9 ms·

Moral flexibility and subjugation. The boss says to build a thing, you build the thing. If rewriting an infiniband driver and pinning it to a core on the server

Moral flexibility and subjugation. The boss says to build a thing, you build the thing. If rewriting an infiniband driver and pinning it to a core on the server and processing requests in kernel space in exquisitely crafted C is what cuts reation time by 0.0000005 sec and makes the firm a few extra bucks, that's what you do. I interviewed at a Manhattan HFT firm (~2015) and that's what they do. The boss noted that "Congress could make a law invalidating our business model" and I realized that would be a good idea. They're not making the world a better place; they're not providing a valuable service; they're just exploiting and extracting and skimming some dollars out of the market. They have money and they're in the right place so their money can grab more money.

ensignavenger 6y ago
What about re-writing and infiniband driver requires moral flexibility?
- znpy 6y ago
  the goal behind the rewrite
  - jolmg 6y ago
    Cutting reaction time to make a few extra bucks? How does that require moral flexibility? Is the immoral part that they can use their money to make more money? If by earning more money, one can afford to buy more food in bulk and save money on that and gas, or buy a washing machine and save money on going to the laundromat, is that immoral of one to do?
    - PascLeRasc 6y ago
      Is that what hedge fund people do with their money, buy their first washing machine? Or are they buying apartments and leaving them empty to store their money?
      - jolmg 6y ago
        > Is that what hedge fund people do with their money, buy their first washing machine? I'm obviously not saying that. It's an example of how average people make/save more money from having more money. IOW, it's how average people use essentially the same tactic.
    - logfromblammo 6y ago
      I think the sticking point is that this method of acquiring money is only available to those who are already have more money than any one person could ever spend, and the money that is acquired often comes from those who do not have enough money to retire yet, via institutional investors that manage insurance, pensions, and retirement accounts. That is, people who could retire now and live without worry for the next thousand years or more are taking more money from people who are toiling away to try to retire by age 70, and making it more difficult to accomplish that goal.
      - jolmg 6y ago
        Then what's being argued is that what's immoral is to have too much money. An issue with it is that there's no objective, definite point at which we can say that a person has made too much money. I think anyone could consider that those that are making more than themselves are making too much. How much more they're making compared to us determines the certainty with which we can say they're making too much.
        logfromblammo 6y ago
        I would absolutely argue that it's immoral to have more money than 500 times the median individual income. That means anyone with individual wealth (after liquidating everything to cash) of more than about $33M is a selfish, exploitative asshole. That's not illegal, of course, but I can still think ill of their avarice. 500 times median individual income allows you to pay your fiduciary manager 2.5x median while you earn 12.5x median for doing nothing at all, forever. That is without a doubt a permanent luxury lifestyle, firmly wedged in the upper class, with a dependent business that is infinitely sustainable with a single client. But it isn't so much that one couldn't spend it all on luxury consumer goods, with a bit of effort. It's enough for up to ten full-time personal servants, while eating filet and lobster every night. Six security guards, at two per 8-hr shift, one personal chef, one executive assistant, one driver, and one house-cleaner. Seems like plenty to me, but as a filthy prole, what do I know? Spending the money back into the economy is the saving grace of the wealthy. Letting the money go, so that it can be someone else's to spend for a little while, is why it is okay for the rich to have lots of money (but not "too much"). They keep the yacht builders and golf course architects in business. When someone has "too much" money, they can't spend it fast enough to avoid creating a wealth singularity. They mostly invest it and lend it, weakly throwing it out in a long elliptical orbit, but that money accumulates more money on its journey through apolucre and then collides back at perilucre. Only spending it can send it out beyond the event horizon, and permanently lessen the mass of the hoard, and possibly keep someone else's star from evaporating too small to sustain its energy reactions. A billionaire can pay their fiduciary management company $5M per year, taking $25M per year in investment income (adjusted for inflation, forever). They can fund a personal servant army/entourage of 350 people, with an average annual salary of $70k, still leaving $500k to spend on their own. The Queen of all the Commonwealth nations has about 1000 servants in the UK, distributed over several palace properties. You literally have to be a national institution to have that many employees.
SkyMarshal 6y ago
Which would you say is more morally problematic, HFT or figuring out ways of making people click ads?
- pouta 6y ago
  Ads, 110%
- ScottFree 6y ago
  The entire financial sector. It captures 30% of all corporate profits in the world economy. Ads are bad, but not "take 1/3 of what other people make" bad.
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
    You’d figure bank stocks would be performing better, considering they’re capturing so much purported profits.
    - ScottFree 6y ago
