Imprecate

If you own the business, why would any rational market participant buy your product or service without expecting it to create more value for them than they paid? Same thing, really.

The issue posed by the original post was that great programmers are not paid proportionally to their output, not whether their employer makes a spread on them.

You're correct though that the closer you get to the money the more value you'll capture. You also take more risk. How many startups have folded where junior engineers made $100k/yr and investors and founders left the endeavor with nothing or a net loss? Depending on your life situation, being more risk-averse and taking the guaranteed paycheck isn't such a bad thing.

Untrue, many salaried finance types eat what they kill in bonus comp, even some developers (front office developers or quants) if they're responsible for driving P&L and not just a cost center.

I guess you could argue that they aren't salaried since their bonus compensation is usually significant, often many multiples of their relatively low base salary.

Can someone explain exactly what's going on here between these guys? It all seems like a bunch of schizophrenic rambling.

I have no opinion on Overstock as an investment or business, but their market cap is around $300mm; I don't see how hedge funds could make enough shorting it for it to be worth committing fraud.

There are areas where I get great data service when nobody else is around. Then during peak hours data service is very slow or intermittent even though my signal strength stays the same. I'm not a telecom engineer, but it seems like they have too few towers for the number of subscribers in some areas or they don't have enough bandwidth in their backhaul.

Maybe both AT&T and the iPhone are bad, at least in my case.

When I travel to less populated cities, 3G data is always extremely fast; still I'd rather have a consistent 800 Kbps than 1500 when I'm lucky and 50 when I'm not.

I don't think programmers are really worth more as they age. Experience lets you add more value to a point (probably around 10 years), but lots of young programmers are equally if not more productive. Many are willfully ignorant of "business" concerns and make terrible managers.

It's not a scalable career for most people.

Making $200k+/yr is not especially hard in high cost of living markets, but it's also not a lot of money there. In New York, 22-year-old Analysts at Goldman make ~125k all-in and most live in crappy studio apartments.

Maybe. If you think about successful serial entrepreneurs or executives, they could easily leave the game and live on a tropical island. There are many reasons to stay, like having an interesting life or wanting to change the world, but I think most have an innate desire to win.

I doubt it's a positive trait overall, but some outliers manage to channel it into something productive.

What do you think are some effective lifestyle changes for people with ADHD? When I was a child, my parents tried all sorts of things since they didn't want to medicate me: talk therapy, activities, spending more time on organization, dietary changes, etc. I don't think they were especially helpful, but I'm always interested in trying new things.

One thing that did work for me was changing jobs. I was working a pretty traditional programming job, then moved to go work on an automated trading desk. I was on medication before but never got around to finding a psychiatrist in my new city for quite a while. I was doing short projects where you could see an immediate P&L impact; if I had buggy code it needed to be fixed immediately since money was on the line; I had a lot to learn since the culture there just expects you to know things.

I think finding a line of work with a tight effort-reward loop and frequent, interesting challenges works wonders. Unfortunately for me, I got good quickly and have to work on larger projects now.

Stimulants stimulate people with ADHD, too. I'm not sure where people get the idea that they don't. The fact that they stop trying to stimulate themselves means they act calmer, but if you gave someone with ADHD a bunch of Ritalin or a few lines, they certainly aren't falling asleep unless they have a huge tolerance.

I'm sure mild doses improve productivity for most people, but I would bet their behavior would turn manic at a lower threshold than people in the ADHD spectrum.

Living with ADHD is extremely frustrating. Without medication there were many days where I'd go to work, get side-tracked for a moment, and accomplish absolutely nothing. Operating that way in college is fine, since you can usually find time to cram, but in the real world every day is finals day.

I also tend to engage in lots of negative novelty-seeking behavior: cheating on girlfriends, speeding since I can hardly pay attention to the road at 55, drinking too much, etc. I'm vaguely anhedonic and insatiable, which has led to great success in my career, but I never enjoy it much.

In a work setting I think it's fine as long as there's some level of interest. Obviously it's a balancing act, but I like to keep my direct manager and peers working on the same component informed about test plans, etc.

