4 ms·

You've missed my point. I'm not commenting on Voleon's non competes. I'm commenting on the fact that CA's noncompete laws make it challenging to run a busines

You've missed my point. I'm not commenting on Voleon's non competes. I'm commenting on the fact that CA's noncompete laws make it challenging to run a business like Voleon.

norir 3y ago
I personally don't really believe this kind of business is good for society so to me this is a more feature than a bug. Obsessive guarding of IP secrets seems to be correlated with paranoid and selfish antisocial behavior, which is essentially how the financial industry appears from the outside in spite of their lofty rhetoric about their contributions to society.
- auntienomen 3y ago
  The largest stream of charitable donations in California come from the most IP-paranoid hedge fund I know of. If you have negative opinions of the finance industry in general, I can't do much but remind you that it's a large and varied industry and that your opinions are priors you should expose to relevant data.
  - tijtij 3y ago
    Maybe the reason that the most IP-paranoid hedge fund makes the largest charitable donations in California is to proactively secure favorable publicity in case they become embroiled in a scandal that could impact their financial standing. Moreover, it raises the question of who truly benefits from these charitable contributions. For example, Ikea is owned by a charity for tax optimization purposes. The mission of the charity is to promote interior design and architecture. Essentially, strategic investments that will ultimately benefit Ikea itself in the long run.
    - auntienomen 3y ago
      Interestingly, it's the opposite. They made the donations anonymously and were outed by a charity reporter. Likewise, the charities were things like the Sierra Club, various disease research foundations, and the ACLU.
surfacing_vol 3y ago
I see your point, though respectfully disagree. Voleon gets some real advantages from being "the only game in town" by being the only remotely large quant fund right next door to Berkeley, and Jon McAuliffe has his pick of good students from Berkeley. I don't think Voleon should be able to reap all of those advantages but not play by California's rules. I wonder how this article is going down in the Berkeley stat department...
- auntienomen 3y ago
  Voleon is competing with the local unicorn population. Unless their returns are amazing, you can get comparable lifetime returns at higher sharpe as a big tech employee.

You've missed my point. I'm not commenting on Voleon's non competes. I'm commenting on the fact that CA's noncompete laws make it challenging to run a business like Voleon.

norir 3y ago

I personally don't really believe this kind of business is good for society so to me this is a more feature than a bug. Obsessive guarding of IP secrets seems to be correlated with paranoid and selfish antisocial behavior, which is essentially how the financial industry appears from the outside in spite of their lofty rhetoric about their contributions to society.

auntienomen 3y ago
The largest stream of charitable donations in California come from the most IP-paranoid hedge fund I know of. If you have negative opinions of the finance industry in general, I can't do much but remind you that it's a large and varied industry and that your opinions are priors you should expose to relevant data.
- tijtij 3y ago
  Maybe the reason that the most IP-paranoid hedge fund makes the largest charitable donations in California is to proactively secure favorable publicity in case they become embroiled in a scandal that could impact their financial standing. Moreover, it raises the question of who truly benefits from these charitable contributions. For example, Ikea is owned by a charity for tax optimization purposes. The mission of the charity is to promote interior design and architecture. Essentially, strategic investments that will ultimately benefit Ikea itself in the long run.
  - auntienomen 3y ago
    Interestingly, it's the opposite. They made the donations anonymously and were outed by a charity reporter. Likewise, the charities were things like the Sierra Club, various disease research foundations, and the ACLU.

surfacing_vol 3y ago

I see your point, though respectfully disagree. Voleon gets some real advantages from being "the only game in town" by being the only remotely large quant fund right next door to Berkeley, and Jon McAuliffe has his pick of good students from Berkeley. I don't think Voleon should be able to reap all of those advantages but not play by California's rules. I wonder how this article is going down in the Berkeley stat department...

auntienomen 3y ago
Voleon is competing with the local unicorn population. Unless their returns are amazing, you can get comparable lifetime returns at higher sharpe as a big tech employee.