Ray Dalio ran Bridgewater like the global strongmen he admired
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> Don’t be so simpleminded, Dalio replied. He told her to keep her emotions in check, as The Principles prescribed. “If you’re so smart,” he sniffed, “why aren’t you rich?” It was a line Dalio had used countless times before.
I enjoyed reading his principles and his newsletter has some interesting insights but then you read something like this and you wonder how people walk the line between idiot and smart so freely.
“Before I begin telling you what I think, I want to establish that I’m a “dumb shit” who doesn’t know much relative to what I need to know. Whatever success I’ve had in life has had more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know.” [0]
One of the concepts for dealing with this is "believability weighting." ie: you may think we should do X, and I think we should do Y, but if out of the two of us, you're the one who's solved this problem - we weigh your opinion more.
So what Ray is doing here, is reminding Karen to be intellectually humble - in response to her asserting an opinion. Kinda like "don't believe everything you think." He's saying it in this way because logically "if you knew everything, you'd win every single trade and be ridiculously rich"
(to be clear, Karen was co-head of research at the time and quite wealthy)
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9871858-before-i-begin-tell...
Sure, but it's possible to do that without purposely trying to be provocative. Being correct doesn't excuse being a jerk.
Some of my biggest personal growth at BW happened from conversations w my boss that were very difficult emotionally.
I'd love to see the psychological research which backs up this approach -- because there's a lot of research which suggests that tailoring your communication to the individual is generally a good idea, and that being confrontational can have significant negative consequences.
Furthermore, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" is just a patently bad take. Being smart and being rich don't exactly have a correlation coefficient of 1. In fact, the top 1% are generally less intelligent than those just above median income[0].
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230208125113.h...
Sorry, I don't buy this. I don't discount your experiences and the fact that you enjoyed this environment, but there's nothing inherent about directness that requires personal insults. If anything, his insults were _less_ direct than saying what he actually meant, as evidenced by the need for your previous comment explaining "what he actually meant was...". The direct way to say "remember, you might not know the whole situation here" is not "don't be simpleminded; if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?", it's literally just stating what you mean.
You can formulate a culture around purposely being rude while still being correct, and you might even be successful, but it's not the same as making a culture around being direct, and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise.
Here's Karen talking about the culture btw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ipFnQ05L0
I agree with this, but to me, that's additional evidence that it's not "direct" communication. It's not like Bridgewater is some sort of foreign society or something; it's company a company that's existed for several decades in the American northeast, and I'm a person who's lived for several decades in the American northeast.
> Karen I am sure was not put off.
Sure, I imagine that if she were unhappy with the way he phrased it enough then she wouldn't have been working there at such a high position in the first place.
I recognize that I was a bit unclear about what I "didn't buy" in my previous comment; I can believe that the specific quote wasn't said in a context meant to be hurtful, but I think it's disingenuous to describe it as "optimized for the direct/impactful communication". It sounds more like the company purposely calibrated the amount of rudeness in communication higher as the new norm and considered it a virtue. Ultimately, it's not really my concern what communication is like internally in a private company I'm not affiliated with, but it's already far too common for people to try to ignore decorum in places they are trying to participate by claiming "I just tell it like it is", so I feel strongly that this sort of mischaracterization is important to point out. People are responsible for more than just what they say, but _how_ they say it, and claiming that personal insults are somehow necessary for direct communication is a fallacy that can be used to help avoid that.
One guy lost it in a meeting and was immediately called out for being a jackass to the person he was talking to. The calling out was the “directness” and he had to go think about that. Pointless rudeness was not tolerated.
[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_dalio_how_to_build_a_company_w...
People had appetite to engage this way.
Lack of immediate repercussions, is what I've seen in my life.
If you know better than anyone else, there's a fortune to be made on Wall Street. A problem is that the way he uses "smart" is not in line with how non-financial people think, so when these phrases/anecdotes escape their context it sounds... uh... the way it does.
Sure, there might be a better way to phrase what he's saying. But he's not wrong.
(Separately, there's a reason why tweets with 500 words of qualifiers and "it depends" and "YMMV" don't catch on. Brevity counts, especially when reminding people that they don't/can't know everything compared to The Market.)
Dalio reminds me of Timothy Leary high on his own supply and probably the kind of person I avoid in social situations.
