9 ms·

David E. Shaw and the Ultimate College Hedge

102 points by wallflower 7y ago

doctorpangloss 7y ago
If Shaw wanted a college guarantee, he could merely start a few of them, with that kind of money. It's a big puzzle to me why this doesn't happen more often. In the past it did. Fighting inequality or discrimination, especially at the professional level, started when someone said, "Okay, I'm just going to make a school for my own then." My favorite example of this is the dismantling of Jewish exclusion at New York medical schools, which happened by creating new medical schools that did not discriminate. [1] The idea that prestige is entrenched, basically, is wrong. Maybe that idea is the main obstacle to education reform. Although maybe this is already happening for rich people. Alt Schools come to mind, although its story has come to an end. I don't think it's possible for the superrich, as a class, to guarantee admissions for their kids at elite universities, because there's only so much space. So why haven't they built their own school? [1] http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1808007&blobtype=pdf http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC18080...
- streetcat1 7y ago
  He cannot start a new college. The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college. It is about signaling, not education. And for that, you need time for the college "image" to become elite.
  - unixbeard1337 7y ago
    > The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college. I've taken community college CS, and I've taken CS50 (online). I did not find this to be the case.
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  - smacktoward 7y ago
    The “start your own college” approach worked out OK for Leland Stanford...
    - starpilot 7y ago
      and Andrew Carnegie
      - davidgay 7y ago
        Don't forget Andrew Mellon ;)
    - sgpl 7y ago
      I think this comment fails to see that this isn't about philanthropy but about buying into networks/access/prestige that these schools (Yale, Horace Mann) provide. Leland Stanford's reason for starting Stanford in his son's name was to honor his son's memory (who died when he was nine). Perhaps if his son was alive and wanted to attend college, he may have donated to Harvard or Wharton instead.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      It took over 50 years for Stanford to reach the second ranks of elite colleges, and plausibly 80 years to be unambiguously among the first rank. Investments that pay off after death have few takers.
      - gbronner 7y ago
        Helped if the first graduate not only made an absolute fortune, translated a well-known work of classics, and became President...
  - harryh 7y ago
    The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college I'm sympathetic to your signaling point of view, but this statement is definitely wrong. CS curriculum varies a lot between the top schools and a typical public university. For example I just now looked at the labs for Operating Systems at University of North Carolina and compared that to the work I did at CMU. UNC has students implement malloc and free. At CMU I implemented a process scheduler and virtual memory system.
    - JoshuaJB 7y ago
      (Disclaimer: I'm a PhD student in real-time operating systems at UNC.) Each program has its own strengths, and simply comparing between similarly titled classes is an unfortunately poor metric. (Eg. At UNC, OS is really an introduction to C and OS concepts class. The Operating System Implementations class sounds more similar to CMU's OS Class.) Academic programs need to be compared holistically, and only if one is consistently worse than the other do you have an answer. (Otherwise I could go and claim that UNC is better than CMU because our real-time group is much better.) Of course, that's too much analysis for most people (including me), so I would argue that looking at where graduates work is typically an okay proxy for undergraduate educational quality.
      - harryh 7y ago
        I fully admit that my entire understanding of the UNC curriculum is what I just gathered in 5 minutes of googling/reading. So ya, just comparing labs from similarly named classes is definitely not the best methodology. That being said I've spent a lot of time in my career recruiting students out of undergrad. And I've noticed significantly more rigor and in depth work from students from some of the top schools compared to most everywhere else.
    - hyperbovine 7y ago
      But CMU has one of the greatest CS departments in the world. Harvard does not.
    - throwawayjava 7y ago
  - throwawayjava 7y ago
    > The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college. No. Not even close. Unless you're taking about flagships like uiuc and Berkeley (which are not local for 99%). This may be true in the humanities but is nowhere near true in the mathematical sciences. My final year analysis course at college only covered a fraction of the content in the FIRST year advanced math sequence at Harvard. As someone who went to one of those truly local state schools then taught at a #1 CS school: the quality difference in CS educations is absolutely insane. See also the "Java Schools" rant.
    - brutus1213 7y ago
      I searched through your comment history for the "Java schools rant" but to no avail. Pointer? I went to school just as Java hit .. saw the old C days and then Java (in my OS course .. the horror!). I feel Java for OS stunted me to this day. Curious what your thoughts are on this.
      - throwawayjava 7y ago
        Sorry, not my rant. See here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-javaschools-2/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-java... (Also, don't read anything into my user name. I just happened to make my first comment about something related to java and then never logged out.)
  - maliker 7y ago
    Part of the difference is the level of competition with the other students. In math at least, if you want to be in classes with and compete against Putnam winners, there are only 4 or 5 schools you can go to do that.
- sgpl 7y ago
  Anyone that wants to go to college can (presumably) get into one. It's not that he wanted a college guarantee - he wanted guarantees at a select few colleges. He, in my opinion, wanted to guarantee for his kids - the networks / access / prestige that come from attending elite schools Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Horace Mann, etc. The motivation for David Shaw isn't fighting inequality or discrimination but ensuring the best possible outcome for his kids.
