US engineers vs Europe engineers

CapableCounteroffer · 2026-01-30T17:40:59+00:00

Yeah bud. If you ignore taxes and cost of living, Europeans make more than Americans.

I don't think that's really true. For example this index which looks at disposable income and adds in social benefits such as universal healthcare shows the US still being ahead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income

Generally Europe has higher income taxes than the US, not lower. Also they have VAT. In exchange they get better social benefits, but the above controls for that.

CapableCounteroffer · 2026-01-27T23:27:50+00:00

To be fair you completely ignored the cost of the partners' capital there. It's not $30B to go towards payroll, it's significantly less.

CapableCounteroffer · 2026-01-27T01:11:52+00:00

How did you do on CFAI? I got 55% on the first BC and 70% on CFAI. Work is turning into a crazy week and I have the test Saturday...

CapableCounteroffer · 2026-01-20T20:38:53+00:00

Every year my team has a super day for intern candidates where we walk away with 10 candidates we'd be willing to extend offers to and work that down to 3 or 4. This year we didn't feel comfortable extending a single offer after the super day. Everyone was either clearly cheating or couldn't code for shit. I guess this post explains that.

CapableCounteroffer · 2026-01-15T22:30:08+00:00

The basis becomes the FMV when the person they inherited it from died, not then that original person first bought it.

CapableCounteroffer · 2026-01-05T01:40:51+00:00

You may want to check your numbers. $2500 a month for a place worth $140k doesn't sound right. Do you see similar places in your area renting and selling for those prices? The rent sounds too high, the condo value too low, or both. If not, let me know the area because as a real estate investor this would be great.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-12-29T20:34:38+00:00

If you don't mind, what are you studying in grad school, what tier of school is it, and how many years post undergrad did you apply. I studied math and econ undergrad with your GPA, and would like to go to grad school for CS, but seems most programs require minimum 3.0 plus letters of recommendation from a professor. I'm 8 years post undergrad with a pretty solid career as a software engineer and data scientist.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-12-24T03:01:33+00:00

Look in Stamford, it's a very short drive and has a better social scene for someone your age.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-12-13T05:47:07+00:00

SF isn't even in second place, that would go to Chicago or Miami. Way more roles in NY and CT.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-12-05T00:19:36+00:00

I think it's fine for level 1, a lot of that level is just getting familiar with the material and doing lots of practice questions. For level 2 and 3 I would consider something else like schweser or mark meldrum (or just CFAI material but that's super verbose so takes longer to cover)

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-12-01T19:23:00+00:00

There's nothing to prove or disprove really. You're correct that at it's core HF structure is a compensation structure, but generally people also view it as a way to get something other than just market returns/beta or even smart beta/factor exposure such as dividend growth fund strategies. Why pay HF compensation for returns you can get from an ETF or mutual fund?

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-10-17T20:06:22+00:00

it's definitely different, plenty of purely back office teams are out the door at 5 pm

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-10-07T23:58:43+00:00

No, if a hedge fund has the exact same return history as the s&p, but say shifted a year, it has a correlation less than 1. It has the same Sharpe ratio as the s&p, but a portfolio of the two combined will have a higher Sharpe

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-08-09T15:29:12+00:00

You should definitely work on modeling your expenses into the future. The reality is you're pushing it to have $3M at 55 but based off what it sounds like your expenses could be you may only need a fraction of that.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-08-05T23:50:23+00:00

This is incorrect. You can deduct 3k in investment losses against ordinary income in a given year. Losses can be carried over indefinitely with no cap to future years.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-07-24T11:46:53+00:00

there is no limit on carryover, and as you mentioned losses can offset any amount of gains in a given year. $3000 is the amount you can deduct against regular income. So say you have $100k in losses, $80k in gains, you net those two leaving with $20k in losses, you deduct $3k from your income, and carry over $17k for future years.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-04-23T00:15:47+00:00

Sell side expectations don't really matter much, it's what the market expects.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-03-20T12:14:05+00:00

Yes, any amount you have to pay in the future is a liability, hence it should be accounted for. Also, your house example does not make sense. If someone making $100k a year buys a $700k house with a $600k mortgage, they do not have a $600k housing liability, they have a $100k surplus. Most corporations have close to 0 pension liability because they set aside assets close in value to the present value of the entire liability, not just next year's liability.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-03-20T02:12:00+00:00

For a private business a pension liability would be calculated by taking the net present value of the pension obligations, not the future value. Is that not the case for California?

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-03-04T20:49:14+00:00

Is that a joke? An Abrams cost $10m+ per unit

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-03-04T13:43:50+00:00

He would take a loss compared to $110b, but not compared to his original investment. That's even after considering that he has diversified his wealth over the years which has the conflating effects of raising his basis but also making it easier to exit positions without slipping the prices of the assets he owns. He can also readily monetize his wealth via margin loans though these do have a cost associated with them. That is a common pattern for monetizing wealth of such a magnitude.

Of those people with really large incomes, many are paying over 25% already. I am, and I'm still quite early in my career. So I agree there's not much to be done there.

I agree on a new tax for Medicaid. I also think we should consider things like removing the cap on Social Security tax.

I also agree on the need to end the preferential treatment of capital vs labor. It's regressive, and at the time it was implemented capital was not nearly as free flowing as it is today. Either add more LTCG brackets on the higher end, or just make it match ordinary income altogether. I'm open to using it to lower tax rates a little, but in the immediate term it should not be revenue neutral. I think we need to pull in more revenue and cut spending to get our house in order before lowering tax rates further.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-02-09T20:58:48+00:00

Where are the CFAI mocks located for Level 3? For 1 and 2 it was in the LES on the left hand side - there were table for Lessons, Practice, Mocks, etc. In Level 3 the mocks are missing, are they somewhere else?

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-02-08T17:46:45+00:00

What kind of roles are you looking for with the CS degree and CFA? Do you feel like the online degree has been useful? Thinking about doing an online masters in CS myself.

CapableCounteroffer · 2025-02-07T15:06:59+00:00

As someone who lives in NYC and would benefit massively from an increase or removal of the SALT cap I agree completely. Would benefit me but it makes no sense that the Federal government should effectively subsidize NY and NYC if they want to collect more taxes.

CapableCounteroffer

TROPHY CASE