Hacker News Reader

Comment by amanj41 | Hacker News Reader

The email from Sam's dad to Sam whining about his 200k salary was disturbing. It's no surprise that Sam ended up the way he did

View on HN

His brother briefly worked at Jane Street. Right out of college he made $300k, next year $600k - his bosses liked his perf and said he'd be on track to make $5-7M per year if he stayed on for another 2-4 years.

Supposedly he still felt inadequate and hated his life...

Those numbers are surprising. Do you have a source for them?

That is typical for Jane Street and other quant firms.

They pay like crazy, if you are good, you make bank.

If not, they fire you

But do you have a source for the $5mn/year salary? I have never heard such figures anywhere for JS four or five years out of college.

co-worker who worked with SBF's brother while at Jane Street.

I’m now considered probably in the top percentile of earners for my country. But I do remember struggling to make ends meet on my 16k a year first tech job out of university. I find it hard sometimes to relate to tech workers in these forums sometimes. And yes I’m in the west.

While many western tech salaries are high, the salary in discussion is a result of nepotism, not merit.

that's insane, 5-7mm?

I mean, there are probably metrics that show he made Jane Street a considerable multiple of that via his trades.

I mean, if I had a close relative with total control over a 40+ billion dollar company and a personal net worth north of 25 billion, I would want a very high salary for showing up too. I don't think asking for more was unreasonable.

Why? Entitlement?

Because it costs them nothing and has a major impact on my life. Why shouldn't I get paid a million a year for doing nothing? It's not like FTX was going to spend that money in a wiser fashion or even literally notice it was gone.

I'm not saying I would get upset if I didn't get it. But I would certainly ask for it.

The money comes from somewhere.

In this case, the people who were defrauded.

There is no free lunch, if you aren't adding value to the economy equal to or exceeding what you're taking, you're taking from someone else.

(Editing to respond to child comment below - you don't be daft, SBF nor his father never thought the business was legit, they architected the fraud!)

Did the likes of musk or bezos add billions of dollars in value to the economy though their own hard work?

Seems to me they are just takers.

I agree.

The likes of buffet and the other 3,000 or so billionaires who choose to live quieter, less Gatsby lifestyle are better role models IMO.

I disagree. There a people who are nice and there are people who get capital and talent together to build new technology that makes per person productivity increase tremendously.

With Elon, he brought to cost of sending payloads into space down by a factor of more than 10.

With electric cars, he made them economically viable that many others had failed to do before. Tesla is an incredibly human efficient company compared to its competitors Ford and GM.

Same with Gates, Bezos and Steve Jobs, they got people and capital organize to boost the productivity per person working for them and people using their output (software and devices)

Good technology amplifies per person productivity.

We may hate the personality and character, but what’s worth looking at is what would be the world be like if there was no Tesla, Amazon, SpaceX or Microsoft?

Elon did it once, maybe a few times.

He is not doing it now, what he did with X, Boring Company, etc us not this.

It's possible for someone to do good, then do bad at a later juncture. That's what I'm saying is happening with Elon, etc.

There’s SpaceX Elon and a Xitter (pronounced shitter) Elon.

>Did the likes of musk or bezos add billions of dollars in value to the economy though their own hard work?

If building Amazon, Tesla or spaceX is that easy, where is your company that changed the entire industry? What did you accomplish so far? You may not like the way they comment on social media, but they have tangible results to back up their reputation. Unlike other types of "celebrities", they actually built tangible things that most people would consider good even if they hate the face of the owner (eg. reusable rockets, electric cars, Amazon delivery, AWS, etc.).

I've designed a bunch of medical devices that have done real good in the world. I'm working to design more as we speak. Are rockets and luxury cars more important than medical care?

They did build some companies and they deserve the rewards for doing so. What they didn't do is add so much value to humanity's productivity to justify rewards in the $10^11 range.

Don’t be daft, he’s assuming the father thinks the business is legitimate. No salary would be worth it if you know it was an illegal business as you creditors will come knocking.

I lost money in FTX. I don't mind the CEO getting a 1m salary for running a multi billion dollar exchange - that's actually probably below the norm for that job. It's the stealing billions in customer funds I object to.

But isn't nit allowing the stealing of customer funds the job? How did he do his job if he didn't do his job?

If the dad helped architect the fraud, then it was reasonable to ask for a greater share than 0.00005% of the stolen money. The issue was the fraud, not his email asking for more money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com