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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"The earnings of a hedge fund manager who makes 1.5 million pounds a day is inflated. Not a software engineer living a decidedly middle class life."

Haha, ok. Can you not clearly see your own subjective bias? Why doesn't that hedgefund manager deserve it? Many of the people working for tech companies are not middle class. At the very least, $500k+ salaries are above middle class. The starting salary at most top-tier companies is multiple times the median salary. I say top-tier companies, because these are the ones doing the layoff. Analysts are saying there will be, or is, a slow down in many if the types of products (data) sold by these companies.

You can continue to think that $500k+ salaries are warranted because you're a force multiplier etc, but that's the same reasoning CEOs and fund mangers use. Maybe they are. But don't be surprised when hordes of average people call you out.

Edit: Why disagree?

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Most engineers are not making said numbers, even at big places like Google.

Besides, 1.5 million A DAY, is near a billion a year, which is an absurdly high number. Especially if said person cries about "inflated tech salaries". You can't ignore these people have exceptional talent, in one of the highest cost of living cities.

Finally, what do these people get for 300k salaries (which was the most common number used for Google, for example)? If you stop looking at the number but the life quality, and what these people have, you will notice quickly that most of it is what we would classify as middle class a couple decades ago.

Middle class is defined using a range of the Area Median Income (AMI). This measure accounts for the income based in a specific locale to determine if you are middle class or not. For San Francisco, the upper limit for middle class is around $225-250k (2x AMI) per household.

A single person earning $300k is above middle class.

If we look solely at quality of life (which you don't even define), then the results are meaningless. Even if the things they have would have been considered middle class decades ago, they are not middle class now due to population increase and density increase in that area (you can't all have SFH in the finite space). Or possible if you mean the quality of has overall decreased, then those people still have more that the people who are currently middle class. I don't think quality of life has actually gone down, but I'd be interested in numbers either way.

Hedge funds are parasites, they are an edge case in capitalism that needs to be patched.

I can’t think of anything else that takes so much, while adding nothing to society.

They provide asset management and investment opportunity.

Not all hedge funds are malicious.

We can also see issues in tech that are similar. Look at all the hate Meta gets for their business model - using addicting algorithms to gather and sell users' info. There can certainly be an argument made here about the potential societal damage they cause being a parasite.

This is a common argument I hear, it just doesn’t hold water.

We should absolutely hold Big Tech accountable for their business models and actions.

On the whole though, they have released many orders of magnitude more useful things than Hedge Funds.

Is there a Citadel Maps I can use ? Or a TwoSigma framework like React ?

At least Big Tech has ad-powered useful services.

Hedge funds gobble up PhD holders and the cream of the crop and use them to make 0.1% of the population 5% wealthier ?

"On the whole though, they have released many orders of magnitude more useful things than Hedge Funds."

Well no shit - you're comparing an entity that creates "things" to one that doesn't!

"gobble up PhD holders and the cream of the crop and use them to make 0.1% of the population 5% wealthier"

Um, Google does this with data scientists. Maybe they do create a useful app, but make no mistake that their primary goal is to make the stock owners (mostly the top 1%) richer off the backs of their unsuspecting users.

You’ve missed the point…

An entity that puts nothing into the host system, but consumes resources from the host to fatten itself is a parasite.

In the case of hedge funds, it’s a zero-sum game. Either you or the counter party lose depending on how the bet goes. In aggregate, society gets nothing, but the cost of the net zero value is high (highly skilled people, taking resources away from other things). It’s profitable but net useless.

In the case of Google Maps, no one has to lose for me to make a journey. It’s profitable and useful.

Saying, ohh but they both operate in a capitalistic system to make money for shareholders is not relevant.

How is that money generated ?

"An entity that puts nothing into the host system, but consumes resources from the host to fatten itself is a parasite."

You seem to miss how the system works. Those companies are where they are today because of financing. Stock purchases, including demand for existing shares drives that.

"In the case of Google Maps, no one has to lose for me to make a journey."

No, you trade your data (lose privacy) for that journey.

> You seem to miss how the system works…

Yea, the way it works with hedge funds is, do whatever it takes to make a profit, underlying company be damned - see naked shorting GME.

Where is the “financing” in that?

What about all the companies that “got to where they are now” aka dissolved because shorting to oblivion would generate a profit ?

The fact you are scraping the bottom of the barrel and claiming that just buying stock = increasing demand = creating value should be a red flag.

“No, you trade your data”

How exactly does that happen in offline mode ?

Sure an individual can use maps in offline mode, but if people did that at scale, Google would use a different revenue structure. Also you miss many if the valuable features built on that data, like traffic.

"Yea, the way it works with hedge funds is, do whatever it takes to make a profit, underlying company be damned - see naked shorting GME."

Who's scraping the bottom of the barrel now? Not all hedge funds operate that way.

"aka dissolved because shorting to oblivion would generate a profit?"

Please elaborate. Shorting does not itself lead to a company dissolving.

"claiming that just buying stock = increasing demand = creating value should be a red flag."

I've claimed no such thing. Stop straw manning. Demand for shares increases stock price, which allows the company to issue shares at a higher price, generating more capital for future expansion. The company can increase demand by increasing their value, either realized or speculative.

You seem to have an emotional vendetta against hedge funds and aren't interested in a real discussion from a systems thinking perspective. Hopefully some third party has gained something from this conversation, otherwise it was a complete waste of time.

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