14 ms·

Why founding a 3-person startup with 0 revenue is better than working for GS

211 points by pitdesi 15y ago

gatsby 15y ago
Previous Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690001 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690001
wccrawford 15y ago
For those who want the short version: GS' bonus system has a screwy bonus system that isn't very predictable, and most people live well above their salary, relying on the bonus. So instead he thinks you should earn nothing, and that way you ... Wait, no, you'd still be living above your means. Sheesh.
- younata 15y ago
  I think his point was that it's better to work for yourself, than be some nameless peon at GS.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    If you believe working for yourself is better than having shelter, food and a life, the more power to you. It's romantic to imagine hoofing it alone, but be realistic- living costs money. It always has, if you consider money to be a replacement for labor- even if you drop out of "the system", you still need to work to provide for yourself to see another day.
- raganwald 15y ago
  Income: twenty pounds. Expenses: twenty pounds, one shilling. Result: Misery. Income: twenty pounds Expenses: nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings. Result: Happiness. If he can find a way to live on ramen, he may be happy.
  - rjh29 15y ago
    And we're using shillings because...?
    - jdale27 15y ago
      It's a quote from Dickens.
      - liedra 15y ago
        Well, apart from the ramen bit. :)
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    Surely, ninety-nine shillings?
    - phpnode 15y ago
      Nope, shillings were pre decimalisation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilling
      - StavrosK 15y ago
        That was informative, thank you.
il 15y ago
Another reason: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-close-to-acquiring-adgrok/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-close-to-acquiring-...
mtrn 15y ago
Eat (burgers) or be eaten.
jacques_chester 15y ago
"Giving sophisticated models and fast computers to traders is like giving handguns and tequila to teenage boys." This seems to be a riff on PJ O'Rourke's remark about giving money and power to governments.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
chrischen 15y ago
"...and with the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers." Minor correction to that: theoretically ADHD kids given stimulants should become more calm, not more hyper.
forgotmypasswd 15y ago
"Antonio now works at Facebook" http://adgrok.com/about/ http://adgrok.com/about/
- trustfundbaby 15y ago
  wait ... what?! After the work-for-yourself jingoism?!?!
  - forensic 15y ago
    What else is new. Bloggers get rich by getting your attention, not by helping you.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      To extend upon that, bloggers get rich by getting your attention, which does not actually require they practice, subscribe to or even believe what they are telling you.
      - Confusion 15y ago
        However, this is not a blogger. Also: Schopenhauer[1]. [1] Famously did not abide by his own philosophy, which does not make it a single bit less insightful or valuable.
        toadi 15y ago
        Was ready to make the same comment. Especially most philosophers working on ethical issues didn't follow their own propositions.
  - alnayyir 15y ago
    Hypocrisy is the norm with much of what passes through here. At least GS employees don't have any pretensions to holiness. I'd much rather work with people who are honest with themselves about their motivations than who try to push the suffering under the surface with bullshit rationalizations like that in the post.
dcosson 15y ago
Love the vonnegut-esque prose. So it goes.
- jaysonelliot 15y ago
  Vonnegut's prose is punchy, darkly humorous, and painstakingly crafted. This is just a rambling, unedited screed from a blogger who can't find satisfaction in his life.
fezzl 15y ago
Am I the only one who thought this was a post written by an ex-Get Satisfaction employee who has recently founded a startup?
rluhar 15y ago
I respect the author's point of view, and I have to agree that Wall Street has .. well.. no moral compass (or maybe its compass points continually to $$$). But I don't completely agree with his description of what a quant does. It all depends on where they work and what asset class they focus on. Some quants determine the trading strategy of a desk. They are in charge of making strategic and technical decisions. Some tech driven trading desks actually are structured as a sort of "start up" within the main bank. The team would have a couple of quants and a bunch of programmers working together. The quants specify the strategy and the algorithm, the programmers code, test and deploy it. In these situations, the quant is not a subordinate to the trader, but a peer. This post reflect's the author's own experience and it makes for interesting and entertaining reading. I doubt, however, that it is a true reflection of what a quant's job is.
