Ray Dalio Is Stepping Down from Management at Bridgewater | Hacker News Reader

Ray Dalio Is Stepping Down from Management at Bridgewater

bloomberg.com

123 pointsJumpCrisscross47 comments

They've recently hired a bunch of senior CIO type people and created a "senior fellowship program", Carsten Stendevad, the former head of the Danish pension fund ATP is the most recent hire.

Also there is no one direct person in charge anymore according to Reuters...

> Dalio is being replaced as CEO by David McCormick, president of Bridgewater for the last eight years. McCormick will serve along side co-CEO Eileen Murray.

So for those of you keeping score he's tried replacing himself with a hand picked successor, and then a computer program and now he's assembling a collective to replace himself and he's making sure there is no one person in charge of the firm.

If I wanted to resign but couldn't bear the thought of someone replacing me, this is almost exactly how I'd setup the firm for my retirement too:)

I guess the clock is running on his return based on this quote from a letter he just wrote......

> “As I love markets, I’m excited about this change and expect to remain a professional investor at Bridgewater until I die or until those running Bridgewater don’t want me anymore,” Dalio said.

For those who aren't familiar with Ray Dalio, beyond being founder and CEO of the world's largest hedge fund, he is also known for his dramatic views on transparency in the workplace, and his knack for explaining economic principles in simple terms. These two content pieces he created give a window into his mind:

Management principles manifesto https://www.principles.com/#Principles

How the economy works cartoon video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0

I've heard from friends there that the directness often only flows in one direction (managers being direct and aggressive to their subordinates), but YMMV.

The directness flows both ways, however, the aggression is strictly top down. Ray Dalio, etc, yell at people all the time, and are praised for their honesty. This is not something that goes both ways.

thats a great distinction. sounds like an institutionalized version of the individual tendency to excuse poor emotional regulation with "it's just who I am, a straight shooter" b.s.

authentic (foolish) straight shooters would have no problem yelling in the upwards direction too

"People who are brutally honest generally enjoy the brutality more than the honesty." --Richard Needham

well as long as they are honest about enjoying the brutality i guess they are being consistent!

Thanks. What is your source? Have you worked there?

Yeah, that's the exactly rub, as it were, with most "radical transparency" policies like these.

Funny how these things tend to work out in Corporate America.

>Funny how these things tend to work out in Corporate America.

They are like that everywhere.

People who are willing to screw over other people without remorse go far in our world.

The New Yorker magazine published a great profile of Dalio in 2012:

Mastering the Machine

How Ray Dalio built the world's richest and strangest hedge fund.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/25/mastering-the-m...

This hour-long interview at a members-only event at the Council on Foreign Relations is also worth watching to get the distinct flavor of the man:

http://www.cfr.org/world/ceo-speaker-series-conversation-ray...

I've read a few books that mention Ray's management approach (my fav is "Learn or Die" by Ed Hess) and I find the approach to feedback loops & developing employees fascinating.

Radical transparency, data-driven decisions for both people and company strategy, etc. are all ideals that I think in the long-run would remove biases across a number of different axes, and develop some of the most self-aware talent in the industry.

Qualitative example: a friend of mine who works there came in with the hypothesis that she would be at a disadvantage on a number of different scales due to being a female in a male-dominated industry. However, because Bridgewater is very open about quantitative evaluations, and video-taping any/all meetings (!!), she is able to validate any/all feedback and claims that people have, and make sure that she's also earning what she deserves.

It's an exciting experiment and I'm disappointed to see some turmoil lately, but hopefully they can right the ship again soon.

> Radical transparency, data-driven decisions for both people and company strategy, etc. are all ideals that I think ...

I'm skeptical about BA's rosy portrayal of "radical transparency," let alone RT as an ideal.

According to employee accounts, BA has plenty of skeletons and dirty laundry [0] These accounts talk to top secret areas, HR blow back, secret society themes, and selective use of "private" recordings to fit narratives. A good example's the recorded video of Dalio arguing with a female exec who resorts to crying, which would be selectively shown to demo BA's "direct confrontational culture" to new recruits. They stopped showing the surveillance--err, video.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/business/dealbook/bridgew...

Ah interesting - I had no idea about those skeletons. Thanks for the article!

Is Principles available in a practical (as in, for on the road/commuting reading) format? Kindle, even paperback?

