Join Wall Street. Save the world

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/join-wall-street-save-the-world/

by jejune06 • 13 years ago

65 99 13 years ago

ekm2• 13 years ago

How can you get into HFT without a degree from an elite school?

zmitri• 13 years ago

Being young, having very strong referrals from someone who works there and demonstrating building things outside of work or above and beyond what you are supposed to be doing.

effbott• 13 years ago

You have to know the right people. I have a non-CS degree from a pretty average state school but I somehow fell into the world of HFT algo development. I suppose luck played a large role in my case since I wasn't actively seeking that type of job. One of my clients (who had founded a small "prop" shop) liked my work and wanted to give me a shot at developing algorithms, even though I had no prior experience and scant knowledge of financial markets. Fortunately it turned out to be a great fit and I ended up automating nearly every aspect of his operation.

Wall Street banks aren't the only ones doing HFT. The technology to develop and deploy algorithms has become much more accessible in recent years. It's still not cheap - collocated servers, real time data streams, and Bloomberg terminals can rack up tens thousands per month - but you don't need a Wall St. budget to get started.

There are lots of small proprietary trading shops (prop shops) scattered throughout the major financial hubs (NYC, London, Chicago, etc.). These shops typically have 20 employees or less. In my case we had two traders, one programmer (me), and one IT guy. These shops are more likely to care about your skills as a programmer than where you went to school.

michaelbwang• 13 years ago

MIT is an elite school. Is this comment meant to be facetious?

gyardley• 13 years ago

I suspect he's asking a question, probably for his own benefit, instead of commenting on the education of the person in the article.

ig13• 13 years ago

It depends what aspect of HFT you want to get into, but experience can generally trump accreditation. That is you won't get hired out of uni, but you can get hired somewhere working on similar tech where you get to prove your worth before transitioning into HFT.

That said if you want to make 100k there's plenty of tech roles outside of HFT where you can make that amount.

anonymoushn• 13 years ago

I did it by applying to an HFT shop. I had a non-CS STEM degree from a state university and 1.5 years of experience as a developer.

taurath• 13 years ago

$100k is a high finance salary? Maybe for a really low trader...

andyjsong• 13 years ago

His bonus will make up for that.

enraged_camel2• 13 years ago

Aren't bonuses performance-based? From what I hear, that is what provides an incentive for finance-types to fuck over everyone, including their own clients.

greesil3• 13 years ago

I thought the recruitment pitch was, "Join Wall Street, fuck the world."

UVB-76• 13 years ago

A lot of the activities that take place on Wall Street are fairly harmless. Some might even be considered socially productive.

greesil3• 13 years ago

Yeah it's just the other activities like the occasional overleveraging that destabilizes the global financial markets and causes depressions. Or, leveraged buy-outs that fuck the rank and file of a company out of their contractually agreed upon pensions.

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

> A lot of the activities that take place on Wall Street are fairly harmless.

Most of those harmless activities do not include trading stocks, bonds, derivatives and commodities.

Wall-Street is like a very powerful diesel engine, it generates enormous amounts of power and it generates enormous amounts of pollution. Hard to get the one without the other.

davorak5• 13 years ago

I think that is a unfortunate negative stereotype that has prevent many from earning more and going more good with it.

mathattack3• 13 years ago

I am very suspicious of people who say they enter Wall Street to save the world.

That said, I also believe most charity events are very economically inefficient. Rather than get a dozen musicians together for a discounted concert at a small concert hall, wouldn't it be more efficient to ask them all to donate one days worth of sales from performing at arenas?

Rather than get a hundred bankers together for a $250/head dinner, wouldn't it be more efficient to ask them to donate what they'd make in 2 hours? (Although the dinner does have social purposes)

You can like Warren Buffett or hate him, but the best thing he can do for society is earn money and then efficiently give it away to solve big problems. That would be much better than him working full time for the peace corps, or a non-profit.

scott_s• 13 years ago

I believe that what you are suggesting is what the first subject of the article is doing.

mathattack3• 13 years ago

Exactly. But I'm still leery of when people join Wall Street for altruistic reasons. :-)

dragontamer• 13 years ago

On the other hand, only Bill Gates has had the vision to lead his charity into wiping out polio from the planet. (only 3 countries left, and only because terrorists keep shooting at volunteers before they can administer cures IIRC).

