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I love the term financial engineers. In my head, it defines the person, the procedure, and the purpose.
by iscrewyou 7y ago
I love the term financial engineers. In my head, it defines the person, the procedure, and the purpose.
- _bxg1 7y agoThe problem with engineers (speaking as one myself) is that we're prone to focusing only on the mechanism itself, abstracting away the details and ignoring the parts of the system we can ignore. In software we can often get away with this because the rest of the system is just further machinery; there are benefits to taking it into consideration, sure, but nobody gets hurt when you don't. But business and finance are not software. Their systems are made of people. When you waste a CPU's time by ignoring its nuances, you simply get less out of it. When you shuffle money around, writing off the nuances of industry and economics as blips in a monetary machine, you destroy lives. I understand the appeal of the engineering mindset, but you have to be a psychopath to continue in it while leaving such destruction in your wake.
- iscrewyou 7y agoI know and I agree. And a software engineer is much different than a mechanical engineer or a civil engineer. I guess I should’ve mentioned that the term financial engineer gives me context or a reference point where I can see that they are behaving like engineers. My comment was more focused on their behavioral mechanisms.
- _bxg1 7y agoI figured that was possibly what you meant; I was just elaborating.
- asdf21 7y agoEngineering typically builds something useful and long-standing, these financial engineers just tear things apart..
- tempodox 7y agoI'd prefer the term “capitalism hackers”.