One other issue with CCing everyone is that you always end up with someone throwing their two cents in about minor issues when they aren't even invested in the project.

I'm more curious why psychedelics are (or were) viewed as something that can cause social problems. It's more clear with drugs that create physical dependence, like opioids or dopamine reuptake inhibitors (cocaine, amphetamines). However, drugs in those classes, along with other addictive drugs like benzodiazepines, are legal with a doctor's prescription.

Why can't people take LSD once a year in a safe, supervised setting?

I know a lot of professionals who use drugs responsibly and recreationally. Even the ones who use hard drugs or abuse alcohol heavily tend to walk the fine line between functional addict and basket-case. Of course, there's a survivorship bias to my anecdotal evidence.

I don't smoke pot, but I think it's one of the least harmful drugs if someone enjoys getting high regularly. Physical and psychological dependance are rare, the effects are mild for most people, and it isn't especially harmful to the body (at least if you vaporize or eat it).

I knew a guy who bought his girlfriend an Eames lounge instead of an engagement ring; just as timeless and much more comfortable.

I wouldn't feel dirty about it. It's a wonderful and functional piece that costs less than a nice watch.

DWR's other problem is competition from online retailers like Hive Modern and highbrowfurniture.com. People see these great designs window-shopping in the city and buy online instead. On items this expensive, the tax savings can be pretty significant, even when you add shipping charges.

It's interesting that opening a storefront like this probably drives sales for modern furniture overall. I wonder if they get kickbacks or lower prices from suppliers.

True, though what appeals to me more is the flatness of the organization and the degree to which everyone's involved. I literally sit next to a partner writing strategies. It's nice working with people who have skin in the game, so to speak.

I've had the same experience in other small organizations, even ones with customers. You learn a lot since there's less isolation. Big corporate work is hellish to me personally since you can't see the result of your effort and don't even have the information to make good decisions.

Best of luck out there, but not too much. :)

Depends on what interests you. I think massive distributed systems processing huge amounts of data using exotic network technologies and super tight code are interesting, but it's not everyone's bag.

C++ is still used a lot because it's fast and allows you to efficiently communicate with the hardware and OS. I'll admit it's ugly, but it's a good choice for certain systems. On the pure analytics side, most quants seem to be moving to more modern and flexible languages, where prototyping ideas quickly is more important than latency.

Jane St Capital uses OCaml extensively (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2336889538700185341...).

I'm curious to see if Google's Go makes any inroads. It seems well-suited to building these types of systems and does away with some of C++'s baggage.

Most of the big high-frequency firms were founded by former commodities pit traders who knew their days were numbered and saw opportunity in the growth of electronic markets. They are not suits by any means, but not all are technical or math gurus, either.

A good example would be Dave Cummings, former KCBOT trader and founder of TradeBot (an automated trading firm) and BATS (an electronic stock exchange that's grown very rapidly over the past few years). He's actually moved into venture capital recently (http://www.tradebotventures.com/).

ETA: Though to be fair he does have an engineering background. Some others I can think of (e.g., guys who founded GETCO) don't.

I work for one of these firms. I think the article's creating a false dichotomy.

It's nothing like academia or a stereotypical think-tank. The environment is very aggressive, high-pressure, and results oriented. Nobody cares about your pedigree so long as your ideas work and make them money. Trading is one of the most purely competitive businesses in the world.

Most of the players are basically alpha male types who can do math and code. I actually think it's a great fit for people who are aggressive and entrepreneurial.

(And no, we're not front-running your orders or clubbing baby seals, despite the media's insistence otherwise.)

That may be one factor, but avoiding lawsuits over broken E911 functionality is another: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=77368

Agreed. Dustin just comes off as whiny and self-important, though I don't think the employee should have been fired considering the content of his email.

Also, booking flights is very straightforward on aa.com. Dustin could have provided some substantive comments on usability, but instead simply called it ugly and slapped together a minimalist southwest.com knock-off. The only thing that really annoys me about the site is how confusing it is to get a list of your current reservations.

A majority of the public only shops based on price and availability. Unless the website is so bad that they can't figure out where to put their credit card number, it doesn't matter.