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Comment by mruts | Hacker News Reader

Only activists would probably go to the trouble of hiring these kinds of people. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Billions is in anyway representive of the industry.

From personal experience, hedge funds are a lot more boring and a lot less cloak-and-dagger than the general public thinks.

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I don't know about that. I've seen first hand, through close acquaintances, where some hedge funds will expend enormous amounts of financial and human capital resources when it comes to legal fights. Especially when it involves current and former employees of said funds that get sideways with founders and partners.

These guys running a lot of these funds didn't get to where they are without really throwing some sharp elbows at times. With the amount of money at stake, and the sheer megalomaniacal attitudes in play between parties, you can bet the drive to get ahead in any dispute will be especially acute.

That all may be so, but in my experience these firms are also populated by a lot of "Hedge Fund Analysts," which is usually a temp gig for unemployed people who went to expensive schools.

I mean certainly it happens but the vast vast majority of hedge funds just deal in the trading of vanilla equities, options, bonds, and futures. And there’s less/not much to sue about for those kind of things.

There are some who deal in bespoke debt, swaps, CDS, etc, where there are often things to sue about. But it’s a less popular space compared to the former.

I spent my past life at a fund of funds and partially agree.

In general though, hedge funds are more likely to be up to some strange or "non-traditional" activities.

At times, our notes about fund manager visits and due diligence read more like the investment version of National Enquirer. Private investigators. Massive power struggles. Odd characters.

And only partially tongue-in-cheek, there's always https://village-us.albourne.com/village/home who organized the infamous Hedge Stock: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/09/business/09hedge.html

It's probably the same as with tech companies where only a very small percentage does cutting edge work.

The vast majority of them are losers, it is true. Providing dubious value to their investors and taking huge slices for themselves through greedy and lazy compensation schemes.

Most don't make good decisions and aren't staffed by particularly smart people either.

The top 1-5% on the other hand, those guys are absolute killers. A lot like tech companies, I suppose.

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