Sure, money helps charities. But a brilliant leader, like what Gates has been to the Gates Foundation, is a force multiplier to that money.

mathattack3• 13 years ago

I'm on the fence with him.

Here's why...

Answer 2 questions: 1) Could somebody else have figured out how to apply that level of thinking on these topics, and been able to convince other to donate? 2) Could he have made another ten or twenty billion by staying at Microsoft?

If the answers are "Yes" and "Yes" then he should have stayed at Microsoft.

The answers might be "No" and "No" in which case you are spot on.

My dogma says the former, but I think you're right. I'll accept him as the exception that proves the rule. :-)

lasonrisa• 13 years ago

The Rotary have been a driving force behind the eradication of polio a lot longer than the B&G Foundation.

michaelkeenan• 13 years ago

If you're interested in effective altruism, you might be interested in the Effective Altruism Summit, which will be held from June 30 to July 6 in San Francisco. All four of the effective altruism organizations mentioned in the article (GiveWell, Giving What We Can, The Life You Can Save, and 80,000 Hours) are participating, along with some not mentioned. Peter Singer, Peter Thiel, and Jaan Tallinn (co-creator of Kazaa and Skype) will give talks.

http://www.effectivealtruismsummit.com/

clarkm• 13 years ago

At a similar event on Efficient Charity at the Berkeley Faculty Club, Robin Hanson made some interesting (and unsettling) points about how most charities operate. [1] For example, he claims that most charitable contributions are actually about status signalling and not about maximizing impact. Because if someone truly wanted to do the Most Helpful Thing, they would save all their money and donate a single lump sum to a single charity right before they die. This strategy leverages compound interest while avoiding certain tax pitfalls, but has the downside of making you look selfish for most of your life.

Scott Alexander has a pretty good summary [2] of the event if you don't want to listen to the audio.

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/04/more-now-means-less-la...

[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/05/investment-and-ineffici...

FD3SA• 13 years ago

In addition to a status signal, charities are also massive tax shelters. All around it is just a way to funnel money out of the government's hands, as most charitable donations would otherwise have been taxed by the government as excess capital or income.

The USA has so many structural problems that sometimes I find it ironic that people are so obsessed with solving third world problems. In a way, due to the massive global influence of the US, solving a big problem here (e.g. militant foreign policy) can lead to incredible improvements in the lives of hundreds of millions across the world. Conversely, if US foreign policy is dictated by warmongers, hundreds of millions suffer war and famine for decades.

As Aaron did [1], please read Noam Chomsky then decide in which order to address first and third world problems.

1. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/epiphany

vortmeester• 13 years ago

An interesting idea, but I think this argument leaves out an important fact: money in the present is more useful than money in the future. This is often captured in accounting by use of a "discount rate". A pretty conventional number is 10% per year: waiting an extra year to receive some money makes it worth 10% less, all else equal. Comparing a typical interest rate and a typical discount rate, I would conclude that you should donate now.

Furthermore, if this is really the best way to do charity... well, charities could just invest the donations they receive and cash out when the time is "right". But since organizations don't die, when would that ever be?

Lastly, the idea that you should invest in a single "best" charity entails the idea that your donation is too small to make much difference in which charity is best. But some problems have already been solved! More problems will surely be solved in the future. It seems that charities could face diminishing returns -- like most other investments -- so your most effective strategy should sometimes be to split among more than one. Especially if you have followed the advice to invest for your entire life, and you do have a huge sum to donate.

astrofinch2• 13 years ago

There's a lot to say about Robin Hanson's argument, and I don't think it's as clear-cut as he makes it out to be, e.g. there are critical comments in this thread:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3q/a_rational_altruist_punch_in_the...

