
Why founding a 3-person startup with 0 revenue is better than working for GS - pitdesi
http://adgrok.com/why-founding-a-three-person-startup-with-zero-revenue-is-better-than-working-for-goldman-sachs/
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forgotmypasswd
"Antonio now works at Facebook" <http://adgrok.com/about/>

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trustfundbaby
wait ... what?!

After the work-for-yourself jingoism?!?!

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alnayyir
Hypocrisy is the norm with much of what passes through here.

At least GS employees don't have any pretensions to holiness.

I'd much rather work with people who are honest with themselves about their
motivations than who try to push the suffering under the surface with bullshit
rationalizations like that in the post.

~~~
alnayyir
Downvoters who may not know better: it's generally expected that if you
downvote someone, you will accompany that with an explanation of why you
downvoted.

We're here to communicate, not bicker over popularity contests.

~~~
forgotmypasswd
What is the karma threshold to get down voting ability?

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wccrawford
For those who want the short version:

GS' bonus system has a screwy bonus system that isn't very predictable, and
most people live well above their salary, relying on the bonus.

So instead he thinks you should earn nothing, and that way you ... Wait, no,
you'd still be living above your means.

Sheesh.

~~~
raganwald
Income: twenty pounds. Expenses: twenty pounds, one shilling. Result: Misery.

Income: twenty pounds Expenses: nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings. Result:
Happiness.

If he can find a way to live on ramen, he may be happy.

~~~
StavrosK
Surely, ninety-nine shillings?

~~~
phpnode
Nope, shillings were pre decimalisation,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilling>

~~~
StavrosK
That was informative, thank you.

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Patient0
"This tendency reached the height of comedy inside the strategies division,
where some of the quants published academic papers on the more theoretical
aspects of their work. If an author quit Goldman though, his name would be
removed from the official version of the publication. It got to the point that
some papers had no authors, and had apparently written themselves. So it goes.
No longer with the firm."

I suspect he plagiarized this whole anecdode from the autobiography "My Life
as a Quant", in which Emanuel Derman is talking about his experience at
_Salomon Brothers_ , rather than GS:

<http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/my_life-excerpt.html>

"The level of fear that permeated Salomon was more evident, too. Friends of
mine who wanted to leave the firm were semi paranoid that their bosses would
discover that they were interviewing elsewhere and then fire them before they
left. I never heard anyone at Goldman speak this way; despite the natural
tension between employer and employee, most Goldman workers never imagined
that exercising their right to look at other jobs would naturally lead to
being fired.

There were other signs of Salomon's take-no-prisoners culture. In the 1980s,
the Bond Portfolio Analysis (BPA) group had written a series of renowned
reports for clients on valuing swaps and other recently invented derivatives
contracts. Each report's distinctive light brown cover bore the names of its
authors printed in a darker brown. Then, over the years, as one or more of the
original authors left the firm for other banks or trading houses, BPA would
reprint the report, having removed the departed authors' names. Eventually
there were old but popular reports still being distributed that apparently had
no author at all. This Orwellian rewriting of history struck me as
particularly petty and ineffective, an affront to the notion of research."

From "My Life as a Quant"...

If so, what else did he make up? Did he directly experience _any_ of this
during his brief stay as a junior member of GS? Or is it all just a bunch of
crap he's been reading in books like "Liar's Poker"?

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plamenv
It's obviously not copy-paste and why would it be so hard to believe that both
Goldman and Salomon had the same practices of removing authors names from
papers?

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Patient0
The similarity between the stories struck me: particularly that they both
stressed the point about reports being circulated with no authors at all... OK
it doesn't prove that he made it all up, but I would be willing to bet some
money on it.

~~~
wisty
It could be a common joke that quants tell, especially those in the companies
where it happens.

His article does sound a lot like other ones though. I doubt he's deliberately
copying them, but he's not entirely unique.

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chrischen
"...and with the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly
Ranchers."

Minor correction to that: theoretically ADHD kids given stimulants should
become more calm, not more hyper.

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gatsby
Previous Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1690001>

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rluhar
I respect the author's point of view, and I have to agree that Wall Street has
.. well.. no moral compass (or maybe its compass points continually to $$$).
But I don't completely agree with his description of what a quant does. It all
depends on where they work and what asset class they focus on. Some quants
determine the trading strategy of a desk. They are in charge of making
strategic and technical decisions. Some tech driven trading desks actually are
structured as a sort of "start up" within the main bank. The team would have a
couple of quants and a bunch of programmers working together. The quants
specify the strategy and the algorithm, the programmers code, test and deploy
it. In these situations, the quant is not a subordinate to the trader, but a
peer. This post reflect's the author's own experience and it makes for
interesting and entertaining reading. I doubt, however, that it is a true
reflection of what a quant's job is.

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mdda
IMHO, his view of the quant life was distorted by being on the 'sell-side',
where the trader and salespeople reign supreme. On the buy-side, quants are
much more of the revenue generators.

That'll become increasingly obvious now that (soon) banks won't be allowed to
prop-trade : there'll be a migration of a lot of the 'value add' to the buy-
side (true hedge funds, mainly).

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rluhar
Indeed. Though it really depends on the asset class. On liquid asset classes
(equities, FX, etc.) there has been more and more focus on algorithmic market
making and order execution. High frequency trading outfits and having
extremely latency / price sensitive counter parties (i.e. the buy side hedge
funds) has forced the sell side desks to evolve to a more tech driven trading
model. In FX, banks like Deutsche and Barclays make loads of money off
algorithmic market making and order execution. Way off topic .. apologies.

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jacques_chester
"Giving sophisticated models and fast computers to traders is like giving
handguns and tequila to teenage boys."

This seems to be a riff on PJ O'Rourke's remark about giving money and power
to governments.

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dkokelley
If there's anything I can take away from this, if there's anything I can say
about GS, it's that they know precisely what and who they are.

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il
Another reason: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-close-to-
acquiring-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-close-to-acquiring-
adgrok/)

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dools
This is beautifully written and a genuinely entertaining read. I love it just
for that, without the politics or without judging the validity of it's
message. I just really enjoyed reading it.

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fedorabbit
I can understand Argyris Zymnis got his PhD in Electrical Engineering,
probably did some research in signal processing, data fusion, etc. A Physics
PhD ends up become a advertisement algorithm coder? How does that academic
experience help though...no idea quantum mechanics applies in this area.

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dlikhten
" the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers"

I think meth and sugar actually makes ADHD kids more calm because it allows
for the easily triggered mental satisfaction obtained from normal everyday
interactions, which ADHD kids crave and require constant attention and running
around in circles to obtain, something we naturally get without drugs. But
moving on with the article. :)

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ams6110
This is nearly a year old and has been posted here before

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fezzl
Am I the only one who thought this was a post written by an ex-Get
Satisfaction employee who has recently founded a startup?

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dcosson
Love the vonnegut-esque prose. So it goes.

~~~
jaysonelliot
Vonnegut's prose is punchy, darkly humorous, and painstakingly crafted.

This is just a rambling, unedited screed from a blogger who can't find
satisfaction in his life.

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mtrn
Eat (burgers) or be eaten.

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known
There are number of paranoids in GS. If you want to work in GS leave your
conscience at the door.

