174 karma · joined June 15, 2011
I got tired of the gamification and social elements of Goodreads, StoryGraph and others. I don't care too much about reviews, but do care about engaging deeply with what I am reading.
Lot's to do still: - Refining the experimental MCP integration so I can bring my bookshelf into my AI assistants - OCR to build notes from screenshots - Voice notes
I wrote a little about why I am building the app here: quietreads.com/about Thoughts on building the app: https://thinking.luhar.org/2026/01/building-at-the-speed-of-...
"The Wealth Management division offers comprehensive wealth management and investment solutions and tailored financing and advisory services to ultra- high-net-worth (UHNW) and high- net-worth (HNW) individuals and external asset managers"
Reference: https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/our-company/struct...
Credit Suisse is in investment banking and wealth management. It does not have a significant retail presence (EDIT - outside of Switzerland). Credit Suisse has also had a number of accounting, risk management, and other scandals over the last few years. They were bailed out late last year by a fund linked with Saudi Arabia who took a ~10% stake in the company. Today, they (the Saudi fund) refused to inject more capital and the shares have collapsed.
On starting his company in a secondary market: I do think that there is an almost complete difference between how you build a company in a primary talent market and sort of secondary talent markets. For instance, one of the biggest differences in secondary places is, if I hired someone, the chance that we are going to still work together in a decade from now is super high.
Hiring for future potential It means that it’s a much better idea to hire for future potential rather than for current skill. Once you do that, what you realize is, a dollar invested into helping to train people or even subtle things like making sure that next to any junior programmer, like for every five junior programmers in a team, you have one person who can become their mentor—these basic ideas all start having way more dividends
On building a hiring process for a learning organisation ..we have a hiring process that really, really finds people of high future potential. And then, we try to help them reach this potential 10, 20 years earlier in their career than they ever thought was possible, through coaching, through book clubs, through anything. Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets Everything in Shopify is built around this idea that if someone shows up with a fixed mindset, we convert them to a growth mindset quickly. And then once we have a growth mindset, we fill people with context (i.e. explain what their role is and what they are expected to do).
On the role of processes with an organisation There are three kinds of process. There’s a kind of process that makes things that were previously impossible to do, possible. That’s good. Then there’s a kind of process that makes something that was previously possible significantly simpler, which is also good. However, 99.9% of all process that exists in corporate America is the third category, which is actually just telling people to behave slightly different from what common sense tells them to do.
So we have lots and lots and lots of examples where we just avoided having to create process by just changing the environment in which we all spend our time in.
This is true not just for data science but when trying to solve any numerical problem. Using a spreadsheet (or a R / Python notebook) to implement the algorithm and getting some results has helped me in the past to really understand the problem and avoid dead ends.
For example, when building a FX pricing system, I was able to use a spreadsheet to describe how the pricing algorithm would work and explain it to the traders (the end users). We could tweak the calculations and make sure things were clear to all before implementing and deploying the algorithm.
Great advice!
You will be surprised at how many places still have spot traders quoting 500K EURUSD rates and assistants running around with pieces of paper..
FX is an OTC market. There are no official "exchanges". Most trading happens either on the interbank markets or via brokers like ICAP, BGC, etc.
Over the last few years, the spreads (difference between a buy and sell price) have compressed. FX Clients (i.e. corporations, hedge funds etc.) who would trade directly with their preferred banks; now aggregate feeds from multiple banks and brokers to attempt to get the best possible price.
This automation and increase in client sophistication has led directly to tailored market making and sophisticated risk management. The number of players in the FX market has increased as the technology has commoditised. Things like the latency and quality of your market making feed have become differentiators.
All of the above has resulted in the market going electronic and a massive reduction in the proportion of trades being quoted and managed by human traders. In most banks, market making is now done by algorithms that aggregate market data and other information from a variety of sources.
Traders have either become specialised to niche currencies (Asian, Emerging Markets, etc.) or at dealing with extremely large trades. Their job is now all about determining the type of rate (i.e. which algo) a client should get and how the risk from those trades is managed (aggressively, passively, etc.).
I have worked on FX desks (as a developer) for 10+ years. I have seen spot trading desks shrink incredibly, with old school traders being replaced by quants and quant-developers. The algorithmic trading space in FX is not as sophisticated as that in equities of derivatives, but is getting there.
Being Mortal (Atul Gawande, 2014) - Powerful book about old age and confronting the mortality of our loved ones
The Dark Forest (Cixin Liu, 2014) - Wonderful science fiction from China
The Peripheral (William Gibson, 2015) - Bleak, near future science fiction.
The Water Knife (Paolo Bacigalupi, 2015) - More bleak, near future science fiction.
There will always be things that you feel like you should or must be doing when you are 24 or 25 or 65!
Its great that you have found something you enjoy. As you get more experience and explore new avenues, you may find things that interest you more. Be open to change. The peanut gallery will always be there, but the only person you are accountable to is yourself.
The social pressures are a part of the culture, but they are background noise as such and should be treated as much. Focus on what you want to do, and where you are going. The other things will fall into place one way or the other.
It will also allow you to share passwords (via Dropbox) between Macs and Windows machines. It can generate strong passwords as well.
(Way off topic) Japan can be quite strange with banking and ATMs as well. Unlike, for example, the UK, your ATM cards usually will only work on the ATMs of your bank or perhaps in some convenience stores.
For example, my Citibank card only works at Citibank ATMs, and 711 convenience stores, but won't work at a MUFG ATM. You also get charged for withdrawing money outside of "office hours" at an ATM, and some ATMs stop working after 2100.
It was a little bit of a shock moving from London where I walked around with 10 pounds in my pocket to Tokyo where withdrawing and walking around with 500 dollars worth of yen seems pretty normal.
India also has loads of tiny convenience stores, I think this is an excellent idea. It also simplifies the logistics. The eCommerce company only has to build out a supply chain to the convenience store instead of having to deliver to each customer or rely on the Indian postal service.
(I have lived both in India and Japan)