- smelendez 7y ago
  It's very expensive to start a college. Most superrich can get their kids in or influence research or whatever they want to do more efficiently by donating to existing schools. Another alternative is to fund a lab or think tank with no students. I'd argue most newish schools are set up because their founders wanted to promote a new kind of education (Olin College's hands on engineering program, Liberty University's Christian environment, etc.) not just start Yet Another Prestigious University
- Mvandenbergh 7y ago
  He didn't want to get his kids into a college which is very easy. He didn't want them to get into an a college with exceptional teaching and high standards either, given how academically high performing his kids seem to be they could easily have gotten into any second-tier university which have basically the same standard of teaching (especially if you know how to look for / ask for it) but not the same kind of prestige.
pinewurst 7y ago
And after all that manipu-vestment of system and children, his 1st kid graduates with a Yale Psych BS and becomes an apprentice comedy writer (quite probably assisted by family connections). Think of how transformative that Yale slot could’ve been to someone not standing on a multi-billion dollar pile.
- simtel20 7y ago
  What if he's genuinely hilarious and we all benefit from his jocular brilliance?
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    She (presumably)
    - simtel20 7y ago
      Thanks for the correction.
- bradleyjg 7y ago
  Where do you think the last person that would have gone to Yale ended up, and why is wherever that is so much of a lesser opportunity for a transformative experience?
  - dillonmckay 7y ago
    Or did they take the comedy-writer apprenticeship spot from a more-deserving/less fortunate person?
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  > Think of how transformative that Yale slot could’ve been to someone not standing on a multi-billion dollar pile. Statistically speaking, isn't it likely that someone that gets into Yale also gets into another elite school? Not defending it but most people "close" to getting into one (waitlisted, etc) end up getting into another. It's only "transformative" for someone that's not even close to getting in (like myself), but even that's hazy.
mlevental 7y ago
i don't understand the point? if i have multiple billions of dollars and my kids want to do something who is going to ask them where they went to school? in fact why are they even going to school? it's like this thought i had about superman being buff - he's the last person that needs to lift weights
- povertyworld 7y ago
  It launders and legitimizes their privilege. Presidents and supreme court justices only come from a handful of schools. This is why Joe Kennedy, the most wealthy and famous Catholic in America in his day, had his kids go to elite WASP schools rather than somewhere Catholic that would lock them out of the ruling class. Then again going to Harvard didn't stop his sons from being assassinated, but one did manage to reach the presidency.
- streetcat1 7y ago
  The point is that shaw understands how much luck plays a role in everything that happens. (This is why most of the money in his firm in treasury bills, and even those are disrupted by negative interest rate). He is extremely risk-averse, even with all of his money. Hence, if you judge his action trough the lanes of risk minimization, it will all make sense.
  - tasuki 7y ago
    > He is extremely risk-averse, even with all of his money. Perhaps he's extremely risk-averse _because_ he has all this money. Making more money would not have much impact on his life, while losing it would make a significant difference.
  - blueblimp 7y ago
    That's what struck me from the article. So much risk aversion! And why not? If you have billions, what's a million here and there to guard against potential roadblocks?
- Gatsky 7y ago
  This is a good question. I suspect part of the answer is that his children want to go to an Ivy League college.
jshaqaw 7y ago
All of these people will be against the wall when the revolution comes. Our society is so broken.
- Zarath 7y ago
  The revolution isn't coming. Hate to break it to you. Surveillance and passivity tech have won out, and if something doesn't happen in the next 50 years or so it just may never happen.
  - jshaqaw 7y ago
    I wasn’t being literal friend
- dang 7y ago
  Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
starpilot 7y ago
This comment from 2011 by siavosh, on another NYMag article about Wall Street really rings true: > I hate articles like this. I used to work on wall street, and these sort of articles were rampant up until the burst: they glamorize financial "wizards", hedge funds, trading life etc. They're financial porn. They glamorize what, in my opinion, is a dubious field. All the while attracting all sorts of people into a field that has already proven it's "value" or lack there of to society. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813902 Edit: It's also funny how the top reply by btcoal describes this current article perfectly: > These articles typically have a set format: 1. Intro into the mysterious culture of the hedge fund 2. Background on the precocious child prodigy turned market whiz 3. Description of firm's hiring practices of PhD's etc 4. Questioning value of Hedge Fund's to society 5. In conclusion, this hedge fund makes a lot of money...
- darawk 7y ago
  Just to clarify, since people seem confused on this point, hedge funds add value to society thusly: 1. Companies need to raise capital. 2. Those companies want to raise capital at a rate closest to the true value of shares in their enterprise. 3. In order to do that, the people who buy those shares need to know that they can resell them later, at a similarly efficient price. This is called a "liquidity premium". If your shares cannot be quickly resold at an efficient price, you are incurring a negative liquidity premium. 4. Because of the foregoing, it is extremely valuable to society for markets to price things efficiently. This is a service that needs to be performed by someone. That someone is, for the most part hedge funds. The ideal scenario (which we are tending towards) is that there are a very small number of extremely sophisticated players that keep markets efficient for everyone else. The more money David Shaw makes, the less money there is for other people to make. Which means we need to employ fewer and fewer people in the business of asset price discovery. Price discovery is an important and necessary function, and the fact that there are these few people making tons of money from it is actually kind of a great thing for the world. All those billions David Shaw made represent many millions not going to other people in finance. Which means those minds are freed up to work on other productive things.
