4 ms·

Imagine coming back from lunch, you start to unwrap your sandwich at your desk. Then, your boss walks by and throws your sandwich across the room and explains w

• alecco 9y ago
  > your bug Knight had a terrible software delivery process and a lot of deadline-oriented pressure on techies.
  • drharby 9y ago
    Strongly concur
  • lagadu 9y ago
    After it passes review and all stages of testing it's everyone's bug.
    • taneq 9y ago
      Exactly. You don't just do code reviews and run tests to catch bugs. You also do code reviews and run tests so that, when something does slip through, it's no one person's fault.
      • mooreds 9y ago
        ... and this everyone's responsibility. Makes total sense. It's almost as if everyone at a company should be on the same team :)
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • internetman55 9y ago
    It's not nice to see a company get wrecked but sounds like they were asking for it
• kilroy123 9y ago
  This is why I would never work on this type of software! I just don't have the nerve.
  • grkvlt 9y ago
    One of the scariest moments for me was when I wrote a poker playing bot back in ~2005 and placed most of my months salary in its trading account before switching it on. Even though I knew I had written money management routines, tested them, and the program did sensible funds allocation and risk-of-ruin calculations, it was still nerve wracking to think that an unnoticed coding error could have wiped out my earnings entirely. (Spoiler - it didn't, fortunately!)
    • audiometry 9y ago
      did it make money? how did it interface to the poker-playing site? was there an api, or were you masquerading as the client?
• dsacco 9y ago
  The way your comment is written, I thought someone literally had their sandwich angrily thrown across the room when Knight collapsed.
  • Dowwie 9y ago
    I was also under that impression until I came across your comment. I guess everyone got his lunch that day.
    • pathsjs 9y ago
      I still undersatnd it that way, what else?
• twic 9y ago
  It might not be a coincidence that it's common in financial firms to have lunch brought to your desk.
• api 9y ago
  The fact that this is even a thing is the problem. Is this industry creating anything of actual value or is this just a giant MMORPG where the object is to grind long enough to get a house in the Hamptons?
  • Ntrails 9y ago
    Define value. Should capital markets work? Should people be allowed to dynamically allocate capital to the most attractive companies? The argument tends to be that making a decision about buying and selling in microseconds is not providing value, but generally everyone agrees that it should be possible at some level (by minute? by hour? by day?). There are a bunch of arguments here but broadly speaking I don't see how they change the underlying game. Make good decisions on where to allocate capital, make money as the market price caches up with your prediction.
  • golergka 9y ago
    Yes. HFT in particular creates liquidity for other trades in the market.
    • Applejinx 9y ago
      I'd accept that answer if you added, "AND is just a giant MMORPG where the object is to grind long enough to get a house in the Hamptons". Both can be true. I think the original poster's criticism is valid. In particular, since one of the objects is to grind long enough that the rules of the game don't apply to you, see 'Goldman Sachs', I think the original poster's criticism is valid. There is no referee. The only goal is to give game winners more money, and if they screw up, give them their money back and then give them more money. It justifies things like investments in index funds (or identifying those who are already competing outside the rules and rewarding them by investing more money in them since they cannot fail), but it's gone well beyond the rational functioning of a system, much less a self-regulating system with useful purposes. It's Calvinball. Go ahead and enjoy it, but it's not right.