I wish he wouldn't try to figure out what hidden motive prevents people from following his strategy before it's even been established as the best strategy.

glomph2• 13 years ago

That is absurd. Charities know about interest rates. If that is the best way to use money (and you choose an effective charity) that is what they will do. But the fact is they can get better returns now by either spending your money on fundraising/awareness or by having real impact now.

Spending money on achieving their goals in the present is not only what they are for but will also reduce future costs. Prevention is better than cure.

Also there are problems that need solving now. If the current generation of philanthropists all wait until they die then there will not be enough money to solve problems that exist in the present.

Why would you think that you know how to use money to achieve a goal better than an organization built around that goal?

nickpinkston7• 13 years ago

Join Wall Street. Attempt to save the world through donations. End up unable to recognize what to solve.

This is a pattern that all these guys do. Even Warren Buffet just gave his money to Gates.

You'd think a guy who spends his life picking out successful businesses would be able to recognize this in non-profit / social ventures, but he's so removed from real problems he can't.

If you want to save the world, save the world first.

Stop. Fucking. Waiting.

swampthing3• 13 years ago

The question is whether the world is better off if Buffet had taken your advice. Not clear that it would be?

nickpinkston7• 13 years ago

I think it's good that he gave money to something more innovative than the Salvation Army or some such, but generally if you're taking the conservative approach to "world-saving" (working and donating), your donations don't have great leverage or relevance. It's why GM couldn't make Tesla...

How many times do they go into it thinking this and just end up with a bunch of cars and naming rights to a building at Harvard at best... We see it the vast majority of the time.

cbr5• 13 years ago

We can't talk just about Buffett without considering reference classes. Before starting his career investing, Buffet didn't know he would do as well as he did.

moakakala2• 13 years ago

> If you want to save the world, save the world first. > Stop. Fucking. Waiting.

I don't understand what you're suggesting. Is Trigg (the programmer who joined Wall Street) "waiting"? What does "not waiting" look like?

nickpinkston7• 13 years ago

Yes, he's waiting essentially. Not waiting looks like doing something that actually is saving the world - starting at a small scale if you have to at first.

Getting to small version of the change you want to see is vastly preferable than trying to be Buffet and then starting a foundation. By then, you've lost all connection to the problems you wished to solve and the mentality of even trying to make this change.

Again: Stop waiting guys! You can actually do this now and grow your little org into a great force for change.

cmbaus• 13 years ago

It will be interesting to see what the effect of both Gate's and Buffet's donations will be. It certainly is a good that a large chuck of capital and energy is going toward improving society, but putting that much capital to work may also cause significant inflation and negate some of the benefit.

nickpinkston7• 13 years ago

Inflation isn't the problem - GDP is $15T or some such, and they're investing this over time - so $150T is what they're comparing. Perhaps in niche markets they could do so.

The main problems of that much money is that you get into investment mode which is more conservative, top-heavy, etc. This means it's slower, less likely to find the best innovations, and lower social-ROI.

However, some problems require such capital - like what Elon Musk is working on at SpaceX, but again that's focused capital.

cbr5• 13 years ago

"Warren Buffet just gave his money to Gates"

Warren Buffet realized that a new charitable foundation wasn't needed and that by donating money through the Gates foundation he could accomplish more.

fatman• 13 years ago

Is it really that simple? If your main concern is net "good" to the world, don't you have to balance that against any "bad" generated by your job? Wall Street certainly is capable of damaging people's lives, and HFT does get some of the blame. Also, is net gain the only concern - if an assassin donates his profits to charity and in the process saves more lives than he takes, is does his net "good" make him moral?

rdl• 13 years ago

HFT seems fairly neutral; it makes trades more efficient, but is an "arms race" for all the traders.

tannerc• 13 years ago

One engineer donating $50k is great.

One teacher-focused engineer doing a decent job at influencing and educating others to do more with their money is... priceless?