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ackbar03 7y ago
I'm not sure this produces healthy adaptable well adjusted kids for shaw
- simtel20 7y ago
  He had his company buy FAO Schwarz and keep it running for years at least partly so it would exist as part of their childhood. Billions of dollars distort reality, and it's hard to imagine a good long term outcome from that much distortion, even when it comes from a place of love.
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fakename11 7y ago
Wow, how can people with normal income families even compete with these very wealth applicants for spots in the Ivy League? They can create such out sized extra curricular activities for themselves that just dwarf everything.
- sgpl 7y ago
  Yeah. What really stood out for me was the dissonance between what the mother was doing vs what she was prescribing/writing about: > One of her areas of expertise is how to pay for college. In her writing, media interviews, and YouTube videos, she cautions parents not to “follow the herd with your donating dollars” or pin their hopes for their children on getting into brand-name colleges. “Don’t believe the hype,” she tells them. “You might find yourself obsessing over those annual college rankings. Don’t take them too seriously.” The sensible solution, she argues, is for families to “pick a few financial safety schools” — public universities close to home. A degree from an elite college, she reminds readers, may not translate into higher earnings in later life. “The Ivy League isn’t necessarily the gravy train.” VS >Shaw and his wife, financial journalist Beth Kobliner, have sent their three children to an elite prep school, supported them with hyperqualified nannies and tutors, and encouraged their extracurricular interests. But while the typical snowplow parent quietly eliminates potential obstacles by clearing the road ahead, Shaw and Kobliner have seemingly bulldozed an entire mountain. >Starting in 2011, when the oldest of their three children was about two years away from applying to college, the Shaw Family Endowment Fund donated $1 million annually to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford and at least $500,000 each to Columbia and Brown. The pattern persisted through 2017, the most recent year for which public filings are available, with a bump in giving to Columbia to $1 million a year in 2016 and 2017. The foundation, which lists Kobliner as president and Shaw as treasurer and secretary, has also contributed $200,000 annually to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2013. >The total donations for “general” purposes across seven years and seven elite schools are $37.3 million, which represents 62 percent of the foundation’s giving over that period.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Dissonance would be if she accepted two inconsistent ideas at the same time. It's possible that she's giving out advice that she would not apply to herself, perhaps to reduce competition for her own strategy.
electricslpnsld 7y ago
When I was an undergrad Prof. Joe Traub (famous for applying Quasi Monte Carlo to derivatives) passed away and they had a whole lecture series in memorium. David Shaw showed up and, having bailed on Columbia CS because they didn’t want to fund his ideas on algorithmic trading, was straight up like fuck this department y’all are dumb and could have been billionaires. It was pretty crazy, I don’t think I’ve ever seen more uncomfortable squirming in an audience!
- tacon 7y ago
  In 1994, I happened to be on temporary assignment from IBM Federal doing mass storage systems for the Cornell Theory Center, at that time an NSF supercomputer center. I attended the Cornell CS department colloquiums, and one time David E. Shaw came to give the lecture. It was one of the most interesting lectures I have ever attended. Shaw used no notes or visual aids, but started with his trying to raise VC money for a parallel supercomputer company. One day he pitches to the gnomes at JP Morgan, and they tell him they aren't interested. But... since you are here anyway, do you have any ideas about solving these kinds of problems with computer science? And they shared some of their issues in the early 80s. Shaw went back to his office and a week later, they called and offered to add a zero to his salary if he would come work for them. Well, yes! Shaw described the basic concept of statistical arbitrage, where each effect on a predicted price added some variance. If someone knew enough to more accurately reduce the variance on the models, they could essentially do arbitrage while other market participants could not be sure the transaction was riskless. He described the early experiments at JP Morgan, where they needed to calibrate a parameter in their model, so one day JP Morgan did 2500 trades one way, and 2500 trades another way, and by measuring the market response, Shaw had his parameter. He estimated JP Morgan spent about $5 million or so to measure that parameter, and then used that number for years for a many, many fold return on investment. He also said that the next market participant trying to measure that parameter had to spend $100 million to get the same parameter. He made it clear he was not looking for investors, that they push the effects as much as they can without distorting the market and ruining their advantage. Over time, the ideas leak out of the firm and stop working, but his team is always coming up with new ideas. He claimed a riskless return year after year of about 15% at the time. He was there at Cornell trying to recruit the top CS students. He said that those quants could sit in a room alone, working on technical problems, never have to manage anyone or do anything business related, and share in the profits of their ideas, with returns for some topping $1 million/year.
choiway 7y ago
