What a shame. So many smart people and great engineers wasting talent on a socially useless and unproductive product.
You also broke the one that asks commenters not to be snarky. Even if you're 100% right, that's no reason to be a jerk; in fact it does double harm because now you've discredited the truth.
Please don't post like this to Hacker News.
There's no effort expended nor insight contributed. It always follows a simple formula: woe to the world that all these {brilliant scientists, talented engineers} decide to work in {high frequency trading, advertising, data mining} when they could be working on {curing cancer, solving climate change, helping the poor}.
If you're not well enough acquainted with economic theory to appreciate why financial markets are at least somewhat useful then that's your problem, not anyone else's. Don't try to insinuate that society has lost something because some very capable people have decided to engage in work you won't even take the time to understand.
It's simply disrespectful. You have no idea what precise benefits their work contributes to society. You also have no idea what kind of charitable work they like to do in their free time or what kind if philanthropy their salaries allow them to contribute to the world. And this is all beside the fact that there are many secondary benefits of a company flush with money releasing excellent open source software and stewarding programming language development.
I'm not saying the intrinsic "worth" of an individual or a company to society is determined by how much profit they generate. That may or may not be the case, but it's a sideshow to what I'm really talking about. I'm saying that it's disrespectful and intellectually lazy to dismiss someone else's work (and implicitly, any fulfillment they may derive from it) because it's technically challenging but not saving the world. It's also implicitly narcissistic, because it makes the critic an ideological arbiter of the worth of other people's professions. The critic should spend more time focusing on being the change they want to see in the world rather than griefing the work of other people.
The examples you provided - blackhat SEO, ICO scammers, spam - are criminal behaviors that undermine society. The examples I used in my template are not. They can cause harm, like most activities, but they are not designed specifically to do so. That makes your examples incomparable as a rebuttal.
At this point it's likely that someone will be incensed by this last point and jump in with a lovely deconstruction of advertising or financial trading that asserts, "No, it actually is a net negative for society!" I'm not going to engage in debating that point because it's not going to go anywhere and it's not directly relevant to my point. Armchair economists have been reinventing "better" financial theory from first principles for years on Hacker News, and focusing on that particular example is a red herring.
I'd really enjoy diving a little deeper into this, and really hope I'm not coming across as combative.
Take the "blackhat" away from SEO, take the "scam" away from ICO, replace "spam" with "effective viral marketers". All of those are technically challenging but not necessarily changing the world. By your reply's 2nd paragraph, I'm assuming you will withhold judgement on these individuals/professions?
Otherwise, would you mind explaining the distinction? The only difference I see is Jane St et al are established with massive amounts of capital, vs being the little guy. I don't wish to offend you again but it seems by calling them criminal/detriment to society you are passing the same judgement that I am on large financial firms?
Aren't high frequency traders and big funds always toeing the line between legitimate behavior market manipulation?
Finally, call me narcissistic if you wish but I am a human not a Vulcan. I can't help pass judgement and say those who willingly pass up easy money to selflessly do poorly compensated hard work to help those less fortunate and make society a more harmonious place DO deserve my praise more than some interns on the way to potentially being the next Martin Shrekli. I think the world needs more of these people and they're certainly not being compensated with money so I want to do what I can to compensate them with social capital.
And finally, I'll repeat that I don't mean to troll or cause offense to you. I'm gracious for the opportunity to engage with you and learn different opinions rather than stay in my echo chamber/filter bubble.
Advertising and Facebook-style spyware deployment[0] are behaviors that undermine society, and are only not criminal due to blatant goverment corruption and, if you want to be overly charitable, being too novel for law to have caught up with. They may not be designed for the express purpose of causing harm, but neither are blackhat SEO, or, for example, shoplifting.
Ironically, your original point was a good one; high frequency trading is fairly clearly positive and certainly not inherently negative. (I don't think anyone believes they're making optimal use of their talents for the betterment of humanity or whatever similar goal, but that's a unreasonably high standard when we're also discussing advertisers and SEO.)
0: Which is what people I've talked to use "data mining" to refer to, although I'm not sure if that's what you meant.
It should be a formal logical fallacy to pretend there is no difference between "not saving the world in someone's favorite flavor" and "doing something useless".
> It always follows a simple formula: woe to the world that all these {brilliant scientists, talented engineers} decide to work in {high frequency trading, advertising, data mining} when they could be working on {curing cancer, solving climate change, helping the poor}.
In order to be intellectually honest, you should replace the strawman "{curing cancer, solving climate change, helping the poor}" by "anything useful".
> If you're not well enough acquainted with economic theory to appreciate why financial markets are at least somewhat useful then that's your problem, not anyone else's. Don't try to insinuate that society has lost something because some very capable people have decided to engage in work you won't even take the time to understand.
There's no effort expended nor insight contributed here either. You not just refused to make an argument, you baselessly claimed that OP considers the work of Jane Street useless because they are stupid and not for reasons you don't even take the time to understand. That is simply disrespectful.
Also, the statements "developing software to gather more money from the financial markets is useless" and "financial markets are useless" are not equivalent. No one claimed the latter.
> It's simply disrespectful.
There is no reason to respect useless work.
> You also have no idea what kind of charitable work they like to do in their free time or what kind if philanthropy their salaries allow them to contribute to the world.
They didn't say anything about what the workers at Jane Street do with their free time.
> And this is all beside the fact that there are many secondary effects of company flush with money releasing excellent open source software and stewarding programming language development.
That is merely a by-product. Also, it may very well be compensated by the fact that if Jane Street didn't have that money, someone else would.
I would welcome a rule against empty arguments like this on HN.
CC: dang, is there any version of this that we can perhaps institute?
Can you inform us?
Edit: It's potentially productive if they open source some of their new stuff? I'm guessing the whole point is that the firm is developing its competitive edge.
In a way, it's even productive if the workers at Jane Street just get to do something they enjoy. But it's odd to judge a company by its by-products.
They said its socially useless and unproductive, which seems roughly true to me