and that shows because in the real world we have businesses making profits in excess of their risks. If I have a business that makes $100 per widget but it depends on a secret that only I know, how does the competitor learn my secret? Where does that secret knowledge fit…

The equation I gave is the equilibrium point. Market forces are always pushing things towards that equilibrium. If a business is operating far away from it, competitors will inevitably emulate it and drive it back to the equilibrium.

> how does the competitor learn my secret?

The more valuable the secret is, the more effort competitors will expend to learn it. The reason we have a patent system is competitors are pretty good at finding out secrets.

The only trade secret I know of that has lasted a long time is Coca-Cola's formula. And yet Pepsi competes successfully with them anyway.

Do you have an example of a trade secret that is enabling unusually high profit margins with poorly paid employees?

> in the real world we have businesses making profits in excess of their risks

A lot of risks do not seem so risky in hindsight. Like Musk's creation of Tesla and SpaceX. I bet risk will look very different to you if you're faced with risking your own money on a venture.

> clearly your argument is flawed since most employees are not paid anywhere near the value they produce

No evidence presented for that.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smells like Igneous or TinTri. Story shows too much competence for Springpath or Whiptail. Storage is particularly rife with stuff like this for some reason.

Was a long time ago, way before them. I agree though, glad to have changed fields.

You would be pleased to know that Whiptail exceeded whatever low bar you might have had. I like to see people achieve the things they set out to do, and I am assuming that was their goal.

Rare to see a product completely canceled and removed from the market as soon as customers started reporting minor things like total data loss due to corruption..

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#184
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you can see from the article you're commenting on, it does not protect you from being fired, so I don't see your point.

The point is that some people just don't have a choice. You are right, as described in the article, it will not protect you from being fired. But choosing not to work overtime may directly cause the firing.

I think the implied solution is to find another position if possible. You can always work for a bad company while attempting to be hired by a better one.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#185
post #44

I just do not believe this story. Nobody in the right mind will fire key software engineer 48 hours after system goes live. This is where all the bugs/problems show up and you need all hands on deck to fix them. Six months after launch when all problems are solved - absolutely, you can fire engineer. 48 hours after launch? absolutely not.

If you really want to fire someone, you're willing to bleed a little (or a lot) to do it. I've seen key personnel be let go, followed by a scramble to figure out what only they know. In this case it sounds like a "junior quant" who built an application in "months of hard work" while working 12hrs x 7days, and using technologies they learned on the fly. Sounds like me in my 20s, but I wasn't as indispensable as I thou…

> From a different perspective, it's kind of like paying a contractor or offshore.

That relationship is much better defined to both parties. It sounds like this person was surprised.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is based on a perfectly spherical economy. Edit: is that the Austrian or Chicago economics? In the real world, there are asymmetries, and that shows because in the real world we have businesses making profits in excess of their risks. If I have a business that makes $100 per widget but it depends on a secret that only I know, how does the competitor learn my secret? Where does that secret knowledge fit…

The equation I gave is the equilibrium point. Market forces are always pushing things towards that equilibrium. If a business is operating far away from it, competitors will inevitably emulate it and drive it back to the equilibrium. > how does the competitor learn my secret? The more valuable the secret is, the more effort competitors will expend to learn it. The reason we have a patent system is competitors are pre…

Okay we've gone off track here. I just find your "equation" makes no sense.

Firstly, the types of your variables don't match. Risk and $/year can't be added together. And adding per employee variables to a per company variable (risk) is yet another typing/dimension issue.

Secondly, adding "opportunity cost" is meaningless. Adding a dependency on the next best employment choice makes no sense. Also an opportunity cost only exists in a non-equilibrium market - I can't see why you argue for equilibrium while having opportunity cost. Why would an employer care what the opportunity cost was - and you can't argue that it is an equilibrium due to employees demand - because there isn't an equilibrium (see your previous wage example).

Finally, if there is a marginal change in revenue, your equation says that is reflected in employee wages. Imagine a low-risk company where profits are fairly static (say close to risk-free rate of return). If revenues go up, your assumption is that employees are perfectly fungible between businesses and that employees will demand higher wages to capture the revenues (assuming transaction costs are zero so no spread). But employees don't know their value, so there is a distribution of bids. If employees are perfectly fungible then a business will buy the employee that underbids, and the business will make an "excess" profit.

