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'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

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Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#71

Post by carabiner »

throw3823423 wrote: post #63

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…

Is it true that Ray has a bias against STEM people, and prefers elite liberal arts pedigrees?

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#72

Post by dogman144 »

23B1 wrote: post #17

It's interesting. I have seen rating systems work – in the military. They're harsh to some, but in some situations, you have to filter out B and C players to keep the A players alive. I do think transparent systems w/360º peer reviews are better than many others. I wonder what else is out there that might work.

We’re talking about OERs and NCOERs right? Those pencil-whipped, boilerplate evals where if you have a 300 PT score and don’t get a DUI/beat your spouse, 1/1? The process that takes 24 months to kick someone out?

I don’t think you know what you’re talking about in this regard and/or didn’t serve, candidly.

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#73

Post by ilaksh »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #20

Man, this feels like something out of Severance. Creating an AI model of Dalio to properly rank employees according to tenants? What the hell?

Hm. When is Severance coming back? Such a great show.

I assume Dalio has been having a field day with ChatGPT/LLMs.

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#74

Post by Almondsetat »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #62

> The truth is that at Bridgewater, some are more equal than others. And Ray Dalio is the most equal one of all. Major Animal Farm vibes.

It’s an almost verbatim quote from the book, of course it has “Animal Farm “””vibes””” “

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#75

Post by motohagiography »

throw3823423 wrote: post #63

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…

The people who survive in that culture, are they interesting, and do they go on to do anything interesting afterwards?

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#76

Post by steveBK123 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #42
slibhb wrote: post #26

There was a NYT article about Bridgewater and Dalio last week: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/business/how-does-the-wor... If these articles are right, the picture I'm coming away with is that Dalio had some good strategies that gave him an edge decades ago but now his competitors have caught up and pulled ahead. Apparently Bridgewater no longer has any quantitative edge and it's really just Dalio and a few close…

Same deal with Bill Gross (“the bond king”). Macro tailwind, a few good compounding successes, and riding that draft for the remainder. They don’t retire, they just graduate to “thought leaders” because what else are you going to do with that much free time and ego. The money no longer matters, all that is left is to chase status. https://www.google.com/search?q=bill+gross+lucky https://www.cnbc.com/video/2013/04/03/…

Yeah that's the thing with investing. Markets change, trades get crowded, data/tech gets commoditized, and strategies stop working. If you do not have a process and evolve, you are roadkill.

So some guys who are early, big and right can attract a halo that long outlives its reality.

To build some piece of tech you need to have some sort of process, and it is probably replicable to building another piece of tech. It is entirely possible to just get lucky right place, right time and make a killing investing for a good run before your lack of process catches up with you.

Half the "Big Short" guys fall under the same category as Dalio & Gross.

But hey, if you make your number and then can graduate into "thought leadership" its not such a bad gig either.

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#77

Post by wolverine876 »

gottorf wrote: post #54
cjohnson318 wrote: post #15

I stopped listening to Ray Dalio when he trotted out the meme about out of control crime in big cities at the beginning of one interview or another. I don't know if he's lazy, or out of touch, but I don't like it when people are fast and loose with extremely verifiable information. Like, maybe you have expert intuition the future of inflation, that's great; but if you're going to talk about extremely verifiable infor…

> if you're going to talk about extremely verifiable information, like per-capita crime rates in American cities, then you should have your facts straight. To be fair, if his claim is "out of control crime" and you interpret it as "out of control crime rates", you're talking about different things. There's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that in some big cities, the occurrence of certain kinds of crime (like car…

> To be fair, if his claim is "out of control crime" and you interpret it as "out of control crime rates", you're talking about different things. There's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that in some big cities, the occurrence of certain kinds of crime (like cars being broken into) is up, yet reporting is down, leading to a lower crime rate that doesn't reflect the street-level reality accurately.

That's too easy to just type; and therefore means nothing. If you think you have an argument, make a claim for what the rates are and show evidence for that. Show evidence that published rates are unusually low.

In the Internet, post-truth era, anecodetal evidence - if you even have that - is less reliable than ever; we swim in oceans of misinformation and disinformation. People post their takes, repeat others, etc. endlessly.

My anecdotal evidence, based on much time spent in cities that are depicted (by right-wing media - let's be honest) as crime ridden, and IME they are almost wonderful, there almost couldn't be a better time to be in them. Crime is low, cities are clean, streets are busy with people and energy, and people go about their days without much of a care. Is that true in every neighborhood? No; but that's not a realistic standard.

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#78

Post by wolverine876 »

immibis wrote: post #58
gottorf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're going to talk about extremely verifiable information, like per-capita crime rates in American cities, then you should have your facts straight. To be fair, if his claim is "out of control crime" and you interpret it as "out of control crime rates", you're talking about different things. There's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that in some big cities, the occurrence of certain kinds of crime (like car…

[flagged]

What are you talking about? Do you know that person?

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#79

Post by diegof79 »

throw3823423 wrote: post #63

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…

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 nature.

Re: 'Ray, this is a religion': How Bridgewater lost two top hires

#80

Post by mamonster »

slibhb wrote: post #26

There was a NYT article about Bridgewater and Dalio last week: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/business/how-does-the-wor... If these articles are right, the picture I'm coming away with is that Dalio had some good strategies that gave him an edge decades ago but now his competitors have caught up and pulled ahead. Apparently Bridgewater no longer has any quantitative edge and it's really just Dalio and a few close…

Dalio is a perfect example of just how much finance has evolved over the last 30-40 years. Risk parity today is a turbo vanilla strategy that every systematic shop can offer and that a master student in fin. eng. can probably build, and yet in like 1990 this was the forefront of systematic investing and got you paid. Bridgewater today is still riding on the fact that they "invented" risk parity.
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