It's good that Mr. Trigg is doing what he can, but discounting the ability of an education role to impact even more people is slightly silly.

davorak5• 13 years ago

At least in my life time and durring my education, mid USA, there seemed to be a considerable amount of emphasis placed on doing good with your own hands, even going to the extent of suggesting that getting a high paying job was morally negative or at least undesirable as an intention.

The article and the sentiment behind it is more about this negative stereotype changing and hopeful disappearing rather then devaluing what is already valuable.

LowKarmaAccount2• 13 years ago

Local governments are also involved in the stock market. High frequency traders make money by acting as an intermediary between buyers and sellers, and thus not creating actual wealth. Instead their supposed value is the "liquidity" they add. That means that the price of "adding liquidity" is a lower return on a stock or bond invested by a local government. Which in turn means that the local government might have to cut funding services for the poor. Even if you give away the money you earn, you are still robbing the poor so you can give to the poor people that you like.

ig13• 13 years ago

If you're a long term investor like a government who invested in an index tracker, HFT and the like have a relatively small impact on prices compared to trades by other large institutional investors.

Fishkins• 13 years ago

This is basically what I was going to say, but more specific. I can't believe they could write such a long article without even mentioning the direct negative impact your job could have on the world. It's still possible working your high-paying job is net improvement over the alternatives, but I don't think this went into enough depth to provide a good argument.

tome• 13 years ago

Wait, do you think intermediaries never create actual wealth?

LowKarmaAccount2• 13 years ago

No, I don't think that. I also don't think that HFT is necessary for an intermediary to create wealth.

edw519• 13 years ago

His logic is simple: The more he makes, the more good he can do.

It may be his logic, but it's not mine. And it doesn't have to be yours, either.

I believe "doing good" is something to be done all the time.

If you wait until the time is right or the conditions are right or you have enough money or time or something else, you will probably never get around to doing good. And even if you do, how much good will not get done while you're on your journey to being able to do good.

You do good by the way you treat other people and in the hard work and good deeds that you do. And it can be just about anything. You don't have to do charity work or walkathons or open source or make giant donations for all to see in order to do good. If your work provides value to someone else, then you're doing good.

It's up to you to decide how good your doing good is. And the best time to start doing good is now. Every little bit matters.

codegeek• 13 years ago

Agreed in general that you don't need to be a millionaire to do good. But his words "The more he makes, the more good he can do" still makes sense. He is using the word "more" and talking purely in terms of financial ability. In order to do good, money comes second because you have to be *willing" first. But once money comes in the picture, it makes it a hell of a lot easier for someone who makes $100K compared to someone who makes $50K.

grimtrigger• 13 years ago

The article could have been titled "Get Rich, Save the World" since it really has nothing to do with Wall Street. Which, when you look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, is pretty hard to disagree with.

Unfortunately, I think most people in this thread are unwilling to pass up an opportunity to bash Wall Street. Which is a shame, because they are rallying against a viable form of altruism.

ca98am79• 13 years ago

I disagree. For example, Gandhi and Mother Teresa had no money and did orders of magnitude of more good than many others with money. They did more than many others who had money and good intentions.

davorak5• 13 years ago

> If you wait until the time is right or the conditions are right or you have enough money or time or something else, you will probably never get around to doing good. And even if you do, how much good will not get done while you're on your journey to being able to do good.

Some times this choice is obvious, under feeding myself to feed other would probably reduce the amount of long term good I could do for the world.

Saving my money now so that I can be in a good finical position to take advantage of economic opportunities is not as obvious, but can lead to considerably more good being done.

awwstn• 13 years ago

>if you wait until the time is right or the conditions are right or you have enough money or time or something else, you will probably never get around to doing good. And even if you do, how much good will not get done while you're on your journey to being able to do good.