You spend a couple hundred dollars to help get your kids into school, you go to jail. Spend a couple million tho...
- wmf 7y ago
  That's why some people say the scandal is really about theft: the parents were getting admission slots at an unfair discount and those slots should have gone to people who donated more.
  - harryh 7y ago
    It wasn't theft because of a discount. It was theft because the money didn't go to the school but instead went to the facilitating lawyer and some corrupt employees.
Gatsky 7y ago
The article doesn't talk it about it much, but it is not entirely inconsequential that he has started a company which for a while was at the cutting edge of high performance computing for protein structure prediction. The field has moved a little away from this idea lately. The billionaire owner of Renaissance has done something similar. It's interesting. Rather than giving the money away to academia or other philanthropic causes à la Bill Gates, they choose instead to micro-manage it. Shaw and the Renaissance guy both formerly worked in academia, and I can see why this would make them skeptical about large donations to academic institutions (beyond the motives proposed in the article).
nir 7y ago
I think these articles and the responses are missing the real point which is how an Ivy League education became so important in America. I grew up in Israel near the Technion, our MIT equivalent which produced a few Nobel Prize winners. It's not a big deal to get in, if you have poor high school scores you take a year long prep course, classes are hard but most people push through. Having a Technion degree might give you a slight edge getting your first job but that's that - you'll be judged by your performance moving on, not on your alma mater. When I lived in the US for a few years, I couldn't understand how people allocate such importance to a person's high school performance (which is basically what determines their alma mater in the best case scenario, before family donations etc). To me it signals a risk-averse mentality that fears taking a chance on a potential hire.
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- DollarGuru 7y ago
  Educational elitism is just another sign of the class system at work.
  - jshaqaw 7y ago
    Agreed. As I age I am saddened by the growing realization that the educational institutions which I love and am proud of are key engines of perpetuating a class system.
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- jshaqaw 7y ago
  To be fair, I think much of the urgency around getting an Ivy League education has more to do with parental status insecurities than actual life outcomes. I have three Ivy League degrees. Have they greased a few wheels in life? Yeah sure. But not as much as you would think. I see plenty of people who didn’t get platinum plated degrees achieve tremendous things thanks to the other legs of the achievement stool - hard work and luck. I’ve seen plenty of my classmates fizzle out on those same two factors. There are a huge number of great schools in this country beyond the top 15.
lordnacho 7y ago
I wonder how the kids feel about it. It's like being born royal, there will never be a way for you to stand on your own feet. Everyone will be polite but you'll always wonder what they really think. And yet you still have to work quite hard at those prep schools and elite colleges. A friend of mine of similar status simply doesn't use the family name, went to an ok but not Uber-elite school and works a normal job.
droithomme 7y ago
Fun article. This Shaw guy is a real character! I suppose the author is criticizing him, but I ended up liking Shaw from the article.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  I worked in a Cambridge MA based DESCo company 1997-2000 and I have to say the caliber of talent across the company (all roles/levels, our receptionist had a PhD IIRC) was the highest I’ve ever seen. I loved it and suspect/wonder if it was the 1990s fintech version of BellLabs. Can confirm there was a well known, published policy on going into David’s office and we got a half page memo from David detailing the importance and exactly how to white space D. E. Shaw & Co. The company ran with excellence as the goal in everything. Even with that, there was a bit of riches to ashes to riches trajectory. I loved my time there, still work with several talented colleagues I met there, and think highly of David Shaw and what he’s created.
  - tasuki 7y ago
    I'm slightly surprised at the necessity of detailing the importance of exact white spacing of the company name. I would expect the talented employees to know perfectly how to spell the name of their detail-oriented employer.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Another view is that this is one way (among many) in which detail orientation is reinforced and transmitted as an essential part of the culture.
    - droithomme 7y ago
      I related to his memo mention! Almost certainly some employees were writing some of these on occasion in their sigs in emails to clients: D.E. Shaw & Co. D.E.Shaw&Co. DE Shaw & Co D. E. Shaw. It's a branding consistency issue. The space and what it conveys (attention to detail) is incredibly important in retaining the trust of some clients who are likewise particular. Some years ago I sent out a memo about the use of an apostrophe in a company name that was perhaps received similarly. Some think it doesn't matter. It matters to some. That's who it is done for.
zubairq 7y ago
I always remembered D.E.Shaw, as I would visit the London offices at least twice a week over the course of 6 months, to see friends who worked there. Only hire the true hackers seemed to work :)
alephnan 7y ago
> My bosses would tell me that if my spending eight hours on something would save David five minutes, it would absolutely be a good use of my time. In addition to risk aversion, the article also talked about his efficiency and value of his time.
m_gscie 7y ago
I was at Cambridge U and the college I was part of had an application from the child of a hyper-wealthy ruler of a notorious country. The money of the ruler could have materially changed the prospects of the future of the college. So what they did was create a new slot in the class especially for the potential new student, so no other students would be disadvantaged. I would expect many schools would do a similar thing. Any school that would receive his kid's application would surely admit them under similar rules. He does not need to hedge his options.