- mdda 15y ago
  IMHO, his view of the quant life was distorted by being on the 'sell-side', where the trader and salespeople reign supreme. On the buy-side, quants are much more of the revenue generators. That'll become increasingly obvious now that (soon) banks won't be allowed to prop-trade : there'll be a migration of a lot of the 'value add' to the buy-side (true hedge funds, mainly).
  - rluhar 15y ago
    Indeed. Though it really depends on the asset class. On liquid asset classes (equities, FX, etc.) there has been more and more focus on algorithmic market making and order execution. High frequency trading outfits and having extremely latency / price sensitive counter parties (i.e. the buy side hedge funds) has forced the sell side desks to evolve to a more tech driven trading model. In FX, banks like Deutsche and Barclays make loads of money off algorithmic market making and order execution. Way off topic .. apologies.
dkokelley 15y ago
If there's anything I can take away from this, if there's anything I can say about GS, it's that they know precisely what and who they are.
known 15y ago
There are number of paranoids in GS. If you want to work in GS leave your conscience at the door.
dools 15y ago
This is beautifully written and a genuinely entertaining read. I love it just for that, without the politics or without judging the validity of it's message. I just really enjoyed reading it.
Patient0 15y ago
"This tendency reached the height of comedy inside the strategies division, where some of the quants published academic papers on the more theoretical aspects of their work. If an author quit Goldman though, his name would be removed from the official version of the publication. It got to the point that some papers had no authors, and had apparently written themselves. So it goes. No longer with the firm." I suspect he plagiarized this whole anecdode from the autobiography "My Life as a Quant", in which Emanuel Derman is talking about his experience at Salomon Brothers, rather than GS: http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/my_life-excerpt.html http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/my_life-excerpt.html "The level of fear that permeated Salomon was more evident, too. Friends of mine who wanted to leave the firm were semi paranoid that their bosses would discover that they were interviewing elsewhere and then fire them before they left. I never heard anyone at Goldman speak this way; despite the natural tension between employer and employee, most Goldman workers never imagined that exercising their right to look at other jobs would naturally lead to being fired. There were other signs of Salomon's take-no-prisoners culture. In the 1980s, the Bond Portfolio Analysis (BPA) group had written a series of renowned reports for clients on valuing swaps and other recently invented derivatives contracts. Each report's distinctive light brown cover bore the names of its authors printed in a darker brown. Then, over the years, as one or more of the original authors left the firm for other banks or trading houses, BPA would reprint the report, having removed the departed authors' names. Eventually there were old but popular reports still being distributed that apparently had no author at all. This Orwellian rewriting of history struck me as particularly petty and ineffective, an affront to the notion of research." From "My Life as a Quant"... If so, what else did he make up? Did he directly experience any of this during his brief stay as a junior member of GS? Or is it all just a bunch of crap he's been reading in books like "Liar's Poker"?
- plamenv 15y ago
  It's obviously not copy-paste and why would it be so hard to believe that both Goldman and Salomon had the same practices of removing authors names from papers?
  - Patient0 15y ago
    The similarity between the stories struck me: particularly that they both stressed the point about reports being circulated with no authors at all... OK it doesn't prove that he made it all up, but I would be willing to bet some money on it.
fedorabbit 15y ago
I can understand Argyris Zymnis got his PhD in Electrical Engineering, probably did some research in signal processing, data fusion, etc. A Physics PhD ends up become a advertisement algorithm coder? How does that academic experience help though...no idea quantum mechanics applies in this area.
dlikhten 15y ago
" the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers" I think meth and sugar actually makes ADHD kids more calm because it allows for the easily triggered mental satisfaction obtained from normal everyday interactions, which ADHD kids crave and require constant attention and running around in circles to obtain, something we naturally get without drugs. But moving on with the article. :)
ams6110 15y ago
This is nearly a year old and has been posted here before