I don't really understand this criticism of him. He isn't trying to save up millions of dollars before doing good, he's working for money and giving it away as fast as it comes in. Sure, making more money isn't the only way to do more good, but if he has chosen charities that use money to do good then his logic can't be refuted: "The more he makes, the more good he can do."

chollida1• 13 years ago

> His logic is simple: The more he makes, the more good he can do. >It may be his logic, but it's not mine. And it doesn't have to be yours, either. >I believe "doing good" is something to be done all the time.

I think you've really missed the mark on this...

The two view points can easily reconcile. You can make more and donate more while still always doing good.

There is nothing wrong with doing both and I'm sure the people mentioned in the article are.

I'm not sure what you have against his idea that the more he makes the more good he can do.

astrofinch2• 13 years ago

I agree with everything you've said, but given that Against Malaria Foundation can save a life for $2,500, does treating your co-workers well and writing quality code really compare?

barry-cotter4• 13 years ago

Doing good is indeed something that can be done all the time but he's not optimising for doing a little good all the time but for doing as much good as he can.

Every litle bit may matter but ten lives saved is ten times better than one.

m52go• 13 years ago

Join Wall Street, make some money, and then start a company that actually does something useful (i.e., not make photo-sharing more beautiful or social marketing .01% more effective).

Giving money away is an effective way of actually accomplishing very little, unless you're doing it like Bill Gates and can have very tight control over what your money is actually doing.

cbr5• 13 years ago

"unless you're doing it like Bill Gates and can have very tight control over what your money is actually doing"

This kind of impact is actually accessible even to people who are giving smaller amounts: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

sailfast• 13 years ago

I fail to see how earning 100K and donating half of it as effective as working to save a life for $500 instead of $2500 over time. Like all things in life, a balance is required and no one way is going to be a cure-all.

I applaud people that live frugally and donate what they have to worthy causes, but maybe a bit more introspection is also required to figure out why the career path has really been chosen.

cbr5• 13 years ago

Saving lives 5x more efficiently would be awesome. But how many people over how many years does that take? It may be that someone like Trigg who is earning to give would actually do better to go into malaria research, but it's a hard question. It's one I'm very interested in, though, if you know something about this.

(What is clear is that he's doing a lot of good, and if more people followed his example that would be great.)

scotty79• 13 years ago

Meanwhile his employers will drain the third world by speculating on food based derivatives.

davorak5• 13 years ago

The effective method of fighting that though seems to be organized political action. The needed skills to organize and drive such groups does not seem very common so it understandable and advantageous for everyone that their efforts are put else where.

Though it is dangerous to ignore this arena completely.

barry-cotter4• 13 years ago

Corn based ethanol subsidies do a hell of a lot more damage to the third world in any one year than futures contracts do. Futures contracts reduce price volatility in agricultural markets. Compare onions (futures are illegal) with other agricultural commodities.

piokoch• 13 years ago

High frequency trade and similar "financial instruments" are mostly created to enable banks to create even more empty, debt driven money. So although it is nice that this guy gives some money to charity, his everyday job leads in the long run to financial crises and to poverty that cannot be equalized by all wallstreet workers giving money to charities.

Besides, the article sounds like some expensive Public Relation action from wallstreet companies. I guess they have hard time to find decent employees...

rayiner3• 13 years ago

Interesting note: Goldman Sachs donated $377m in cash last year. At $2,500 per life saved, that's 150,000 live saved per year.

davorak5• 13 years ago

It would be rather awesome if all or most of that money was going to one of the top three charities at give well. Enough so that would significantly change my understanding of Goldman Sachs and make me revaluate similar companies.

dev1n• 13 years ago

It should also be noted that by donating a smallish amount of money (377M is a relatively small amount of money for a bank like Goldman) banks can get tax breaks, which could amount to more than they donated.

lix2333• 13 years ago

This is actually a common misconception. No matter how much you donate (or a corporation donates), you'll still end up net negative.

lukeprog• 13 years ago

Goldman Sachs did not donate to the charity that plausibly saves lives at a price of $2500 (Against Malaria Foundation). If I had to guess, they gave it to groups who don't even try to save lives, or to groups who save lives at a cost 100 times or more greater than $2.5k/life.