102 points by wallflower 7y ago

If Shaw wanted a college guarantee, he could merely start a few of them, with that kind of money. It's a big puzzle to me why this doesn't happen more often. In the past it did. Fighting inequality or discrimination, especially at the professional level, started when someone said, "Okay, I'm just going to make a school for my own then." My favorite example of this is the dismantling of Jewish exclusion at New York medical schools, which happened by creating new medical schools that did not discriminate. [1] The idea that prestige is entrenched, basically, is wrong. Maybe that idea is the main obstacle to education reform. Although maybe this is already happening for rich people. Alt Schools come to mind, although its story has come to an end. I don't think it's possible for the superrich, as a class, to guarantee admissions for their kids at elite universities, because there's only so much space. So why haven't they built their own school? [1] http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1808007&blobtype=pdf http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC18080...

streetcat1 7y ago
He cannot start a new college. The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college. It is about signaling, not education. And for that, you need time for the college "image" to become elite.
- unixbeard1337 7y ago
  > The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college. I've taken community college CS, and I've taken CS50 (online). I did not find this to be the case.
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- smacktoward 7y ago
  The “start your own college” approach worked out OK for Leland Stanford...
  - starpilot 7y ago
    and Andrew Carnegie
    - davidgay 7y ago
      Don't forget Andrew Mellon ;)
  - sgpl 7y ago
    I think this comment fails to see that this isn't about philanthropy but about buying into networks/access/prestige that these schools (Yale, Horace Mann) provide. Leland Stanford's reason for starting Stanford in his son's name was to honor his son's memory (who died when he was nine). Perhaps if his son was alive and wanted to attend college, he may have donated to Harvard or Wharton instead.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    It took over 50 years for Stanford to reach the second ranks of elite colleges, and plausibly 80 years to be unambiguously among the first rank. Investments that pay off after death have few takers.
    - gbronner 7y ago
      Helped if the first graduate not only made an absolute fortune, translated a well-known work of classics, and became President...
- harryh 7y ago
  The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college I'm sympathetic to your signaling point of view, but this statement is definitely wrong. CS curriculum varies a lot between the top schools and a typical public university. For example I just now looked at the labs for Operating Systems at University of North Carolina and compared that to the work I did at CMU. UNC has students implement malloc and free. At CMU I implemented a process scheduler and virtual memory system.
  - JoshuaJB 7y ago
    (Disclaimer: I'm a PhD student in real-time operating systems at UNC.) Each program has its own strengths, and simply comparing between similarly titled classes is an unfortunately poor metric. (Eg. At UNC, OS is really an introduction to C and OS concepts class. The Operating System Implementations class sounds more similar to CMU's OS Class.) Academic programs need to be compared holistically, and only if one is consistently worse than the other do you have an answer. (Otherwise I could go and claim that UNC is better than CMU because our real-time group is much better.) Of course, that's too much analysis for most people (including me), so I would argue that looking at where graduates work is typically an okay proxy for undergraduate educational quality.
    - harryh 7y ago
      I fully admit that my entire understanding of the UNC curriculum is what I just gathered in 5 minutes of googling/reading. So ya, just comparing labs from similarly named classes is definitely not the best methodology. That being said I've spent a lot of time in my career recruiting students out of undergrad. And I've noticed significantly more rigor and in depth work from students from some of the top schools compared to most everywhere else.
  - hyperbovine 7y ago
    But CMU has one of the greatest CS departments in the world. Harvard does not.
  - throwawayjava 7y ago
- throwawayjava 7y ago
  > The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college. No. Not even close. Unless you're taking about flagships like uiuc and Berkeley (which are not local for 99%). This may be true in the humanities but is nowhere near true in the mathematical sciences. My final year analysis course at college only covered a fraction of the content in the FIRST year advanced math sequence at Harvard. As someone who went to one of those truly local state schools then taught at a #1 CS school: the quality difference in CS educations is absolutely insane. See also the "Java Schools" rant.
  - brutus1213 7y ago
    I searched through your comment history for the "Java schools rant" but to no avail. Pointer? I went to school just as Java hit .. saw the old C days and then Java (in my OS course .. the horror!). I feel Java for OS stunted me to this day. Curious what your thoughts are on this.
    - throwawayjava 7y ago
      Sorry, not my rant. See here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-javaschools-2/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-java... (Also, don't read anything into my user name. I just happened to make my first comment about something related to java and then never logged out.)
- maliker 7y ago
  Part of the difference is the level of competition with the other students. In math at least, if you want to be in classes with and compete against Putnam winners, there are only 4 or 5 schools you can go to do that.
sgpl 7y ago
Anyone that wants to go to college can (presumably) get into one. It's not that he wanted a college guarantee - he wanted guarantees at a select few colleges. He, in my opinion, wanted to guarantee for his kids - the networks / access / prestige that come from attending elite schools Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Horace Mann, etc. The motivation for David Shaw isn't fighting inequality or discrimination but ensuring the best possible outcome for his kids.
smelendez 7y ago
It's very expensive to start a college. Most superrich can get their kids in or influence research or whatever they want to do more efficiently by donating to existing schools. Another alternative is to fund a lab or think tank with no students. I'd argue most newish schools are set up because their founders wanted to promote a new kind of education (Olin College's hands on engineering program, Liberty University's Christian environment, etc.) not just start Yet Another Prestigious University
Mvandenbergh 7y ago
He didn't want to get his kids into a college which is very easy. He didn't want them to get into an a college with exceptional teaching and high standards either, given how academically high performing his kids seem to be they could easily have gotten into any second-tier university which have basically the same standard of teaching (especially if you know how to look for / ask for it) but not the same kind of prestige.