211 points by pitdesi 15y ago

Previous Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690001 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690001

For those who want the short version: GS' bonus system has a screwy bonus system that isn't very predictable, and most people live well above their salary, relying on the bonus. So instead he thinks you should earn nothing, and that way you ... Wait, no, you'd still be living above your means. Sheesh.

younata 15y ago
I think his point was that it's better to work for yourself, than be some nameless peon at GS.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  If you believe working for yourself is better than having shelter, food and a life, the more power to you. It's romantic to imagine hoofing it alone, but be realistic- living costs money. It always has, if you consider money to be a replacement for labor- even if you drop out of "the system", you still need to work to provide for yourself to see another day.
raganwald 15y ago
Income: twenty pounds. Expenses: twenty pounds, one shilling. Result: Misery. Income: twenty pounds Expenses: nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings. Result: Happiness. If he can find a way to live on ramen, he may be happy.
- rjh29 15y ago
  And we're using shillings because...?
  - jdale27 15y ago
    It's a quote from Dickens.
    - liedra 15y ago
      Well, apart from the ramen bit. :)
- StavrosK 15y ago
  Surely, ninety-nine shillings?
  - phpnode 15y ago
    Nope, shillings were pre decimalisation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilling
    - StavrosK 15y ago
      That was informative, thank you.

il 15y ago

Another reason: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-close-to-acquiring-adgrok/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-close-to-acquiring-...

mtrn 15y ago

Eat (burgers) or be eaten.

jacques_chester 15y ago

"Giving sophisticated models and fast computers to traders is like giving handguns and tequila to teenage boys." This seems to be a riff on PJ O'Rourke's remark about giving money and power to governments.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

chrischen 15y ago

"...and with the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers." Minor correction to that: theoretically ADHD kids given stimulants should become more calm, not more hyper.

forgotmypasswd 15y ago

"Antonio now works at Facebook" http://adgrok.com/about/ http://adgrok.com/about/

trustfundbaby 15y ago
wait ... what?! After the work-for-yourself jingoism?!?!
- forensic 15y ago
  What else is new. Bloggers get rich by getting your attention, not by helping you.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    To extend upon that, bloggers get rich by getting your attention, which does not actually require they practice, subscribe to or even believe what they are telling you.
    - Confusion 15y ago
      However, this is not a blogger. Also: Schopenhauer[1]. [1] Famously did not abide by his own philosophy, which does not make it a single bit less insightful or valuable.
      - toadi 15y ago
        Was ready to make the same comment. Especially most philosophers working on ethical issues didn't follow their own propositions.
- alnayyir 15y ago
  Hypocrisy is the norm with much of what passes through here. At least GS employees don't have any pretensions to holiness. I'd much rather work with people who are honest with themselves about their motivations than who try to push the suffering under the surface with bullshit rationalizations like that in the post.

dcosson 15y ago

Love the vonnegut-esque prose. So it goes.

jaysonelliot 15y ago
Vonnegut's prose is punchy, darkly humorous, and painstakingly crafted. This is just a rambling, unedited screed from a blogger who can't find satisfaction in his life.

fezzl 15y ago

Am I the only one who thought this was a post written by an ex-Get Satisfaction employee who has recently founded a startup?

rluhar 15y ago

I respect the author's point of view, and I have to agree that Wall Street has .. well.. no moral compass (or maybe its compass points continually to $$$). But I don't completely agree with his description of what a quant does. It all depends on where they work and what asset class they focus on. Some quants determine the trading strategy of a desk. They are in charge of making strategic and technical decisions. Some tech driven trading desks actually are structured as a sort of "start up" within the main bank. The team would have a couple of quants and a bunch of programmers working together. The quants specify the strategy and the algorithm, the programmers code, test and deploy it. In these situations, the quant is not a subordinate to the trader, but a peer. This post reflect's the author's own experience and it makes for interesting and entertaining reading. I doubt, however, that it is a true reflection of what a quant's job is.