Absolutely! Even audiobook:

https://principlesbydalio.com/

Uh, nice, thanks. (I should probably have googled that)

To me, this is the more interesting news.

"his star hire Jon Rubinstein, one of the creators of the iPod, will leave after 10 months as co-CEO."

Citadel recently got rid of Keven Turner, Microsoft's ex-COO, from the CEO position at Citadel Securities. It sounds like the experiment of hiring tech executives into asset management roles isn't producing very promising results.

Kevin Turner isn't really a tech executive; he's a professional big company manager. Prior to MSFT, he spent 20 years at Walmart.

Turner wasn't exactly beloved at Microsoft either, at least by the field sales people who reported up to him.

Given how most 'tech' guys on sites like this think about finance, economics and markets, it's really not surprising. Trading isn't intuitive, there is no math formula that can save you (more like a thousand different formulas that maybe, just maybe can nudge you in one direction or the other), and you can't just throw money at the problem.

I beg to differ - nowadays most successful finance (Citdadel, RenCap, Susquehanna etc) are quant-driven and the primary costs are tech/research talent, data and servers - very similar to tech companies.

Don't know about quant-driven per se, all do use lots of technology and have large IT staffs, but that doesn't mean tech guys are driving trading strategy. Not much room left for making money off HFT/arbitrage, and while I do know of attempts to trade use AI driven strategy, it's not there yet.

When a tech exec transitions to successfully running a hedge fund, that'd be news.

> Citadel recently got rid of Keven Turner, Microsoft's ex-COO, from the CEO position at Citadel Securities.

I'd be careful to draw such broad conclusions as Citadel with our without Turner has extremely high staff turnover

I would argue that this is a questionable conclusion, given a sample size of 2 (or 3 or 4, for that matter)

When you're talking about executive performance at extremely large companies within specific industries in specific time frames, sample sizes are always too small to draw conclusions.

Then we are in agreement :-)

The thing is, small sample sizes, be it as they may, are still data, and drawing inferences off of them is the only thing we can do given the nature of our inability to experiment.

They try to hire a lot of guys from our firm. I've always heard they have a very cutthroat and had an odd work environment where they urge / insist on everyone giving direct harsh criticism of their colleagues. Wondering how this may change that at all if any.

The article says he'll remain as co-CIO.

As his long term stated goal is to replace most humans in the company with a "What would Ray Dalio do?" AI, I'd say he's still on track to be in charge of everything (assuming that includes the CEO spot!).

CIO in the context of a hedge fund means "Chief Investment Officer" rather than "Chief Information Officer".

wonder what they were thinking when they hired Jon Rubinstein. Why hire someone with consumer electronics background and no financial background in the first place? I worked with Apple before and I'm very disinclined to believe that their success had much to do with their tech.

I believe it's more for the fund than for their particular investments.

See: Renaissance Capital

The article (and especially the associated video) claim that internal technology was/is a major priority at the firm.

Does anybody know what they're building? Just typical trading algos or something else?

They said to be betting heavily on AI for day-to-day management https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/bridgewat...

I interviewed at Bridgewater recently. It was a unique experience. From what I could glean, they are trying to take the institutional knowledge and systems thinking that informs their trading strategies and turn those into code.

Dalio has a very impressive record, will be interesting to see if Bridgewater can maintain it

My sentiment exactly; there's something quite interesting watching 'culture' firms once the, uh, fish head gets lopped off. Either via attrition or mortality.

Here's the source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changes-bridgewaters-manageme...

"What We Do

Bridgewater Associates is focused on understanding how the world works. By having the deepest possible understanding of the global economy and financial markets, and translating that understanding into great portfolios and strategic partnerships with institutional clients, we've built a distinct track record of success. We've done this for more than 40 years by having great people operate in a culture of radical truth and radical transparency. Today, we manage about $160 billion for approximately 350 of the largest and most sophisticated global institutional clients including public and corporate pension funds, university endowments, charitable foundations, supranational agencies, sovereign wealth funds, and central banks."

I know a cult when I see one. When there's a whole lotta money on the line and you drop a paragraph that contains the phrases "radical truth" and "radical transparency" but that paragraph doesn't start with "Bridgewater Associates is a hedgefund that...", you are a fucking cult.

"Radical [surveillance]" [0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/business/dealbook/bridgew...

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