pinewurst 7y ago

And after all that manipu-vestment of system and children, his 1st kid graduates with a Yale Psych BS and becomes an apprentice comedy writer (quite probably assisted by family connections). Think of how transformative that Yale slot could’ve been to someone not standing on a multi-billion dollar pile.

simtel20 7y ago
What if he's genuinely hilarious and we all benefit from his jocular brilliance?
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  She (presumably)
  - simtel20 7y ago
    Thanks for the correction.
bradleyjg 7y ago
Where do you think the last person that would have gone to Yale ended up, and why is wherever that is so much of a lesser opportunity for a transformative experience?
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Or did they take the comedy-writer apprenticeship spot from a more-deserving/less fortunate person?
akhilcacharya 7y ago
> Think of how transformative that Yale slot could’ve been to someone not standing on a multi-billion dollar pile. Statistically speaking, isn't it likely that someone that gets into Yale also gets into another elite school? Not defending it but most people "close" to getting into one (waitlisted, etc) end up getting into another. It's only "transformative" for someone that's not even close to getting in (like myself), but even that's hazy.

mlevental 7y ago

i don't understand the point? if i have multiple billions of dollars and my kids want to do something who is going to ask them where they went to school? in fact why are they even going to school? it's like this thought i had about superman being buff - he's the last person that needs to lift weights

povertyworld 7y ago
It launders and legitimizes their privilege. Presidents and supreme court justices only come from a handful of schools. This is why Joe Kennedy, the most wealthy and famous Catholic in America in his day, had his kids go to elite WASP schools rather than somewhere Catholic that would lock them out of the ruling class. Then again going to Harvard didn't stop his sons from being assassinated, but one did manage to reach the presidency.
streetcat1 7y ago
The point is that shaw understands how much luck plays a role in everything that happens. (This is why most of the money in his firm in treasury bills, and even those are disrupted by negative interest rate). He is extremely risk-averse, even with all of his money. Hence, if you judge his action trough the lanes of risk minimization, it will all make sense.
- tasuki 7y ago
  > He is extremely risk-averse, even with all of his money. Perhaps he's extremely risk-averse _because_ he has all this money. Making more money would not have much impact on his life, while losing it would make a significant difference.
- blueblimp 7y ago
  That's what struck me from the article. So much risk aversion! And why not? If you have billions, what's a million here and there to guard against potential roadblocks?
Gatsky 7y ago
This is a good question. I suspect part of the answer is that his children want to go to an Ivy League college.

jshaqaw 7y ago

All of these people will be against the wall when the revolution comes. Our society is so broken.

Zarath 7y ago
The revolution isn't coming. Hate to break it to you. Surveillance and passivity tech have won out, and if something doesn't happen in the next 50 years or so it just may never happen.
- jshaqaw 7y ago
  I wasn’t being literal friend
dang 7y ago
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

starpilot 7y ago

This comment from 2011 by siavosh, on another NYMag article about Wall Street really rings true: > I hate articles like this. I used to work on wall street, and these sort of articles were rampant up until the burst: they glamorize financial "wizards", hedge funds, trading life etc. They're financial porn. They glamorize what, in my opinion, is a dubious field. All the while attracting all sorts of people into a field that has already proven it's "value" or lack there of to society. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813902 Edit: It's also funny how the top reply by btcoal describes this current article perfectly: > These articles typically have a set format: 1. Intro into the mysterious culture of the hedge fund 2. Background on the precocious child prodigy turned market whiz 3. Description of firm's hiring practices of PhD's etc 4. Questioning value of Hedge Fund's to society 5. In conclusion, this hedge fund makes a lot of money...

darawk 7y ago
Just to clarify, since people seem confused on this point, hedge funds add value to society thusly: 1. Companies need to raise capital. 2. Those companies want to raise capital at a rate closest to the true value of shares in their enterprise. 3. In order to do that, the people who buy those shares need to know that they can resell them later, at a similarly efficient price. This is called a "liquidity premium". If your shares cannot be quickly resold at an efficient price, you are incurring a negative liquidity premium. 4. Because of the foregoing, it is extremely valuable to society for markets to price things efficiently. This is a service that needs to be performed by someone. That someone is, for the most part hedge funds. The ideal scenario (which we are tending towards) is that there are a very small number of extremely sophisticated players that keep markets efficient for everyone else. The more money David Shaw makes, the less money there is for other people to make. Which means we need to employ fewer and fewer people in the business of asset price discovery. Price discovery is an important and necessary function, and the fact that there are these few people making tons of money from it is actually kind of a great thing for the world. All those billions David Shaw made represent many millions not going to other people in finance. Which means those minds are freed up to work on other productive things.
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ackbar03 7y ago

