121–130 of 179 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad in what sense? Surely that's not correct otherwise I imagine society would be significantly worse than it is today.
I think he meant "bad" as in incompetent. In the context of the top parent, you'll have many more B and C players than A players, so trusting the majority works against the A players.
"Dalio would often review the results in his office ... chewing on Scotch tape, as was his habit when he was concentrating..." This article really buried the lede here
Very funny. If it's true that all the talk of computers and statistical modelling at Bridgewater is bullshit, and it's just a vanilla hedge fund, then it reminds me of the story from The Man Who Solved the Market that Renaissance was founded as a quant fund but none of the algorithms actually worked, so Simons just traded on hunches until D.E Shaw started competing with them years later.
I read that book too, albeit a number of years ago when it first came out, and I don’t recall “none of the algorithms actually worked” being true.
I definitely do not remember anything about Simon making trades based on 'hunches'
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The idea was supposedly that everyones ideas were valid and hierarchy didn't matter and that everyone should challenge anything no matter who they were in the organisation. On the engineering side, ideally this is how things are done anyway. I've never had a problem digging into the ideas presented by engineers more senior than me, and I've always encouraged junior engineers to question any ideas I present. Everyon…
Just because you are in engineering does not mean politics, culture, psychology stop applying. It's really no different than any job at all. Engineers will often think they're in some kind of meritocracy, when in reality they're just as trapped by social constructions as anyone else.
I agree that an engineer is still trapped by social concerns, but not that they're as trapped as anyone else, because anyone who can easily demonstrate that they're right, even if they aren't listened to and even if they can only demonstrate it in some specific areas, has an advantage over someone who can't.
Very funny. If it's true that all the talk of computers and statistical modelling at Bridgewater is bullshit, and it's just a vanilla hedge fund, then it reminds me of the story from The Man Who Solved the Market that Renaissance was founded as a quant fund but none of the algorithms actually worked, so Simons just traded on hunches until D.E Shaw started competing with them years later.
I read that book too, albeit a number of years ago when it first came out, and I don’t recall “none of the algorithms actually worked” being true.
Page 79: "In 1978, Simons left academia to start his own investment firm focusing on currency trading."
Page 99: "In the following days, Simons emerged from his funk, more determined than ever to build a high-tech trading system guided by algorithms, or step-by-step computer instructions, rather than human judgment. Until then, Simons and Baum had relied on crude trading models, as well as their own instincts, an approach that had left Simons in crisis."
Page 101: "The regulators somehow missed the humor in Simons's misadventure. They closed out his potato positions, costing Simons and his investors millions of dollars. Soon, he and Baum had lost confidence in their system. They could see the Piggy Basket's trades and were aware when it made and lost money, but Simons and Baum weren't sure why the model was making its trading decisions. [...] In 1980, Hullender quit..."
Page 102: "With Hullender gone and the Piggy Basket malfunctioning, Simons and Baum drifted from predictive mathematical models to a more traditional trading style."
Page 105: "Their traditional trading approach was going so well that, when the boutique next door closed, Simons rented the space... Simons came to see himself as a venture capitalist as much as a trader."
[Various things happen. Renaissance makes and then loses a bunch of money. It is now 1985]
Page 114: "Simons wondered if the technology was yet available to trade using mathematical models and present algorithms, to avoid the emotional ups and downs that come with betting on markets with only intelligence and intuition."
Page 201: "By 1990, Simons had high hopes Frey and Kepler might find success with their stock trades. He was even more enthused about his own Medallion fund and its quantitative-trading strategies... Competition was building, however, with some rivals embracing similar trading strategies. Simons's biggest competition figured to come from David Shaw."
So my timeline was a little off: Renaissance was largely a traditional fund from 1978 until AxCom in 1985, with D.E. Shaw only in 1990.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised by your comment. It's a basic knowledge of getting feedback in UX research or any social research that social pressure influences your response. That's why most feedback surveys are anonymous. Even in politics, there is an old theory called the Spiral of Silence on how people shut down their contrarian opinions in public. It looks like Ray's fixation on "radical transparency" ignored the basics of human…
Unfortunately, no one will trust that a work survey is anonymous. They sent it to an email address that includes my name, with a unique link. And it's often possible to just infer who it is.
I worked with Ferrucci in BW. The internals of the employee rating system that preceded him were hilarious. In short: Everyone is encouraged to rate anyone else in a variety of categories, as often as possible. Every rating is public. You know who is rating you, and how they did it. Those ratings are put together to get a score in every category, and can be seen by anyone. It's your Baseball Card. The problem is that…
You'd think someone with as much experience as Ray Dalio would be vigilant against overfitting a model, and that's exactly what this is.
Just goes to show you that even the most successful are susceptible to ego-driven blind spots.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised by your comment. It's a basic knowledge of getting feedback in UX research or any social research that social pressure influences your response. That's why most feedback surveys are anonymous. Even in politics, there is an old theory called the Spiral of Silence on how people shut down their contrarian opinions in public. It looks like Ray's fixation on "radical transparency" ignored the basics of human…
Unfortunately, no one will trust that a work survey is anonymous. They sent it to an email address that includes my name, with a unique link. And it's often possible to just infer who it is.
Do i trust that big bosses, IT, and HR can’t deanonymise my answer? Never. Obviously they can and will if they are interested.
Can the rank and file do the same? Probably not.
Ugh, I had a recruiter approach me a couple of years ago to work for some company that had a "radical openness" culture or something like that. The idea was supposedly that everyones ideas were valid and hierarchy didn't matter and that everyone should challenge anything no matter who they were in the organisation. The way they sold it sounded a bit culty to me, and the potential for abusive behaviour seemed high. Di…
> The idea was supposedly that everyones ideas were valid and hierarchy didn't matter and that everyone should challenge anything no matter who they were in the organisation. On the engineering side, ideally this is how things are done anyway. I've never had a problem digging into the ideas presented by engineers more senior than me, and I've always encouraged junior engineers to question any ideas I present. Everyon…
- being presented under-cooked ideas so you do the thinking for them.
- too many ideas (which can lead to the first) with an inability to focus
There is a feedback loop for the first where people don't dive too deeply into their idea because they know they'll get a lot of criticism.
The second can be bad because the idea or its implementation is never polished.