      fair enough. Updated to specify the entire financial sector, not just banks.
    - logfromblammo 6y ago
      Capturing other companies' profits is just step 1 in the plan to put as much of that money in your own pockets as possible. If you're willing to "steal" from other companies, why wouldn't you also "steal" from the owners of your own company? Why pay a dividend when you can pay bonuses?
    - parenthesis 6y ago
      In many listed financial companies it is certain employees and management who do well financially, rather than the shareholders.
      - sweeneyrod 6y ago
ping_pong 6y ago
"Making the world a better place" is one of the original jokes in the Silicon Valley tv show because it's such an absurd goal. If they are doing something illegal they should go to jail, but as long as they aren't actively hurting others, being a middleman in a transaction is something that many, many people do to make money.
- ma2rten 6y ago
  I think you are thinking about "changing the world". "Making the world a better place" to me has the connotation of providing a small positive contribution for others around you.
  - ping_pong 6y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso
- puranjay 6y ago
  When the dust is settled, I think HFT firms will emerge as a very minor evil compared to social media firms.
  - justusw 6y ago
    Are there any HFT firms that engage in shady data deals or startup acquisitions, or outright lie to the government about what they are doing?
- justusw 6y ago
  Also, from the same show, Gavin Belson: > I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do
ma2rten 6y ago
Could you explain this more? I don't know much about this world. I understand they are not making the world a better place, but are they making it worse? Something that I have heard is that they are providing a service by providing liquidity to the market.
- quickthrowman 6y ago
  You are correct, HFT firms provide a valuable thing: liquidity in financial markets which leads to smaller bid/ask spreads. They aren’t making things worse, lower transaction costs are good for everyone that participates in markets, which includes the OP.
  - jliptzin 6y ago
    In theory yea but during a crisis or other high volatility situation where the market needs liquidity the most they’re the first ones to pull their bids/asks.
    - traK6Dcm 6y ago
      Even if that was true (it's difficult to prove either way since there is little data on black swan events), the fact that they provide liquidity during stable times can make up for not providing liquidity during black swans. The impact could still be net-positive. Also, it's unclear what the alternative is. While HFT may not be needed, markets run by human traders were significantly more unfair than anything we have now. It's just that fewer people complained about it because nothing was transparent. Or do you believe human traders don't pull quotes?
      - jliptzin 6y ago
        I don't really have an opinion on how to make the market fair one way or another, I just advocate for retail investors to completely dispense with the idea that the market will be fair to them. I see a lot of people getting into day trading not realizing that the whole thing is completely rigged, from front-runners, insider traders, hedge fund managers with huge pockets spreading fake news (watch Jim Cramer brag about all his different market manipulation tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMShFx5rThI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMShFx5rThI), etc. Unless you are prepared to engage in that kind of behavior as well (and have the resources to do it), expect to lose your money. Your only option is to buy and hold for the very long term.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ackbar03 6y ago
Wouldn't this kind of stuff make the server hugely vulnerable though? Like wouldn't one malformed input completely screw the whole thing up, or God forbid a carefully crafted malicious one? High speed complex systems running on tailor made c code doesn't seem particularly safe
- lucozade 6y ago
  Bugs have been known to cause some fairly major blow outs [0]. It's pretty/very rare for malicious code/data to get involved because this sort of thing is almost always co-hosted with the exchange. There's nowhere really to inject yourself. I'm sure it happens in other parts of the process, just not much in the very low latency parts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stock_trading_disruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stoc...
nnoitra 6y ago
Right. Does it take 15 minutes to "rewrite an Infiniband driver and pin it to a core"? I ask because a friend was contacted by HFT firm but is concerned about work hours and cowboy coding.
1e-9 6y ago
> The boss says to build a thing, you build the thing. Sounds like a typical entry-level job to me. > They're not making the world a better place; they're not providing a valuable service; they're just exploiting and extracting and skimming some dollars out of the market. Firms providing useful services through their trading allow our economies to prioritize resources more efficiently. Better resource prioritization increases prosperity, which makes the world a better place in a multitude of ways. The useful services provided (for example, increased market stability) go beyond the seemingly-simple benefits of "increased liquidity" and "tighter bid/ask spreads" that are often mentioned. This becomes easier to appreciate once you delve into the enormous number and diversity of traded instruments and their interrelationships. It's far more than just cash equities. Firms pursing parasitic trading are harmful to markets. Their behavior tends to backfire in the long run due to a combination of regulatory action and natural market dynamics. Characterizing all (or even most) HFT firms as harmful is inaccurate in my experience.