I'm not sure this produces healthy adaptable well adjusted kids for shaw

simtel20 7y ago
He had his company buy FAO Schwarz and keep it running for years at least partly so it would exist as part of their childhood. Billions of dollars distort reality, and it's hard to imagine a good long term outcome from that much distortion, even when it comes from a place of love.
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fakename11 7y ago

Wow, how can people with normal income families even compete with these very wealth applicants for spots in the Ivy League? They can create such out sized extra curricular activities for themselves that just dwarf everything.

sgpl 7y ago
Yeah. What really stood out for me was the dissonance between what the mother was doing vs what she was prescribing/writing about: > One of her areas of expertise is how to pay for college. In her writing, media interviews, and YouTube videos, she cautions parents not to “follow the herd with your donating dollars” or pin their hopes for their children on getting into brand-name colleges. “Don’t believe the hype,” she tells them. “You might find yourself obsessing over those annual college rankings. Don’t take them too seriously.” The sensible solution, she argues, is for families to “pick a few financial safety schools” — public universities close to home. A degree from an elite college, she reminds readers, may not translate into higher earnings in later life. “The Ivy League isn’t necessarily the gravy train.” VS >Shaw and his wife, financial journalist Beth Kobliner, have sent their three children to an elite prep school, supported them with hyperqualified nannies and tutors, and encouraged their extracurricular interests. But while the typical snowplow parent quietly eliminates potential obstacles by clearing the road ahead, Shaw and Kobliner have seemingly bulldozed an entire mountain. >Starting in 2011, when the oldest of their three children was about two years away from applying to college, the Shaw Family Endowment Fund donated $1 million annually to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford and at least $500,000 each to Columbia and Brown. The pattern persisted through 2017, the most recent year for which public filings are available, with a bump in giving to Columbia to $1 million a year in 2016 and 2017. The foundation, which lists Kobliner as president and Shaw as treasurer and secretary, has also contributed $200,000 annually to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2013. >The total donations for “general” purposes across seven years and seven elite schools are $37.3 million, which represents 62 percent of the foundation’s giving over that period.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Dissonance would be if she accepted two inconsistent ideas at the same time. It's possible that she's giving out advice that she would not apply to herself, perhaps to reduce competition for her own strategy.

electricslpnsld 7y ago

When I was an undergrad Prof. Joe Traub (famous for applying Quasi Monte Carlo to derivatives) passed away and they had a whole lecture series in memorium. David Shaw showed up and, having bailed on Columbia CS because they didn’t want to fund his ideas on algorithmic trading, was straight up like fuck this department y’all are dumb and could have been billionaires. It was pretty crazy, I don’t think I’ve ever seen more uncomfortable squirming in an audience!

tacon 7y ago
In 1994, I happened to be on temporary assignment from IBM Federal doing mass storage systems for the Cornell Theory Center, at that time an NSF supercomputer center. I attended the Cornell CS department colloquiums, and one time David E. Shaw came to give the lecture. It was one of the most interesting lectures I have ever attended. Shaw used no notes or visual aids, but started with his trying to raise VC money for a parallel supercomputer company. One day he pitches to the gnomes at JP Morgan, and they tell him they aren't interested. But... since you are here anyway, do you have any ideas about solving these kinds of problems with computer science? And they shared some of their issues in the early 80s. Shaw went back to his office and a week later, they called and offered to add a zero to his salary if he would come work for them. Well, yes! Shaw described the basic concept of statistical arbitrage, where each effect on a predicted price added some variance. If someone knew enough to more accurately reduce the variance on the models, they could essentially do arbitrage while other market participants could not be sure the transaction was riskless. He described the early experiments at JP Morgan, where they needed to calibrate a parameter in their model, so one day JP Morgan did 2500 trades one way, and 2500 trades another way, and by measuring the market response, Shaw had his parameter. He estimated JP Morgan spent about $5 million or so to measure that parameter, and then used that number for years for a many, many fold return on investment. He also said that the next market participant trying to measure that parameter had to spend $100 million to get the same parameter. He made it clear he was not looking for investors, that they push the effects as much as they can without distorting the market and ruining their advantage. Over time, the ideas leak out of the firm and stop working, but his team is always coming up with new ideas. He claimed a riskless return year after year of about 15% at the time. He was there at Cornell trying to recruit the top CS students. He said that those quants could sit in a room alone, working on technical problems, never have to manage anyone or do anything business related, and share in the profits of their ideas, with returns for some topping $1 million/year.

choiway 7y ago

You spend a couple hundred dollars to help get your kids into school, you go to jail. Spend a couple million tho...

wmf 7y ago
That's why some people say the scandal is really about theft: the parents were getting admission slots at an unfair discount and those slots should have gone to people who donated more.
- harryh 7y ago
  It wasn't theft because of a discount. It was theft because the money didn't go to the school but instead went to the facilitating lawyer and some corrupt employees.