genofon• 13 years ago

This is so stupid.. so instead of working to make the world a better place let's speculate on everything, trying to rip of as much as we can so then we can give our money away. It's like working as a lumberjack and then use your wages to plant other trees, you will never be able to replant what you destroyed previously

masonhensley• 13 years ago

John Arnold, Houston billionaire & hedge funder, closed up shop last year to focus on his foundation with his wife:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-new-science-of-giving-2126...

staccatomeasure• 13 years ago

It's cool to do what you think is righteous. Nobody knows the right answer.

ivan_ah3• 13 years ago

I am completely appalled by this article. How could working for the system (in this case, the finance sector) ever be considered as a positive gain? The state of the world affairs is f'd precisely because currently all aspects of life are viewed through a mechanistic view focused on short term financial gain. Wall street, by supporting and feeding the mega-corps, is indirectly part of the economic exploitation of the world.

Furthermore, as pointed out by @mathattack, some charities are very inefficient operations--sometimes bordering on unethically so. My friend worked as a webmaster for a charity whose operations overhead was ~70% (mostly due to the annual general meeting held at a 5* resort in Banff, attended by all the volunteers working in the charity (most of them spouses of the donors)).

OK, I am going to calm down now. It is just words. Just propaganda. Perhaps this article was commissioned by Wall Street as an attempt to influence perceptions and to assuage the existential threat to their existence. If the analytically-minded youth of the next generation makes the really moral choice and STOPS going to work for wall street (and big corp in general), then the system stands no chance.

BrentRitterbeck• 13 years ago

What about those that go into risk management at a big Wall Street firm because they view this as the best use of their background? Would you rather have someone who didn't understand the mathematical intricacies of fixed income managing the risk of an entity capable of bringing an economy to a halt, or would you prefer that job to be taken by someone who knew what they were doing?

ivan_ah3• 13 years ago

> managing the risk of an entity capable of bringing an economy to a halt

I am more worried about talented quants building/inventing new financial products which lead to further instability and //cause// risk.

From what I hear from friends who work in the field, they don't have much control over company policy and direction. At the risk of sounding provocative, I will say that quants are glorified code monkeys. The fact that they are really smart will not allow them to influence decisions. If it is not clearly illegal and it makes profits, it will be done halt or no halt.

The way I see it, the less "advances" in the financial sector there are, the better.

barry-cotter4• 13 years ago

The proper gauge of a charity is not overhead but lives saved per unit money, whether you go for acturial lives saved or quality adjusted life years.

If the charity your webmaster friend worked at saved a life for $1,800 donated it would be a good place to donate money.

Jason Trigg probably saved 20 lives last year. Are you saying that what he did is bad?

ivan_ah3• 13 years ago

Jason Trigg actually sounds like a good guy and I applaud him for his choice. My disagreeing is with the idea of ethical-corporate-whorism being a viable way to do good in the world---the "new trend" the article purports to have discovered.

Let's assume for the moment that donating 50k/y led to some tangible benefits for humanity. Were there any human costs as well? Were people actively harmed for him to obtain the 100k/y salary?

The chain of implications between actual harm being done on the ground (say in a 3rd world country) and Jason's day to day job is very long and whitewashed by buzzwords, but it is still there:

   Company X1 deals with gov. of country Y to rob people of a water resource (buzzword: privatization)
   Company X2 owns X1 stock  (buzzword: market)
   Company X3 trades in X2 stock
   Company X4 makes high-freq deals for X3 (buzzword: fluidity)

So the people have no water, but nobody is responsible!

Meanwhile a new charity forms: let's give money so that the people of Y can have drinking water.

blueprint• 13 years ago

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

Henry David Thoreau

thewarrior• 13 years ago

By this logic you could justify becoming a drug lord provided that you donate some of your earnings to charity.

Join Wall Street. Save the world

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