3 ms·

hmm, I take it you mean +ev and -ev ? not sure if I'm revealing too much, but as someone who is not white, or one of the "model minority", who grew up in what m

by zpwe 7y ago

hmm, I take it you mean +ev and -ev ? not sure if I'm revealing too much, but as someone who is not white, or one of the "model minority", who grew up in what many would consider the "hood", attended one of the worst high schools in the country, I have felt my life has been inherently -ev due to the zipcode I grew up in / the color of my skin, who sees the many anti-AA views on this forum (advantages gained from AA are way overstated, if anything it helps rich URM more than those who are poor) and has been discouraged from pursuing a job in traditional tech given all the bullshit about inclusion and diversity that is spewed while their actions say otherwise, I consider the stock market the great equalizer. The barrier to entry is lower than most tech jobs and the color of your skin or your background doesn't change the potential outcome when a trade is placed, getting a job in the industry is a different story though. I've had a hard time hearing back from quant firms (quant from bb that rhymes with oldman slacks said my cv had too many "red flags" to be considered). When talking to universities about grad school, they really didn't give a shit that I was a URM like a lot of people will have you believe, they just wanted money. This bought me time to pursue independent study, where I've been teaching myself stochastic calc, math behind ML, additional programming in hopes of landing a jr quant role where performance is more objective with less layers of abstraction when it comes to value provided, people don't really care how you look if you you can point directly at how much money you made them. So given that most my life has been inherently -ev, I'm not going to lie it feels great for a change and I plan to run with this. Given where I grew up, dog eat dog is what I know, I thrive under pressure and stay rational in chaos, growing up I've had to hyper-analyze situations to anticipate any worst case scenarios that might occur and gtfo before shots are fired. I guess if I were a character from Peanuts, I'd be Pig-pen.

ggm 7y ago
Thank you for a very informative answer. Glad it felt good, hope it continues. I don't think pig-pen got to quant, but 55 years later, who can say? I am a believer (bad word, but no other choices) in AA and I hate the anti-AA rhetoric. I still struggle when people who could have benefited from AA either by gender or race say they don't like it, but I won't pretend they don't say it, or there aren't problems. AFAIK its always the best candidate, its just AA re-defines what 'best' is in ways some other people don't like. The whole PC/SJW language is just shit: its labels to deny the underlying problem. I am the other side of this problem, never faced the bias, never had to overcome it. I might even be part of the problem. Can't hire wisely if you don't know your own biases. That said, hiring women and minorities into my ICT space is just hard, and thats from a not-for-profit with 80 staff and more cultures than I can count. We still put women into finance and HR more than into tech and we still have next to no leadership outside the anglo core. The board is mixed. So there's that, I think it helps. (not in the USA btw) Money is colourblind.. kinda. I do not believe this is completely true. I don't know any Koch brothers, or Walmart owners, or Peter Theil, and so I work in third hand knowledge. I do not believe they are colour or politics blind: their view of money is complicated. But I do believe you when you say that proven skills cut more with hiring in the money space, than in other spaces. Indian capital by definition is non-white and there are some standout Indian capital movers-and-shakers who own steel, coal, but who also live in a culture which badges people from birth "other" and that totally freaks me out. (there is one, Sanjeev Gupta, who I will put to one side. He might be capitalist, but he's no racist: he's accormittel and tata steel. he's big) If you wind up in quant with money, ethical investment will be out there, in the future state, as something to talk about as a sub-set of investment to model. I get, that plays in tobacco and drugs and oil will include speculative gains as they crash and burn, or take off and persist. You would get to make choices in that too: Do you want to make $m on the strength of coal-tar sand mining, as KSA and others dump oil stocks to move to Solar? Or do you want to invest in battery tech to ride the up wave in Solar, but be tied into KSA legals? Do you even have to care? No, you don't. And I won't try to pretend you cannot, and won't say you should, even if I do say I would like you (and others) to care. I read about black radio/tv entrepreneurs some time ago. People who could have been in the weather underground or panthers, but chose to invest in the system instead. I have also read that Clarence Thomas is not an AA backer, believes its better to prove you got there without the help. I don't respect Thomas for obvious reasons. He's pretty anti-social, never mind anti-socialist)

by zpwe 7y ago

ggm 7y ago

Thank you for a very informative answer. Glad it felt good, hope it continues. I don't think pig-pen got to quant, but 55 years later, who can say? I am a believer (bad word, but no other choices) in AA and I hate the anti-AA rhetoric. I still struggle when people who could have benefited from AA either by gender or race say they don't like it, but I won't pretend they don't say it, or there aren't problems. AFAIK its always the best candidate, its just AA re-defines what 'best' is in ways some other people don't like. The whole PC/SJW language is just shit: its labels to deny the underlying problem. I am the other side of this problem, never faced the bias, never had to overcome it. I might even be part of the problem. Can't hire wisely if you don't know your own biases. That said, hiring women and minorities into my ICT space is just hard, and thats from a not-for-profit with 80 staff and more cultures than I can count. We still put women into finance and HR more than into tech and we still have next to no leadership outside the anglo core. The board is mixed. So there's that, I think it helps. (not in the USA btw) Money is colourblind.. kinda. I do not believe this is completely true. I don't know any Koch brothers, or Walmart owners, or Peter Theil, and so I work in third hand knowledge. I do not believe they are colour or politics blind: their view of money is complicated. But I do believe you when you say that proven skills cut more with hiring in the money space, than in other spaces. Indian capital by definition is non-white and there are some standout Indian capital movers-and-shakers who own steel, coal, but who also live in a culture which badges people from birth "other" and that totally freaks me out. (there is one, Sanjeev Gupta, who I will put to one side. He might be capitalist, but he's no racist: he's accormittel and tata steel. he's big) If you wind up in quant with money, ethical investment will be out there, in the future state, as something to talk about as a sub-set of investment to model. I get, that plays in tobacco and drugs and oil will include speculative gains as they crash and burn, or take off and persist. You would get to make choices in that too: Do you want to make $m on the strength of coal-tar sand mining, as KSA and others dump oil stocks to move to Solar? Or do you want to invest in battery tech to ride the up wave in Solar, but be tied into KSA legals? Do you even have to care? No, you don't. And I won't try to pretend you cannot, and won't say you should, even if I do say I would like you (and others) to care. I read about black radio/tv entrepreneurs some time ago. People who could have been in the weather underground or panthers, but chose to invest in the system instead. I have also read that Clarence Thomas is not an AA backer, believes its better to prove you got there without the help. I don't respect Thomas for obvious reasons. He's pretty anti-social, never mind anti-socialist)