Gatsky 7y ago

The article doesn't talk it about it much, but it is not entirely inconsequential that he has started a company which for a while was at the cutting edge of high performance computing for protein structure prediction. The field has moved a little away from this idea lately. The billionaire owner of Renaissance has done something similar. It's interesting. Rather than giving the money away to academia or other philanthropic causes à la Bill Gates, they choose instead to micro-manage it. Shaw and the Renaissance guy both formerly worked in academia, and I can see why this would make them skeptical about large donations to academic institutions (beyond the motives proposed in the article).

nir 7y ago

I think these articles and the responses are missing the real point which is how an Ivy League education became so important in America. I grew up in Israel near the Technion, our MIT equivalent which produced a few Nobel Prize winners. It's not a big deal to get in, if you have poor high school scores you take a year long prep course, classes are hard but most people push through. Having a Technion degree might give you a slight edge getting your first job but that's that - you'll be judged by your performance moving on, not on your alma mater. When I lived in the US for a few years, I couldn't understand how people allocate such importance to a person's high school performance (which is basically what determines their alma mater in the best case scenario, before family donations etc). To me it signals a risk-averse mentality that fears taking a chance on a potential hire.

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DollarGuru 7y ago
Educational elitism is just another sign of the class system at work.
- jshaqaw 7y ago
  Agreed. As I age I am saddened by the growing realization that the educational institutions which I love and am proud of are key engines of perpetuating a class system.
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jshaqaw 7y ago
To be fair, I think much of the urgency around getting an Ivy League education has more to do with parental status insecurities than actual life outcomes. I have three Ivy League degrees. Have they greased a few wheels in life? Yeah sure. But not as much as you would think. I see plenty of people who didn’t get platinum plated degrees achieve tremendous things thanks to the other legs of the achievement stool - hard work and luck. I’ve seen plenty of my classmates fizzle out on those same two factors. There are a huge number of great schools in this country beyond the top 15.

lordnacho 7y ago

I wonder how the kids feel about it. It's like being born royal, there will never be a way for you to stand on your own feet. Everyone will be polite but you'll always wonder what they really think. And yet you still have to work quite hard at those prep schools and elite colleges. A friend of mine of similar status simply doesn't use the family name, went to an ok but not Uber-elite school and works a normal job.

droithomme 7y ago

Fun article. This Shaw guy is a real character! I suppose the author is criticizing him, but I ended up liking Shaw from the article.

sokoloff 7y ago
I worked in a Cambridge MA based DESCo company 1997-2000 and I have to say the caliber of talent across the company (all roles/levels, our receptionist had a PhD IIRC) was the highest I’ve ever seen. I loved it and suspect/wonder if it was the 1990s fintech version of BellLabs. Can confirm there was a well known, published policy on going into David’s office and we got a half page memo from David detailing the importance and exactly how to white space D. E. Shaw & Co. The company ran with excellence as the goal in everything. Even with that, there was a bit of riches to ashes to riches trajectory. I loved my time there, still work with several talented colleagues I met there, and think highly of David Shaw and what he’s created.
- tasuki 7y ago
  I'm slightly surprised at the necessity of detailing the importance of exact white spacing of the company name. I would expect the talented employees to know perfectly how to spell the name of their detail-oriented employer.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Another view is that this is one way (among many) in which detail orientation is reinforced and transmitted as an essential part of the culture.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    I related to his memo mention! Almost certainly some employees were writing some of these on occasion in their sigs in emails to clients: D.E. Shaw & Co. D.E.Shaw&Co. DE Shaw & Co D. E. Shaw. It's a branding consistency issue. The space and what it conveys (attention to detail) is incredibly important in retaining the trust of some clients who are likewise particular. Some years ago I sent out a memo about the use of an apostrophe in a company name that was perhaps received similarly. Some think it doesn't matter. It matters to some. That's who it is done for.

zubairq 7y ago

I always remembered D.E.Shaw, as I would visit the London offices at least twice a week over the course of 6 months, to see friends who worked there. Only hire the true hackers seemed to work :)

alephnan 7y ago

> My bosses would tell me that if my spending eight hours on something would save David five minutes, it would absolutely be a good use of my time. In addition to risk aversion, the article also talked about his efficiency and value of his time.

m_gscie 7y ago

I was at Cambridge U and the college I was part of had an application from the child of a hyper-wealthy ruler of a notorious country. The money of the ruler could have materially changed the prospects of the future of the college. So what they did was create a new slot in the class especially for the potential new student, so no other students would be disadvantaged. I would expect many schools would do a similar thing. Any school that would receive his kid's application would surely admit them under similar rules. He does not need to hedge his options.