ensignavenger 6y ago

What about re-writing and infiniband driver requires moral flexibility?

znpy 6y ago
the goal behind the rewrite
- jolmg 6y ago
  Cutting reaction time to make a few extra bucks? How does that require moral flexibility? Is the immoral part that they can use their money to make more money? If by earning more money, one can afford to buy more food in bulk and save money on that and gas, or buy a washing machine and save money on going to the laundromat, is that immoral of one to do?
  - PascLeRasc 6y ago
    Is that what hedge fund people do with their money, buy their first washing machine? Or are they buying apartments and leaving them empty to store their money?
    - jolmg 6y ago
      > Is that what hedge fund people do with their money, buy their first washing machine? I'm obviously not saying that. It's an example of how average people make/save more money from having more money. IOW, it's how average people use essentially the same tactic.
  - logfromblammo 6y ago
    I think the sticking point is that this method of acquiring money is only available to those who are already have more money than any one person could ever spend, and the money that is acquired often comes from those who do not have enough money to retire yet, via institutional investors that manage insurance, pensions, and retirement accounts. That is, people who could retire now and live without worry for the next thousand years or more are taking more money from people who are toiling away to try to retire by age 70, and making it more difficult to accomplish that goal.
    - jolmg 6y ago
      Then what's being argued is that what's immoral is to have too much money. An issue with it is that there's no objective, definite point at which we can say that a person has made too much money. I think anyone could consider that those that are making more than themselves are making too much. How much more they're making compared to us determines the certainty with which we can say they're making too much.
      - logfromblammo 6y ago
        I would absolutely argue that it's immoral to have more money than 500 times the median individual income. That means anyone with individual wealth (after liquidating everything to cash) of more than about $33M is a selfish, exploitative asshole. That's not illegal, of course, but I can still think ill of their avarice. 500 times median individual income allows you to pay your fiduciary manager 2.5x median while you earn 12.5x median for doing nothing at all, forever. That is without a doubt a permanent luxury lifestyle, firmly wedged in the upper class, with a dependent business that is infinitely sustainable with a single client. But it isn't so much that one couldn't spend it all on luxury consumer goods, with a bit of effort. It's enough for up to ten full-time personal servants, while eating filet and lobster every night. Six security guards, at two per 8-hr shift, one personal chef, one executive assistant, one driver, and one house-cleaner. Seems like plenty to me, but as a filthy prole, what do I know? Spending the money back into the economy is the saving grace of the wealthy. Letting the money go, so that it can be someone else's to spend for a little while, is why it is okay for the rich to have lots of money (but not "too much"). They keep the yacht builders and golf course architects in business. When someone has "too much" money, they can't spend it fast enough to avoid creating a wealth singularity. They mostly invest it and lend it, weakly throwing it out in a long elliptical orbit, but that money accumulates more money on its journey through apolucre and then collides back at perilucre. Only spending it can send it out beyond the event horizon, and permanently lessen the mass of the hoard, and possibly keep someone else's star from evaporating too small to sustain its energy reactions. A billionaire can pay their fiduciary management company $5M per year, taking $25M per year in investment income (adjusted for inflation, forever). They can fund a personal servant army/entourage of 350 people, with an average annual salary of $70k, still leaving $500k to spend on their own. The Queen of all the Commonwealth nations has about 1000 servants in the UK, distributed over several palace properties. You literally have to be a national institution to have that many employees.

