10 ms·

Makes me wonder what’s going on at Jane Street. How sure are we they’re above board?

typon 4y ago
This is what I have been thinking. This whole thing has soured in my mind: Jane Street, Effective Altruism. Crypto, VCs, Silicon Valley culture in general I already assumed are scummy.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  You got it. That is the correct line to follow. Sequoia in particular must be heavily investigated.
- neilparikh 4y ago
  > Effective Altruism The practical version of Effective Altruism for most people is essentially "if you're well off, you should donate a chunk of your income to buying anti-malaria bed nets/deworming medicine/direct cash transfers for the global poor". I don't see how that could "sour" in your mind, seems like a fairly unreservedly good thing. I want to point out that there are real people [1] being helped by Effective Altruism right now. Telling them "sorry, can't help you any more, some rich asshole in the US just committed a scam, and he claimed he wanted to help you too" just seems incredibly petty and cruel to me. [1] - This is also a group that traditionally doesn't receive much attention either.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    This is why so many people find EA annoying. People donated to malaria causes well before EA was a thing, but of course now, without EA, there's nothing.
    - hestefisk 4y ago
      I find it very annoying. Why I’ rely on the benevolence of a few rich people when you can do the same much more effectively with proper taxation and wealth redistribution.
      - neilparikh 4y ago
        > proper taxation and wealth redistribution All the mainstream political suggestions for taxation/wealth distribution focus on correcting wealth inequalities within a rich nation. Very few (if any) suggest redistributing from wealthy western nations to the global poor.
        freejazz 4y ago
        Neither does EA, they just suggest rich people donate sometimes...
    - neilparikh 4y ago
      I don’t think upper-middle class programmers were donating much before EA. Obviously AMF has been around before EA, the big difference is the additional amount of money it’s been able to deploy. I personally know many people (including me!) who started donating significantly because of EA.
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    "if you're well off, you should donate a chunk of your income to buying anti-malaria bed nets/deworming medicine/direct cash transfers for the global poor" (c) Isn't it against EA ethos? Helping some people right now, right here? I read some posts about this movement, and from them it seemed like EAs are more interested in the far off stuff - developing benevolent AI, transumanism, space travel, gene vaults, terraforming, Mars colonisation etc. (there is nothing wrong with these activities). Because helping people right now is "just" altruism, not effective altruism.
    - neilparikh 4y ago
      The longtermist EAs do suggest that, but by dollar donated, the more traditional global health stuff is still a large chunk of what EA do. > I read some posts about this movement, and from them it seemed like EAs are more interested in the far off stuff You can’t really use that as a metric to judge the movement, since there’s only so much one can write about “donate money to AMF”, but you can write pages and pages about the far off stuff.
- astrange 4y ago
  None of those things are Silicon Valley. Can't blame Santa Clara County for none of this. Jane Street - NYC EA - Berkeley Crypto - the Bahamas or something? VCs - Palo Alto
  - hnfong 4y ago
    Palo Alto is literally in Santa Clara Country.... ```Palo Alto (/ˌpæloʊ ˈæltoʊ/; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area``` - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California
whimsicalism 4y ago
Maybe you should spend a moment researching rather than using some nebulous transitive property of "if they hired this person, they must also be a scam." Jane St is a prop trading firm - the only money they have to lose is their own.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  Alameda was supposedly a prop trading firm too.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    FTX is the one who lost their customers' money. Jane St is fully above board and has no such associated firm managing customer money.
- paganel 4y ago
  One of the biggest financial frauds of this century has just been perpetrated by two young people that used to work for them, the questioning related to "how did Jane Street hire these people" is perfectly logical.
  - hahaxdxd123 4y ago
    Well the interview process is more or less "are you good at probability puzzles and games somewhat related to trading." A plausible story to me is that they were good at whatever they screen for in the interview and then at Jane Street they made a bunch of money. Then they attributed too much of that to themselves and not enough to whatever institutional processes and risk frameworks they benefited from. They bring themselves but not those processes to their own trading firm, and then boom!
    - MrMan 4y ago
      I worked on quant buy side for a long time and you dont just automatically come out of these places knowing one secret to making money trading. equally smart on paper people might be working on message passing, risk management, data analysis, special projects, also trading, simulator, database, and might spend 5 years in-house and not come away from the experience with knowledge which by itself represented major alpha. for me just knowing how to setup a quant trading firm, how to choose prime brokers, how to find and select vendors, leased lines, how to setup paper work, cap intro relationships, exchange memberships, FIX certs, are of equal value as alpha tricks, and really I dont even see a lot of evidence that the Almeda / FTX people were particularly well-seasoned in any respect.
wellareyousure 4y ago
Finally this question is no longer considered fringe.
tweestuff 4y ago

