5 ms·

Bjarne Stroustrup – Managing Director, Technology

38 points by mk44 12y ago

adamnemecek 12y ago
Hasn't he been there for some time now?
- mk44 12y ago
  yes, since 2014. But this wasn't widely known
  - adamnemecek 12y ago
    ah ok. i think that i learned it within the last year from his site (http://www.stroustrup.com/ http://www.stroustrup.com/) which has a very 90's vibe to it so i categorized it as old news.
mk44 12y ago
This is surprising to me. I can't exactly point to why...
- huac 12y ago
  I would guess it's very important to MS to hire top technical talent. Having a big name on staff (doesn't get that much bigger than the C++ designer) helps do that - it's a competitive advantage for MS over traditional tech companies and over other banks.
- melling 12y ago
  The money, of course. He's a Managing Director. http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Morgan-Stanley-Managing-Director-Salaries-E2282_D_KO15,32.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Morgan-Stanley-Managing-Dire...
zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
> What motivated you to leave academia to join Morgan Stanley? $$$ Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with that, he's earned it. But the whole spiel about wanting to get back to solving real world problems... Come on, now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems to solve there tackling difficult problems. But Morgan Stanley? Decade old technology spending most of your time interfacing twenty year old languages to mainframes. Nothing that will make your heart pound there. But the money... oh yeah, the money. No argument there.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  >Google? NASA? Tesla? Google seems to be pushing its own Go more. NASA is focused on space more than advancing the frontiers of programming. Tesla, maybe.
  - dingaling 12y ago
    > NASA is focused on space more than advancing the frontiers of programming. NASA does huge amounts of research into aerospace computing science. The first 'A' does stand for 'Air' after all. Here's just the first example I plucked from the Ames website: In this paper, a framework is proposed to enable a flight control system with optimal control allocation to incorporate real-time structural load feedback and structural load constraints. $190 million of their budget for 2015 ( $885 million ) was allocated for pure science research and another $50 million for aerospace.
- devnonymous 12y ago
  You'd be surprised at how technically challenging/appealing financials can be. Ulrich Drepper also left Red Hat to work at Goldman Sachs ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrichdrepper https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrichdrepper ). The algorithmic challenges, hardware optimization challenges etc in financials are nothing to scoff. Yeah, and the money is good as well. The work is not as 'sexy' as google, nasa, tesla but it is just as appealing to people who are interested in doing work that is supposed to provide high performance and high reliability.
mehrzad 12y ago
He still teaches a grad-level (I think?) course here at Columbia. How I envy the students in that class.
- urs2102 12y ago
  It's an incredible class - I luckily got into it. It's pretty much like watching a John Carmack keynote where he just unloads all the crazy ideas buzzing around his head. He's a great guy - if there are any questions you want me to ask him - I'd be happy to for you.
billions 12y ago
Nicolae Tesla died a poor man. Who are we to judge others' career choices?
jonalmeida 12y ago
I met some ambassadors from Morgan Stanley who were wearing a shirt which had a list of check boxes that went something like this: [ ] Had a holiday recently [ ] ??? [x] Met inventor of C++
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
bch 12y ago
What would he _do_ there in that capacity? I think of him as a technically brilliant engineer -- a "Managing Director, Morgan Stanley" and Bjarne Stroustrup just don't sound compatible (to me) on the surface... at least he's getting paid, though.
- sanswork 12y ago
  Managing Director isn't exactly as high up in the chain at MS as it sounds and he could definitely still be getting his hands dirty directly with technical decisions at that level. When I worked there I worked with one MD who was 3rd in line on the pager list and was more than comfortable logging into the servers to resolve problems if there was an issue that for some reason 1st and 2nd level weren't in a position to respond to. Edit: I got MD/ED backwards. Ignore the above.
  - elmyraduff 12y ago
    Managing Director is the highest up in chain and it covers highest levels of management. In fact, CEO of Morgan Stanley is a Managing Director. But of course an MD can decide to 'get his hands dirty'. It is a personal decision.
