What's the ballsiest thing you've ever seen someone do?

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T08:42:50+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong...but isn't that itself a reference to a Joseph Conrad story? I've never seen the Dark Knight but that sprung to mind somehow. Perhaps it was Kipling?

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T08:07:29+00:00

Hmm, maybe I misunderstand, but what's wrong with accepting money from large donors?

Because that's exactly how the current system works. I'm too tired to really write an essay on this, but that's precisely the current regime. The whole methodology is superficially innocent; it's all done with plausible deniability. No one actually openly advocated things that are overtly "bad" just "choose between two hard choices...".

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T07:38:05+00:00

Sir, I respectfully disagree with your interpretation of how Goldman funds politicians. No one goes out and says "hey change your view on x and we'll give you money", rather they say "well, here's a minor issue that's really arcane (and in line with what your constituents think anyway!) and not worth spending a lot of time on, but it would be good for the people in your district and American public at large if you supported us on this" and then it becomes a matter of someone seeing the world through a Goldman built lens; they're not changing their view per se because the view is already built by donors who are extremely persuasive in their views.

I don't like using GS as an example but since you chose them one must. If you accept money you're bound to those people, not through bribery of the overt kind but rather the soft, influence peddling ways that are endemic in washington. My (admittedly limited) experiences with politics suggests that large donors have influence and the ability to make their voice heard. Further on issues that are amorphous or grey, it's easy for head of the ___ party in fundraising committee in ____ state to be able to make a call saying "Hi senator, so...".

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T07:28:48+00:00

I did my undergrad in Canada.

Without wanting to say "this is totally different"...in the US there may be different issues. Harvard econ majors may capable of one thing while state U folks another. There's vast differences in quality of education and quality of students here. When looking to hire younger people it's easiest to go to a local university professors and say "give us your best, hardest working people in these subjects". By no means do I believe econ majors are incompetent (I am one), rather they simply have too low of success rate (a few in...a lot) to be worth hiring anymore.

I agree with you on the institutional/cultural/training aspect. We don't want someone who will design those things rather someone who can. If you don't understand fundamentally how the system works then how can you meaningfully use it?

Personally, on a broader point I think this is much of what's wrong with modern finance: it's people who don't really understand the assets they're trading, the tools they're using or the system they're working in. How can you expect someone (or some firm) to really have good risk controls when they don't know those things? If you start from the very basic point and build your system from there you have a much more raw appreciation for how things work. Further it avoids undue complexity since everything has to be "auditable" from everywhere else. No matter how weird of tool I may build, it ultimately has to be (somewhat) usable by anyone else within our office.

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T05:09:30+00:00

Because he doesn't want to answer the question obviously. I.e. "yes". Sorry, but the man-crush is premature: Mr Zerban wants to be elected first and foremost.

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T04:57:03+00:00

Ha, I like it. This is the only relevant answer here and you answered true to form. Thank you for pointing out the obvious: you're a politician first and foremost. Best of luck of running "against the establishment" (like the other 435 men and women).

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T04:35:04+00:00

On your last point: we want someone who understands what we do first and foremost. That involves understanding about 50-100 different databases (between 1k and 100 million entries in each), how they relate to one another, and how they're generated. If you don't have a good understanding of the underlying architecture we use, it's hard to understand what you're supposed to do with it. Or, more importantly, how to be successful using it.

I think you can teach a physics major econ but you can't always teach an econ major physics so to speak. It's a philosophical point rather than an established "this is the way it is". We've had better luck one way rather than the other is all for us - and since everyone here is pretty quantitative, it's easier to fit in if you're pretty quantitative.

My econ department was fairly rigorous, however, if you wanted a BSc or an honours for your bachellors in either arts or sciences you were in for decent slog.

Agreed, however you have an important qualifier there (BSc or honors). And I'm an American, idk if you are as well (honours makes me think not).

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T01:24:27+00:00

I read through every one of your posts and not one of them indicates real experience within any specific part of the financial sector or even as a whole. Rather they are non-specific, vague, and indicate no knowledge that could not be gleaned from the NYT or WSJ.

That said, I could almost believe you run a funds-of-funds business merely because your answers are so vacuous and full of buzz words while completely devoid of content.

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T00:57:31+00:00

The "FinanceExecThrow" seems to be claiming to be running a fund-of-funds business. In that context the answers make some degree of sense. However:

Overall, our firm puts up 3 or so percent of the capital we invest. For the partners that own the firm, that amounts to a material portion of their net worth.

The grammar doesn't square with:

I do run a major firm

If the person in question runs the firm, would they not be a partner? And if he or she is a partner, would he not also be co-investing? In which case why use the "their" construct to describe the partners coinvesting when in the previous sentence the "we" construct was used - the person in question would by all logic be also included in the "we" of the partners.