This is what I have been thinking. This whole thing has soured in my mind: Jane Street, Effective Altruism. Crypto, VCs, Silicon Valley culture in general I already assumed are scummy.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
You got it. That is the correct line to follow. Sequoia in particular must be heavily investigated.
neilparikh 4y ago
> Effective Altruism The practical version of Effective Altruism for most people is essentially "if you're well off, you should donate a chunk of your income to buying anti-malaria bed nets/deworming medicine/direct cash transfers for the global poor". I don't see how that could "sour" in your mind, seems like a fairly unreservedly good thing. I want to point out that there are real people [1] being helped by Effective Altruism right now. Telling them "sorry, can't help you any more, some rich asshole in the US just committed a scam, and he claimed he wanted to help you too" just seems incredibly petty and cruel to me. [1] - This is also a group that traditionally doesn't receive much attention either.
- freejazz 4y ago
  This is why so many people find EA annoying. People donated to malaria causes well before EA was a thing, but of course now, without EA, there's nothing.
  - hestefisk 4y ago
    I find it very annoying. Why I’ rely on the benevolence of a few rich people when you can do the same much more effectively with proper taxation and wealth redistribution.
    - neilparikh 4y ago
      > proper taxation and wealth redistribution All the mainstream political suggestions for taxation/wealth distribution focus on correcting wealth inequalities within a rich nation. Very few (if any) suggest redistributing from wealthy western nations to the global poor.
      - freejazz 4y ago
        Neither does EA, they just suggest rich people donate sometimes...
  - neilparikh 4y ago
    I don’t think upper-middle class programmers were donating much before EA. Obviously AMF has been around before EA, the big difference is the additional amount of money it’s been able to deploy. I personally know many people (including me!) who started donating significantly because of EA.
- Yizahi 4y ago
  "if you're well off, you should donate a chunk of your income to buying anti-malaria bed nets/deworming medicine/direct cash transfers for the global poor" (c) Isn't it against EA ethos? Helping some people right now, right here? I read some posts about this movement, and from them it seemed like EAs are more interested in the far off stuff - developing benevolent AI, transumanism, space travel, gene vaults, terraforming, Mars colonisation etc. (there is nothing wrong with these activities). Because helping people right now is "just" altruism, not effective altruism.
  - neilparikh 4y ago
    The longtermist EAs do suggest that, but by dollar donated, the more traditional global health stuff is still a large chunk of what EA do. > I read some posts about this movement, and from them it seemed like EAs are more interested in the far off stuff You can’t really use that as a metric to judge the movement, since there’s only so much one can write about “donate money to AMF”, but you can write pages and pages about the far off stuff.
astrange 4y ago
None of those things are Silicon Valley. Can't blame Santa Clara County for none of this. Jane Street - NYC EA - Berkeley Crypto - the Bahamas or something? VCs - Palo Alto
- hnfong 4y ago
  Palo Alto is literally in Santa Clara Country.... ```Palo Alto (/ˌpæloʊ ˈæltoʊ/; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area``` - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California

whimsicalism 4y ago

Maybe you should spend a moment researching rather than using some nebulous transitive property of "if they hired this person, they must also be a scam." Jane St is a prop trading firm - the only money they have to lose is their own.

thepasswordis 4y ago
Alameda was supposedly a prop trading firm too.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  FTX is the one who lost their customers' money. Jane St is fully above board and has no such associated firm managing customer money.
paganel 4y ago
One of the biggest financial frauds of this century has just been perpetrated by two young people that used to work for them, the questioning related to "how did Jane Street hire these people" is perfectly logical.
- hahaxdxd123 4y ago
  Well the interview process is more or less "are you good at probability puzzles and games somewhat related to trading." A plausible story to me is that they were good at whatever they screen for in the interview and then at Jane Street they made a bunch of money. Then they attributed too much of that to themselves and not enough to whatever institutional processes and risk frameworks they benefited from. They bring themselves but not those processes to their own trading firm, and then boom!
  - MrMan 4y ago
    I worked on quant buy side for a long time and you dont just automatically come out of these places knowing one secret to making money trading. equally smart on paper people might be working on message passing, risk management, data analysis, special projects, also trading, simulator, database, and might spend 5 years in-house and not come away from the experience with knowledge which by itself represented major alpha. for me just knowing how to setup a quant trading firm, how to choose prime brokers, how to find and select vendors, leased lines, how to setup paper work, cap intro relationships, exchange memberships, FIX certs, are of equal value as alpha tricks, and really I dont even see a lot of evidence that the Almeda / FTX people were particularly well-seasoned in any respect.

wellareyousure 4y ago

Finally this question is no longer considered fringe.

tweestuff 4y ago