SkyMarshal 6y ago

Which would you say is more morally problematic, HFT or figuring out ways of making people click ads?

pouta 6y ago
Ads, 110%
ScottFree 6y ago
The entire financial sector. It captures 30% of all corporate profits in the world economy. Ads are bad, but not "take 1/3 of what other people make" bad.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
  You’d figure bank stocks would be performing better, considering they’re capturing so much purported profits.
  - ScottFree 6y ago
    fair enough. Updated to specify the entire financial sector, not just banks.
  - logfromblammo 6y ago
    Capturing other companies' profits is just step 1 in the plan to put as much of that money in your own pockets as possible. If you're willing to "steal" from other companies, why wouldn't you also "steal" from the owners of your own company? Why pay a dividend when you can pay bonuses?
  - parenthesis 6y ago
    In many listed financial companies it is certain employees and management who do well financially, rather than the shareholders.
    - sweeneyrod 6y ago

ping_pong 6y ago

"Making the world a better place" is one of the original jokes in the Silicon Valley tv show because it's such an absurd goal. If they are doing something illegal they should go to jail, but as long as they aren't actively hurting others, being a middleman in a transaction is something that many, many people do to make money.

ma2rten 6y ago
I think you are thinking about "changing the world". "Making the world a better place" to me has the connotation of providing a small positive contribution for others around you.
- ping_pong 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso
puranjay 6y ago
When the dust is settled, I think HFT firms will emerge as a very minor evil compared to social media firms.
- justusw 6y ago
  Are there any HFT firms that engage in shady data deals or startup acquisitions, or outright lie to the government about what they are doing?
justusw 6y ago
Also, from the same show, Gavin Belson: > I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do

ma2rten 6y ago

Could you explain this more? I don't know much about this world. I understand they are not making the world a better place, but are they making it worse? Something that I have heard is that they are providing a service by providing liquidity to the market.

quickthrowman 6y ago
You are correct, HFT firms provide a valuable thing: liquidity in financial markets which leads to smaller bid/ask spreads. They aren’t making things worse, lower transaction costs are good for everyone that participates in markets, which includes the OP.
- jliptzin 6y ago
  In theory yea but during a crisis or other high volatility situation where the market needs liquidity the most they’re the first ones to pull their bids/asks.
  - traK6Dcm 6y ago
    Even if that was true (it's difficult to prove either way since there is little data on black swan events), the fact that they provide liquidity during stable times can make up for not providing liquidity during black swans. The impact could still be net-positive. Also, it's unclear what the alternative is. While HFT may not be needed, markets run by human traders were significantly more unfair than anything we have now. It's just that fewer people complained about it because nothing was transparent. Or do you believe human traders don't pull quotes?
    - jliptzin 6y ago
      I don't really have an opinion on how to make the market fair one way or another, I just advocate for retail investors to completely dispense with the idea that the market will be fair to them. I see a lot of people getting into day trading not realizing that the whole thing is completely rigged, from front-runners, insider traders, hedge fund managers with huge pockets spreading fake news (watch Jim Cramer brag about all his different market manipulation tactics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMShFx5rThI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMShFx5rThI), etc. Unless you are prepared to engage in that kind of behavior as well (and have the resources to do it), expect to lose your money. Your only option is to buy and hold for the very long term.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ackbar03 6y ago

Wouldn't this kind of stuff make the server hugely vulnerable though? Like wouldn't one malformed input completely screw the whole thing up, or God forbid a carefully crafted malicious one? High speed complex systems running on tailor made c code doesn't seem particularly safe

lucozade 6y ago
Bugs have been known to cause some fairly major blow outs [0]. It's pretty/very rare for malicious code/data to get involved because this sort of thing is almost always co-hosted with the exchange. There's nowhere really to inject yourself. I'm sure it happens in other parts of the process, just not much in the very low latency parts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stock_trading_disruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Capital_Group#2012_stoc...

nnoitra 6y ago

Right. Does it take 15 minutes to "rewrite an Infiniband driver and pin it to a core"? I ask because a friend was contacted by HFT firm but is concerned about work hours and cowboy coding.

1e-9 6y ago

> The boss says to build a thing, you build the thing. Sounds like a typical entry-level job to me. > They're not making the world a better place; they're not providing a valuable service; they're just exploiting and extracting and skimming some dollars out of the market. Firms providing useful services through their trading allow our economies to prioritize resources more efficiently. Better resource prioritization increases prosperity, which makes the world a better place in a multitude of ways. The useful services provided (for example, increased market stability) go beyond the seemingly-simple benefits of "increased liquidity" and "tighter bid/ask spreads" that are often mentioned. This becomes easier to appreciate once you delve into the enormous number and diversity of traded instruments and their interrelationships. It's far more than just cash equities. Firms pursing parasitic trading are harmful to markets. Their behavior tends to backfire in the long run due to a combination of regulatory action and natural market dynamics. Characterizing all (or even most) HFT firms as harmful is inaccurate in my experience.