    - sanswork 12y ago
      ED was higher than MD when I was there unless I'm remembering it backwards it was over a decade ago. We had an ED who ran a few large projects and had 2 MD's under him(and above me). Edit: Just did a bit of googling and it looks like I did have them backwards. Thanks for the correction.
tdicola 12y ago
Funny to see some of HN hating on Morgan Stanley and Wall Street. You're biting the hand that feeds you...
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  Some resourceful people have co-opted the term "hacker" to refer to people who are very good at chasing money. Not all the hackers have gotten that memo though.
maxlybbert 12y ago
> Come on, now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems to solve there tackling difficult problems. Well, as a professor, he did get some code into some JPL projects ( http://stroustrup.com/mbd09.pdf http://stroustrup.com/mbd09.pdf , http://stroustrup.com/sec09.pdf http://stroustrup.com/sec09.pdf , http://stroustrup.com/autonomics09.pdf http://stroustrup.com/autonomics09.pdf , http://stroustrup.com/fdc_jcse.pdf http://stroustrup.com/fdc_jcse.pdf , http://stroustrup.com/autonomics2008.pdf http://stroustrup.com/autonomics2008.pdf and http://stroustrup.com/isorc2008.pdf http://stroustrup.com/isorc2008.pdf ). (Some information about MDS and goal oriented software can be found on JPL's website, http://mds.jpl.nasa.gov/public/ http://mds.jpl.nasa.gov/public/ ).
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Ok, is it just me that thought it telling that all the folks in the carousel at the bottom of the page are wearing suits (and ties for the men) but Bjarne has a open necked shirt on? That said, I really resonate with this statement of his: "I wanted to get back to solving real-world problems." I tend to be most motivated when I've got a problem to solve which can be expressed in terms of real world gains (usually in efficiency). Interesting to hear that he didn't think he could do that in academia.
- gadders 12y ago
  I work in IT for an investment bank. No-one really wears ties any more, except for interviews. A few people don't even wear suits. Some people even wear brown shoes and pockets on the fronts of their shirts.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- princeb 12y ago
  financial services are getting more customized and the margins are getting thinner. clients also tend to care very little about the cleverness about the back end solutions and only about whether it works better than the alternatives and whether it is cheaper. time to market is very low, and the quality hurdle is your best competitor. this is just the nature of the sell side. and after all is said and done banks are huge organizations and it's hard to really stand out whether one is a salesperson or an innovator.
mk44 12y ago
OP here. My original title was "The Inventor of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup Works at Morgan Stanley", and after 20 minutes, it somehow changed "Bjarne Stroustrup – Managing Director, Technology". WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  HN censors at work. I've had my titles changed also, with no notice or even an indication that the title is different from what I submitted even though it is still attributed to me. I consider it bullshit.
- ternaryoperator 12y ago
  It happens fairly often. The moderators tend to revert submissions to the original title. From the posting guidelines[1]: "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- tlb 12y ago
  Titles of submissions should match the title of the article. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - thaumaturgy 12y ago
    In this case though the edited title gives less information than the original one.
rawnlq 12y ago
Thought it would be cool to check out what some of the other language inventors were/are doing: Guido van Rossum (Python) - Google, Dropbox Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) - WePay, Etsy, Jelastic Yukihiro Matsumoto (Ruby) - Heroku
urs2102 12y ago
He is also a visiting professor at Columbia's computer science department and mentioned that a big reason for coming to New York was really to be close to his grand kids. I am currently in a course on C++ language library design at Columbia with him - and I can comfortably say that he's one of the most humble and down-to-earth professors in the department (IMHO). His class is awesome for not only hearing his stories like why it's called C++ instead of ++C, but learning about all the little details in C++ today and what's to come for C++17 and on. If anyone has any questions they want me to ask him, I'd be happy to do so.

