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Comment by zackzackzack | Hacker News Reader

This was a great a comment. I normally rail against Wall Street precisely because I've been around some of the people who go into the business and seen some shitty attitudes about life, but the call out to a higher calling of doing humanity a necessary and useful service really strikes a chord.

In your opinion, are there any trading firms that you feel embody that idea that they should be working to create systems to better allocate capital (instead of, say, gaining all of the capital for themselves)? I'm attracted to the problems that banks have to solve and deal with, but the culture around the current solutions is incredibly off putting.

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Bridgewater Associates catches my eye as a firm that has fun with economics - they pioneered risk parity in the 1990s and have invested so much in intelligence and analytics that Paul Volcker commented that they have "a bigger staff, and produce more relevant statistics and analyses, than the Federal Reserve" [1]. Another one, going off the academic papers coming out of the firm and conversations with people I know there, may be AQR.

Note that it's more fun to prance around the trading floor Gangnam Style than compose oneself as an extra-dimensional intelligence, a memo the tech industry has taken to heart. The loudest kid isn't driving the bus.

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/21549968

Bridgewater's founder, Ray Dalio, wrote an amazing internal document on his principles of work, business, and life is an amazing read... one of the top pieces of nonfiction I've ever read --

http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...

Edit: Seriously, regardless of what you're surfing online right now, stop it and go read Principles. It's worth it.

Side note: Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater Associates) is an incredibly interesting guy. He wrote a 100 page handbook entitled "Principles" that describes his life philosophy in detail and is required reading material for all new associates. If you've ever wanted to see inside the thought process of the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, this is the way to do it.

http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...

From the intro: "Above all else, I want you to think for yourself—to decide 1) what you want, 2) what is true and 3) what to do about it...If you can’t do these things, you should reflect on why that is, because you probably have discovered one of your greatest impediments to getting what you want out of life."

Thank you for the suggestions. I wonder how possible it is to find a position at either firms if you aren't explicitly in the finance industry. I have no idea how to apply there and would be interested in talking to somebody about what goes on there.

Why not just do some projects relevant to what you'd want to do there, and then try contacting HR about a job with a link to your projects?

For a slightly different perspective on Bridgewater: http://nymag.com/news/business/wallstreet/ray-dalio-2011-4/

This was a great a comment. I normally rail against Wall Street precisely because I've been around some of the people who go into the business and seen some shitty attitudes about life

1. Quants and financial IT: decent, geeky, respectable people (for the most part; some exceptions exist.)

2. Startup engineers: decent, geeky, respectable people. More optimistic and less socially skilled than (1). Not a worse or better crowd, just different.

3. Soft-side bankers: a few decent ones, many giant douches, some outright slimeballs.

4. Soft-side VC-istanners (executives, founders): from my experience, most are horrid human beings attempting to exploit the idealism of (2). Most are far worse than (3). There's a small sample size here, but enough to notice a "type".

By 4, do you mean the VCs giving money or the founders & executives running companies and asking VCs for money?

Founders and executives. My sample size is small, but a lot of the ones I've met are pretty rotten people. There are a lot of good people who want to become founders, and there seem to be some decent people in VC, so I'm not sure where the mismatch occurs. I think it's an artifact of the fact that it takes a certain kind of ego to tell a stranger to give you millions of dollars.

Those "horrid human beings" who start and fund companies are adding value to the real economy-- creating new technology, finding cures for diseases, etc. Can you say the same for those "decent, geeky, respectable people" who work in finance?

To me the contrast between silicon valley and NYC illustrates why modern finance is so useless. VCs know that they can't determine whether a company is worth funding without visiting it in person, getting to know the founders, figuring out what's going on in the industry.

In contrast, finance has become a black hole of computers trading with other computers, completely ignorant of what the companies behind the ticker symbols even do. If you tried to explain to a quant why he should fund one company or the other because of the fundamentals, he would probably just tell you that it's irrelevant. It's about the mathematical models, gaming the system, and staying "just windward of the law."

There is a lot of BS to go around in every industry. But when your industry produces something of value people tend to give you a break. My tax dollars are still paying for the mistake of the finance industry, from which I got no upside, so you'll forgive me if I don't give you a break.

Don't get me wrong. I like what entrepreneurs can do-- to use your words, "adding value to the real economy-- creating new technology, finding cures for diseases, etc." Two things, though.

1. I don't think a new social media platform deserves in the same category as cancer research. When I talk about VC-istan, I'm talking about the former category. I know absolutely nothing about biotech.

2. There's no question that what entrepreneurs are doing has the potential to make the world substantially better. I'm only saying that among the people I've seen get picked to be founders, I've seen few good ones and mostly bad.

I don't have a "[my] industry". I've worked in finance, and in startups, and I generally work whereever I think it will benefit my career. I don't think it's wise to rule anything out.

Anyway, certainly I agree with the spirit of what you are saying. VC-istan could be really great, but it needs a total reboot and that involves most of the current crop of "cool kids" being out on the curb.

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