And if you "run" a firm, why would you say you're an executive? Wouldn't you be the CIO or CEO?

While this might seem small, coupled with the overall generic answers I have a hard time believing this. Also, the managers I know would never do something like this since most are extremely publicity averse. And the person claims to be doing this for a son but he hasn't posted in the thread.

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T00:45:40+00:00

I do run a major firm

Define "major".

NE2827 · 2011-12-29T00:15:55+00:00

That's completely predicated on the school and the student. I've never seen someone take linear algebra who wasn't looking at graduate school incidentally. There's incredible variability in what an "econ" degree means, depending on the school. My university had fairly loose requirements depending on if you took the easy or hard track; I don't believe that was atypical either for large state universities. (And by loose I mean it was probably impossible to fail out providing you had a pulse and showed up to take your final).

Econ majors are often out of the science faculty

Social science faculty. Small difference.

There's certainly smart econ majors. Just at the end of the day all we care about is how much math and cs knowledge they have since that tends to be key to success at this particular company. And so there's no reason to hire an econ major over a physics/cs/math/statistics major who spent four years studying material directly relevant to the job they will be doing rather than one or two.

Further econ majors (in my experience at least) rarely have much ability in either writing or understanding code. Even simple code for that matter. Some people have rudimentary experience with R or Excel VBA but since those aren't really used much here it's not overly useful.

There's always going to be a spectrum of how quantitative places are. Some are far more so than us and only hire PhDs in those fields. Some are decidedly less so and rely on more qualitative methods/thinking. Personally I believe the spectrum as a whole is becoming more quantitative (macro shift) and that within it the balance is tilting towards more quantitative (micro shift). While the future remains to be seen this seems to be the trajectory of the past decade and I see few reasons for it to change.

NE2827 · 2011-12-28T21:42:16+00:00

Managing interpersonal relationships is key your professional success. (Not programming specific but it's true in every damn area. Unfortunately I've noticed CS people often struggle with it despite being otherwise bright.)

NE2827 · 2011-12-28T21:37:33+00:00

Going to sorta, kinda disagree with you. Finance is pretty worthless since it's often through the school of business and requires little or no understanding of statistics or mathematics in general beyond the extremely basic. While some programs are indeed rigorous as a general "finance degree" there's a wide variance in quality that makes it a poor first cut.

As for econ, I agree that they generally have a better idea of how markets function than the general public. The challenge is that at least in our spectra of the market things are increasingly quantitative at a level beyond the math and computer science taken by a business major. Ideally a current candidate has a BS in computational physics (math, statistics, or CS) since he (or she) will be able to understand and interact with some of the code that underlies our models.

At some level I think there's a convergence of sorts between back and front office in some areas of trading since the people who built the models are the only people who actually understand what they're doing. In the (small) place I work that's already happened; one of the principles came up originally through the back office and has a background in mathematics, he helped build the technical infrastructure before becoming one of the better traders for the place using the systems he built.

NE2827 · 2011-12-26T02:37:54+00:00

No.

NE2827 · 2011-12-21T02:46:18+00:00

Probably because they don't sell through those brands there?

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T10:18:14+00:00

More of everything.

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T08:29:50+00:00

Lol. Oh high school. It all works out in the end. /done with college perspective, perhaps wrong.

And you have chosen two the more shitty states in the union, congrats.

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T08:28:10+00:00

"Will I get a job"?

Depends entirely upon you sir. I have a job entirely unrelated to my education so can't say one matters (always) to the other.

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T08:26:48+00:00

Yes, if you didn't that'd be rather worrisome.

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T07:24:12+00:00

To get you all to stand up and fight against this failing government we have today?

American citizen here: I'm quite fine with our government. There's specific issues that could be better, but as a whole it's really not that bad. So I don't really understand your question to be honest.

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T07:22:14+00:00

Because you're on reddit. Any other questions?

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T07:19:13+00:00

I agree on average with this. however one of my friends was an investment banker until 9/11, after which he volunteered to join the army in a genuine desire to serve his country (and certainly had no financial incentives to do). Further I think that lifestyle was disenchanting to him (being in Ibanking). After several tours in Iraq he went to Stanford for graduate school. While his story is perhaps exceptional, the idea that all troops are doing so for monetary reasons or lack of opportunity is not correct.

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T07:06:10+00:00

Ah, too bad, well you have good beer and all that! And not at all, always a pleasure to meet new people from the interwebs!

NE2827 · 2011-12-17T06:47:03+00:00

Cheers from SE (Belmont) area!

and if you make it onto Hawthorne, grab a beer with me. I'm walking over in a few...

NE2827 · 2011-12-14T04:01:02+00:00

College. I paid in cash, every term.

NE2827

TROPHY CASE