
Why a Hedge Fund Started a Video Game Competition - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/why-a-hedge-fund-started-a-video-game-competition
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strong_silent_t
Annoyed to see a unit error in the first paragraph.

Bulgaria nominal GDP is $50 billion PER YEAR.

Two Sigma assets under management is $50 billion. (Not per year).

If your car goes 100km/hour, and Shelbyville is 100km away, your car is not
the distance of Shelbyville.

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mtarnovan
Hyperbolic comparisons like these are very off-putting for me too, but I see
them everywhere, presumably "for effect". The effect in this instance is that
I stopped reading.

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emodendroket
I'd saying having the yearly GDP of Bulgaria as AUM is still pretty
impressive. And the point is more to contextualize. It's hard when you get
past the millions to understand exactly how much we're talking about.

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smallnamespace
It's a bit odd though because I doubt the majority of readers will have any
direct experience with Bulgaria to put it in context. It's like trying to
explain X in terms of Y, when Y is equally unfamiliar.

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emodendroket
"The yearly GDP of a sovereign nation, albeit a relatively small and poor one"
is a lot more meaningful than $50b without context, I'd think.

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orbifold
It is 1/4th of Toyota's or Volkswagen's revenue of one year, so not that much.
And last time I checked they did not create a game for recruiting tech talent
either.

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emodendroket
Oh, _only_ a quarter of the yearly revenue of the world's fifth-largest
company by revenue, or the second-largest if we exclude state-run enterprises
(c.f.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue)).
Alright then.

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barrkel
Still stock vs flow.

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emodendroket
So what? I'm not trying to claim they're bigger than Bulgaria.

If somebody compared the distance traveled by some object to the length of a
football field, you could similarly object that the football field is
stationary, the object isn't as long as that, etc., but none of those things
are the point of the comparison, right?

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montecarl
So the hedge fund started a video game competition to gain recognition and
acquire talent. Well, they are at the top of HN now, so they have achieved
their goal.

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swyx
im actually not sure why this article is doing so well. HN ranking is weird.

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teej
I found Alfred’s answers insightful and elegantly stated.

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stuffedBelly
An OK marketing piece for Two Sigma, but I don't see why being a Hedge Fund
has anything to do with it. BTW, Robocode has been there for years and there
is a huge community behind it.

P.S. I work in finance and sometimes find companies in this industry try way
too hard to appeal to the younger generation. Lots of marketing pieces sound
like dad jokes.

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swyx
i am new to robocode but from skimming through it it seems you are just
controlling one tank? this two sigma game involves controlling a swarm of bots
with colonizing involved so its a different problem. in any case, just 'cause
something exists shouldnt block you from trying your own twist on it.

~~~
sydriax
Yeah, I agree that Robocode is very different from Halite.

There are some competitions that are somewhat similar. \- Visually,
generals.io is pretty similar to Halite-I, but in actuality ends up being a
pretty different game. \- Halite-I is most similar to the Ants AI Challenge of
2011 (which inspired it). \- Halite-II was conceived of as sort of a mix of
Halite-I and Planet Wars. \- MIT Battlecode is similar in controlling lots of
pieces, but the style of game is very different because Halite is all about
emergent behaviors in the game whereas traditionally Battlecode hasn't been.
They're also very different from the implementation side for the end-user. \-
Codingame can range from somewhat similar to very, very different.

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kcorbitt
Does anyone have a good feel for what real compensation/career trajectory
looks like for a software developer at Two Sigma? I always hear about how
great the compensation is in finance, but it doesn't look like that extends to
software engineers. Glassdoor[1] says ~130k base/~180k total comp, which is
good but not great for a software developer in a major metro area.

[1]: [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Two-Sigma-Software-
Engineer...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Two-Sigma-Software-Engineer-
Salaries-E241045_D_KO10,27.htm)

~~~
kevmo314
Maybe they're trying to become more of a tech company so they can pay lower
wages relative to finance firms. :v

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neerkumar
If the goal of this was looking smart to attract smart talent, I feel it
didn't work particularly well. At least, by reading the article, I didn't get
that feeling.

Any game where the last survivor wins are based on the idea to get involved as
little as possible early on (unless extremely high rewards are given along the
way).