38 points by mk44 12y ago

adamnemecek 12y ago

Hasn't he been there for some time now?

mk44 12y ago
yes, since 2014. But this wasn't widely known
- adamnemecek 12y ago
  ah ok. i think that i learned it within the last year from his site (http://www.stroustrup.com/ http://www.stroustrup.com/) which has a very 90's vibe to it so i categorized it as old news.

mk44 12y ago

This is surprising to me. I can't exactly point to why...

huac 12y ago
I would guess it's very important to MS to hire top technical talent. Having a big name on staff (doesn't get that much bigger than the C++ designer) helps do that - it's a competitive advantage for MS over traditional tech companies and over other banks.
melling 12y ago
The money, of course. He's a Managing Director. http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Morgan-Stanley-Managing-Director-Salaries-E2282_D_KO15,32.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Morgan-Stanley-Managing-Dire...

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago

> What motivated you to leave academia to join Morgan Stanley? $$$ Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with that, he's earned it. But the whole spiel about wanting to get back to solving real world problems... Come on, now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems to solve there tackling difficult problems. But Morgan Stanley? Decade old technology spending most of your time interfacing twenty year old languages to mainframes. Nothing that will make your heart pound there. But the money... oh yeah, the money. No argument there.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago
>Google? NASA? Tesla? Google seems to be pushing its own Go more. NASA is focused on space more than advancing the frontiers of programming. Tesla, maybe.
- dingaling 12y ago
  > NASA is focused on space more than advancing the frontiers of programming. NASA does huge amounts of research into aerospace computing science. The first 'A' does stand for 'Air' after all. Here's just the first example I plucked from the Ames website: In this paper, a framework is proposed to enable a flight control system with optimal control allocation to incorporate real-time structural load feedback and structural load constraints. $190 million of their budget for 2015 ( $885 million ) was allocated for pure science research and another $50 million for aerospace.
devnonymous 12y ago
You'd be surprised at how technically challenging/appealing financials can be. Ulrich Drepper also left Red Hat to work at Goldman Sachs ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrichdrepper https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrichdrepper ). The algorithmic challenges, hardware optimization challenges etc in financials are nothing to scoff. Yeah, and the money is good as well. The work is not as 'sexy' as google, nasa, tesla but it is just as appealing to people who are interested in doing work that is supposed to provide high performance and high reliability.

mehrzad 12y ago

He still teaches a grad-level (I think?) course here at Columbia. How I envy the students in that class.

urs2102 12y ago
It's an incredible class - I luckily got into it. It's pretty much like watching a John Carmack keynote where he just unloads all the crazy ideas buzzing around his head. He's a great guy - if there are any questions you want me to ask him - I'd be happy to for you.

billions 12y ago

Nicolae Tesla died a poor man. Who are we to judge others' career choices?

jonalmeida 12y ago

I met some ambassadors from Morgan Stanley who were wearing a shirt which had a list of check boxes that went something like this: [ ] Had a holiday recently [ ] ??? [x] Met inventor of C++

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

bch 12y ago

What would he _do_ there in that capacity? I think of him as a technically brilliant engineer -- a "Managing Director, Morgan Stanley" and Bjarne Stroustrup just don't sound compatible (to me) on the surface... at least he's getting paid, though.

sanswork 12y ago
Managing Director isn't exactly as high up in the chain at MS as it sounds and he could definitely still be getting his hands dirty directly with technical decisions at that level. When I worked there I worked with one MD who was 3rd in line on the pager list and was more than comfortable logging into the servers to resolve problems if there was an issue that for some reason 1st and 2nd level weren't in a position to respond to. Edit: I got MD/ED backwards. Ignore the above.
- elmyraduff 12y ago
  Managing Director is the highest up in chain and it covers highest levels of management. In fact, CEO of Morgan Stanley is a Managing Director. But of course an MD can decide to 'get his hands dirty'. It is a personal decision.
  - sanswork 12y ago
    ED was higher than MD when I was there unless I'm remembering it backwards it was over a decade ago. We had an ED who ran a few large projects and had 2 MD's under him(and above me). Edit: Just did a bit of googling and it looks like I did have them backwards. Thanks for the correction.