Who do I admire? Check out the MSRB leadership, Bond Dealers Association...you know, folks who build schools and roads. Dalio's legacy is like Ozymandias but near as I can tell that windbag ain't built shit.
I mean, they are completely different beasts.
Dalio's appeal is the same as Cohen and Rajat because hype and image work around a bunch of easily conned geeks.
I'll go all in - Ray Dalio is a legally legitimate version of Lou Pearlman without the Boy Bands.
BONUS:
Ray's "be a prick and call it constructive" philosophy spread. I know this because I interviewed with Vari. FKA a startup known as VariDesk. Maybe some here know about it?
So they talked big about their new office furniture pivot - names like Goldman Sachs - and I did some research. You know, legit players in the business. This is Dallas. Serious money is here serious people are here. Well at Vari they are sure to mention they embrace the Dalio inspired communication technique...
"Oh? Honestly, they're not even on my radar - they're not even close to being a player. Their quality is awful and their SKU list? Nope, Goldman Sachs would laugh them out of the room."
So after Vari ghosted me I made sure to give them the legit treatment:
"Here in Texas, we would call your pitch a bunch of happy horse shit."
700+ positions (comically overdiversified), top 2 holdings is the S&P and an emerging markets ETF that make up 11% of the portfolio.
Why does anyone pay a premium for this over holding the S&P or a total world ETF.
Less than five minutes, but gets the point across. Skip to 2:50 for visual.
the reference performance from fund inception is a pretty poor proxy if you were not a limited partner from inception
side pockets can be the greatest of all time
That analysis is also important in case anyone wants to learn how to (or how NOT to) run a company
There must be an ongoing PR push.
It is impossible to come up with a macroeconomic model that perfectly describes reality because economic realities are far too complex to be modelled. That doesn't mean there is zero truth or value to these models, but it means they are certainly wrong, and that is is healthy to approach all macroeconomic analysis with a critical mind.
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/488767-bloomberg-spent...
It sounds like Dalio killed his puppy. I don't know what happened but Copeland seems to hate him.
In interviews he mostly seems level headed, but intermittently he lets the façade drop.
I do wonder how he is getting the funds for such a media blitz. Does he have a tremendous number of friends in the media, is he independently wealthy, or is someone backing him?
Ray Dalio is a perfect example of a person being analytically and synthetically successful and otherwise covering for severe character defects like Steve Jobs and in the big picture guys look like him are a fucking joke and anybody who takes them seriously as "leaders" should be smacked around a few times with a hardcover biography of Teddy Roosevelt.
Dalio might not be able to juggle but he's still a clown who gets clicks.
Steve isn't really a joke unless you like "That isn't my daughter" and "Haha I conspire to keep wages down" and "fuck musicians I need a yacht" is comedy.
I can go on and on because I'm glad he never got to see that yacht. He was a cancer. Intellectual cancer.
Is the "he" here referring to billionaire Ray Dalio or author Rob Copeland? :)
Worth pointing out here that Lee Kuan Yew is perhaps the most widely praised leader of his generation. I read a book about him a couple years ago that was prefaced with endorsements from every president going back to Carter, every major Sec. of State, and so on and so forth. Trying to portray praise of Lee Kuan Yew as unhinged is itself unhinged.
For example:
> Dalio, 72, has a deep respect for the country and its leaders, people who know him said. He once even organized a group meant to govern Bridgewater and named it the Politburo, after the Chinese government’s decision-making body.
* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-20/dalio-s-c...
(Note that "Politburo" was used in many/most Communist countries, not just China.)
We have millions of people professionally throwing dice in the stock market. A few of them will be very successful and become billionaires. But there’s not much benefit to society, and nothing interesting to emulate. The best thing might be to ignore these people who seem to endlessly crave attention and respect for their purported achievements.
It's definitely a Gell-Mann amnesia type thing[0]. Imagine you're someone who does cross-fit and you read an article about "a group of people being forced to get up at 5 in the morning to rapidly lift heavy things until they are exhausted" - you'd go "wow that sounds horrible" but then "wait, I chose to do this and I love what it does for me."
Bridgewater is a super rigorous place to work where you know exactly where you stand due to direct feedback and practices that hold up failure as a fodder for learning (different than punishment.) That's not for everyone - even I had trouble "metabolizing" it at times but overall it's a great way to operate.