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sydriax
From the 2016 competition, there was at least one Two Sigma hire directly
resulting from Halite and several more that were probably resulted indirectly.

Regarding your point about the last survivor winning, that's partially true,
but partially not. What you're essentially describing is a proto-version of
the non-aggression pact we saw develop in the last weeks of Halite 2016 (and
which was indeed largely successful). However, even there, it wasn't quite so
simple; competition winner mzotkiew had an excellent write-up of his strategy
at
[https://github.com/mzotkiew/HaliteBot/blob/master/writeup.pd...](https://github.com/mzotkiew/HaliteBot/blob/master/writeup.pdf).
Halite-II makes non-aggression even more difficult due to the lack of
discretization found in Halite I.

source: conceived of and co-developed Halite.

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swyx
I recently discovered halite too and I think the origin story is pretty
interesting.

from [https://halite.io/about/](https://halite.io/about/)

> Halite I was conceived of and developed by Benjamin Spector and Michael
> Truell in 2016. Two Sigma, having had a history of playful programming
> challenges for its mathematical and software-oriented teams (e.g., see the
> Robotic Air Hockey Competition) retained Ben and Michael as 2016 summer
> interns to develop Halite, run an internal Halite Challenge, and ultimately
> open Halite up to human and non-human coding enthusiasts worldwide. Halite I
> was a great success, developing a flourishing community of bot builders from
> around the globe, representing 35+ universities and 20+ organizations.

> As a result of the community’s enthusiasm, the Two Sigma team decided to
> create Halite II, an iteration of the original game with new rules but a
> similar structure and philosophy. With Ben and Michael as creative advisors,
> Halite II was developed by David Li, Jaques Clapauch, Harikrishna Menon,
> Julia Kastner as an evolution of Halite I. The team considered simply
> reviving Halite I, but given the progress the community made and the number
> of open source bots that had been published, the team decided to create
> Halite II with new game mechanics and a fun background story that fleshes
> out the Halite universe. Halite involved moving pieces around a board with
> only up-down-left-right options. In 2017’s Halite II, bots battle for
> control of a virtual continuous universe, where ships mine planets to grow
> larger fleets and defeat their opponents.

not bad for just a second iteration. cynical people can view it as just a
marketing thing, but you can also think of it as a very successful intern
project that I personally would find hard to pull off. in particular i am
surprised that there are more "professional" players than university/high
school players. ([https://halite.io/programming-competition-
leaderboard](https://halite.io/programming-competition-leaderboard))

in the forums there are high schoolers doing well in this game and the fund is
choosing not to work with them. i think this is shortsighted.
([https://forums.halite.io/t/two-sigma-
interview/312](https://forums.halite.io/t/two-sigma-interview/312))

disclosure - am interviewing with 2sigma.

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huac
That's interesting because both of the developers attend Horace Mann (still)

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swyx
odds on them having a job when they graduate? :)

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sydriax
Ben Spector here; both Michael and I are planning to attend college, but we'll
see in ~five years! :)

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swyx
Hey Ben! i'm going to start at 2Sigma soon. would love to meet up with you if
you are ever in new york. swyx@swyx.io

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ScottBurson
What I _thought_ this was going to say was that they had built a system that
translated market actions into a video game context and conversely in real
time, such that someone playing the game would actually be trading, without
knowing it. Then they could pay people to play the game with some small
fraction of the profits they were making.

How's that for an evil scheme? BWAHAHAHAHA

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50CNT
Then someone realizes what you're doing and "plays" your game to play you. If
you outsource your brain, don't expect your bodies sanctity to stay intact.
How's that for an evil scheme.

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praulv
It's a marketing gimmick. Along with a ridiculous algorithms heavy whiteboard
interview process (think Manacher's, graph algos)... all for average
compensation and you'll probably end up babysitting a database at most. Try
talking to someone who actually works there before believing these fluff
pieces.

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dvddgld
Those first two paragraphs make me feel like there's a good TV show about this
industry that hasn't been written yet.

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champagnepapi
Billions on Showtime

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Bromskloss
Good the first season, with the tension building up to a peak in the season
finale, with the two main characters revving their engines to clash in battle.
Perfect for a second season to erupt with unrestrained fighting, and
eventually resolve and end the series. Instead, the makers began the "let's
draw this out" procedure. :-|