tdicola 12y ago

Funny to see some of HN hating on Morgan Stanley and Wall Street. You're biting the hand that feeds you...

thaumaturgy 12y ago
Some resourceful people have co-opted the term "hacker" to refer to people who are very good at chasing money. Not all the hackers have gotten that memo though.

maxlybbert 12y ago

> Come on, now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems to solve there tackling difficult problems. Well, as a professor, he did get some code into some JPL projects ( http://stroustrup.com/mbd09.pdf http://stroustrup.com/mbd09.pdf , http://stroustrup.com/sec09.pdf http://stroustrup.com/sec09.pdf , http://stroustrup.com/autonomics09.pdf http://stroustrup.com/autonomics09.pdf , http://stroustrup.com/fdc_jcse.pdf http://stroustrup.com/fdc_jcse.pdf , http://stroustrup.com/autonomics2008.pdf http://stroustrup.com/autonomics2008.pdf and http://stroustrup.com/isorc2008.pdf http://stroustrup.com/isorc2008.pdf ). (Some information about MDS and goal oriented software can be found on JPL's website, http://mds.jpl.nasa.gov/public/ http://mds.jpl.nasa.gov/public/ ).

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Ok, is it just me that thought it telling that all the folks in the carousel at the bottom of the page are wearing suits (and ties for the men) but Bjarne has a open necked shirt on? That said, I really resonate with this statement of his: "I wanted to get back to solving real-world problems." I tend to be most motivated when I've got a problem to solve which can be expressed in terms of real world gains (usually in efficiency). Interesting to hear that he didn't think he could do that in academia.

gadders 12y ago
I work in IT for an investment bank. No-one really wears ties any more, except for interviews. A few people don't even wear suits. Some people even wear brown shoes and pockets on the fronts of their shirts.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

princeb 12y ago
financial services are getting more customized and the margins are getting thinner. clients also tend to care very little about the cleverness about the back end solutions and only about whether it works better than the alternatives and whether it is cheaper. time to market is very low, and the quality hurdle is your best competitor. this is just the nature of the sell side. and after all is said and done banks are huge organizations and it's hard to really stand out whether one is a salesperson or an innovator.

mk44 12y ago

OP here. My original title was "The Inventor of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup Works at Morgan Stanley", and after 20 minutes, it somehow changed "Bjarne Stroustrup – Managing Director, Technology". WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

jsprogrammer 12y ago
HN censors at work. I've had my titles changed also, with no notice or even an indication that the title is different from what I submitted even though it is still attributed to me. I consider it bullshit.
ternaryoperator 12y ago
It happens fairly often. The moderators tend to revert submissions to the original title. From the posting guidelines[1]: "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
tlb 12y ago
Titles of submissions should match the title of the article. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  In this case though the edited title gives less information than the original one.

rawnlq 12y ago

Thought it would be cool to check out what some of the other language inventors were/are doing: Guido van Rossum (Python) - Google, Dropbox Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) - WePay, Etsy, Jelastic Yukihiro Matsumoto (Ruby) - Heroku

urs2102 12y ago

He is also a visiting professor at Columbia's computer science department and mentioned that a big reason for coming to New York was really to be close to his grand kids. I am currently in a course on C++ language library design at Columbia with him - and I can comfortably say that he's one of the most humble and down-to-earth professors in the department (IMHO). His class is awesome for not only hearing his stories like why it's called C++ instead of ++C, but learning about all the little details in C++ today and what's to come for C++17 and on. If anyone has any questions they want me to ask him, I'd be happy to do so.