BW is a great place to work for the right people. I loved my few years there and I say this even though I got fired eventually. It has made me much stronger and set me up for ongoing success elsewhere.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amn...
- How was your time there?
- What was your role at the company?
- What was the interview process like?
- Can you describe what a normal day looked like for you?
- How often did you interact with RD?
- What was the book's biggest mischaracterization/exaggeration of RD/BW?
- What was the book's most accurate assessment?
- Why did you get fired? What was the firing process like (any NDAs/noncompetes)?
// How was your time there?
I found it challenging but worthwhile. Bridgewater drowns you in feedback even if you're an amazing performer, so you're constantly aware of your good and bad patterns. Obviously some of that stuff is hard to hear because your ego fights it being true, but I found a few areas where I really embraced the feedback and improved myself not just as an employee but as a person. EG, I am more decisive, more aware of my propensity to over-analyze and the real impact it can have on things, etc. Some of the stuff was deeper but too much context to explain.
// - What was your role at the company?
I was brought in as a senior tech IC with an eye to take the space on as a manager.
// - What was the interview process like?
I think it was fairly specific to me and my role to be honest. One big thing obviously is the firm is very focused on screening out people who are not interested in operating in this culture of growth and transparency.
// - Can you describe what a normal day looked like for you?
In terms of time allocation, not that different than my prior job at a fintech or subsequent FAANG. Every colleague was very smart and communication was very high-bandwidth. I really appreciated being able to say "you are confusing me" or "this doesn't make sense to do because X" -- and have people say this stuff to me -- without hesitation. It was very good to know where you stand and have no barrier to let others know what you are thinking.
// - How often did you interact with RD?
I was in a few large meetings where he was in and otherwise had a chat w him at a picnic table outside the office on a sunny day. I think he was sitting there smoking a pipe before I came to say hi.
// What was the book's biggest mischaracterization/exaggeration of RD/BW?
I didn't read the book and based on the articles I see coming from it, I have zero interest. But mainly, BW culture is legitimately not for everybody and not even for most people. The mistake people make it hearing about how it works and instead of deciding "wow, that's not for me" - they decide "wow, that's terrible."
An analogy I have is something like - imagine someone told you about an olympian's training regiment, diet, etc. You'd probably go "wow what a horrible life" - but the olympian loves it because that type of rigor is necessary for the kind of performance they seek to attain. Obviously working at BW is not the olympics but as an analogy it works.
// - What was the book's most accurate assessment?
Similar to above, it sounds like the book describes certain processes and attributes of the culture and then tells you "and that's terrible" whereas the folks who work there love these aspects of the culture and connect it to their personal growth, company success, etc.
// Why did you get fired? What was the firing process like (any NDAs/noncompetes)?
When COVID hit, we downsized the tech department of my business. I was legitimately the weakest person of my role in my area so it was right for me to go. I don't say this as false modesty, I am good at what I do but the other people were even better. The firing was super respectful, I got to pick my exit date and had very generous severance. BW has a fairly standard non-compete that I signed when I joined (I had thought about it for a while and decided it was a worthwhile risk.) Mainly, if I wanted to go to another fund for a similar role, they were likely to block it. The further afield I went, the less of an issue there was. I had two jobs in the non-compete period (2 years) and BW signed off on both within the same day.
Happy to share anything else
> To Ray Dalio, sitting across the table, the analogy would have been seamless.
There's been a few really good, long-form articles on Ray Dalio and Bridgewater recently. It's reassuring to see there's room for one that's not as good as them to also make it onto the front page of HN. For the sake of completeness, if nothing else, and because maybe they'll interest people in reading those better articles, and the book they are in service of.
It's not necessarily bad to seek inspiration from strong leader archetype when it's applied to business though (even though comparing someone to Putin on social media is like calling them Hitler today, but IRL there's more nuance).
Companies aren't democracies. Even companies with experimental decentralized structures like Valve still ultimately have a single person at the top making important calls.
Of course the overtly-negative stuff like not tolerating dissent is another question. But most people don't seek to draw inspiration from other famous leaders by trying to copy their worst negative traits. You tend to take the cream from the top from multiple people, ditch the negative attributes, and assemble a new whole.
If more rich successful people tried help educate the public the way Ray does, the world would be a better place.
Are his principles actually true? Accurate?
I ask because Bridgewater does not use them in any of their trading strategies.
Expressed "intrigue"?