> No evidence presented for that.

That's a diversion. Anecdotally I've experienced it many times as an employee and as a business owner.

The real world has too many counter-examples of disequilibrium - and you are trying to make micro-economic arguments that depend on perfect market equilibrium.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#187
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many possibilities (and I can't really tell from skimming this writeup), but the possibilities absolutely include someone thinking "We got what we needed, now let's drop this person, and free the salary and bonus obligations". Or they might've decided they didn't want that employee for some reason, maybe even dudebro culture fit mismatch when he showed up looking fatigued, and were "sux2bu" about how they g…

Or maybe they thought: we don't want this fool around who let us exploit him so much.

People who say no get respect, those who say yes to impossible deadlines, work insane hours, maybe miss an impossible deadline by a few hours-or not, get fired.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#188

It sounds like they were never given written confirmation for the bonuses. How likely are you to face penalties if you put a "time bomb" in a codebase like this? Something with plausible deniability like let's say like an authentication script that you have to run every 30 days or the program stops working for "security reasons". Also you're the only one who knows where the script is and how to run it.

This won't get you the bonus, it'll just get you possibly sued and/or prison time. I think a better fix is to just not give to a company what you would regret giving. Don't put in 80 hours a week for months unless you have good reason to think it's going to be worth it and do it with the full knowledge that you might be gambling on the company's generosity.

I mean, you could come back as a contractor and have them pay your rate to show them how to get the authentication script authenticating again. Obviously this isn't ethical.

> Don't put in 80 hours a week for months unless you have good reason to think it's going to be worth it and do it with the full knowledge that you might be gambling on the company's generosity.

I agree. I'm also not 100% convinced the original story is even true.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equation I gave is the equilibrium point. Market forces are always pushing things towards that equilibrium. If a business is operating far away from it, competitors will inevitably emulate it and drive it back to the equilibrium. > how does the competitor learn my secret? The more valuable the secret is, the more effort competitors will expend to learn it. The reason we have a patent system is competitors are pre…

Okay we've gone off track here. I just find your "equation" makes no sense. Firstly, the types of your variables don't match. Risk and $/year can't be added together. And adding per employee variables to a per company variable (risk) is yet another typing/dimension issue. Secondly, adding "opportunity cost" is meaningless. Adding a dependency on the next best employment choice makes no sense. Also an opportunity cost…

As a business owner, I'm surprised you don't know the term opportunity cost. What it is is the investment returns you can get by doing something simple and safe, like investing in bonds. There's no reason to be in business if you can't do better than that.

> But employees don't know their value

Your assumption that employees are stupid and ignorant is false.

> Anecdotally

I.e. you don't really have the data.

> that depend on perfect market equilibrium

Nope. I said that market forces push it in that direction.

Re: I worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay we've gone off track here. I just find your "equation" makes no sense. Firstly, the types of your variables don't match. Risk and $/year can't be added together. And adding per employee variables to a per company variable (risk) is yet another typing/dimension issue. Secondly, adding "opportunity cost" is meaningless. Adding a dependency on the next best employment choice makes no sense. Also an opportunity cost…

As a business owner, I'm surprised you don't know the term opportunity cost. What it is is the investment returns you can get by doing something simple and safe, like investing in bonds. There's no reason to be in business if you can't do better than that. > But employees don't know their value Your assumption that employees are stupid and ignorant is false. > Anecdotally I.e. you don't really have the data. > that d…

> I'm surprised you don't know the term opportunity cost.

Assumptions. I know it. I'm saying that it makes zero sense to put it in your equation as you have. Your equation appears to be per employee (but you are not talking about the employee opportunity cost). You are adding in the business opportunity cost of money to your equation - a per business cost not a per employee cost. Again you are mixing implicit types which makes your equation meaningless.

> Your assumption that employees are stupid and ignorant

You are making the assumption. I never said that and I certainly don't think it.

Post reply on HN