mdda 15y ago
IMHO, his view of the quant life was distorted by being on the 'sell-side', where the trader and salespeople reign supreme. On the buy-side, quants are much more of the revenue generators. That'll become increasingly obvious now that (soon) banks won't be allowed to prop-trade : there'll be a migration of a lot of the 'value add' to the buy-side (true hedge funds, mainly).
- rluhar 15y ago
  Indeed. Though it really depends on the asset class. On liquid asset classes (equities, FX, etc.) there has been more and more focus on algorithmic market making and order execution. High frequency trading outfits and having extremely latency / price sensitive counter parties (i.e. the buy side hedge funds) has forced the sell side desks to evolve to a more tech driven trading model. In FX, banks like Deutsche and Barclays make loads of money off algorithmic market making and order execution. Way off topic .. apologies.

dkokelley 15y ago

If there's anything I can take away from this, if there's anything I can say about GS, it's that they know precisely what and who they are.

known 15y ago

There are number of paranoids in GS. If you want to work in GS leave your conscience at the door.

dools 15y ago

This is beautifully written and a genuinely entertaining read. I love it just for that, without the politics or without judging the validity of it's message. I just really enjoyed reading it.

Patient0 15y ago

"This tendency reached the height of comedy inside the strategies division, where some of the quants published academic papers on the more theoretical aspects of their work. If an author quit Goldman though, his name would be removed from the official version of the publication. It got to the point that some papers had no authors, and had apparently written themselves. So it goes. No longer with the firm." I suspect he plagiarized this whole anecdode from the autobiography "My Life as a Quant", in which Emanuel Derman is talking about his experience at Salomon Brothers, rather than GS: http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/my_life-excerpt.html http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/my_life-excerpt.html "The level of fear that permeated Salomon was more evident, too. Friends of mine who wanted to leave the firm were semi paranoid that their bosses would discover that they were interviewing elsewhere and then fire them before they left. I never heard anyone at Goldman speak this way; despite the natural tension between employer and employee, most Goldman workers never imagined that exercising their right to look at other jobs would naturally lead to being fired. There were other signs of Salomon's take-no-prisoners culture. In the 1980s, the Bond Portfolio Analysis (BPA) group had written a series of renowned reports for clients on valuing swaps and other recently invented derivatives contracts. Each report's distinctive light brown cover bore the names of its authors printed in a darker brown. Then, over the years, as one or more of the original authors left the firm for other banks or trading houses, BPA would reprint the report, having removed the departed authors' names. Eventually there were old but popular reports still being distributed that apparently had no author at all. This Orwellian rewriting of history struck me as particularly petty and ineffective, an affront to the notion of research." From "My Life as a Quant"... If so, what else did he make up? Did he directly experience any of this during his brief stay as a junior member of GS? Or is it all just a bunch of crap he's been reading in books like "Liar's Poker"?

plamenv 15y ago
It's obviously not copy-paste and why would it be so hard to believe that both Goldman and Salomon had the same practices of removing authors names from papers?
- Patient0 15y ago
  The similarity between the stories struck me: particularly that they both stressed the point about reports being circulated with no authors at all... OK it doesn't prove that he made it all up, but I would be willing to bet some money on it.

fedorabbit 15y ago

I can understand Argyris Zymnis got his PhD in Electrical Engineering, probably did some research in signal processing, data fusion, etc. A Physics PhD ends up become a advertisement algorithm coder? How does that academic experience help though...no idea quantum mechanics applies in this area.

dlikhten 15y ago

" the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers" I think meth and sugar actually makes ADHD kids more calm because it allows for the easily triggered mental satisfaction obtained from normal everyday interactions, which ADHD kids crave and require constant attention and running around in circles to obtain, something we naturally get without drugs. But moving on with the article. :)

ams6110 15y ago

This is nearly a year old and has been posted here before