For those who want the short version:<p>GS' bonus system has a screwy bonus system that isn't very predictable, and most people live well above their salary, relying on the bonus.<p>So instead he thinks you should earn nothing, and that way you ... Wait, no, you'd still be living above your means.<p>Sheesh.
"This tendency reached the height of comedy inside the strategies division, where some of the quants published academic papers on the more theoretical aspects of their work. If an author quit Goldman though, his name would be removed from the official version of the publication. It got to the point that some papers had no authors, and had apparently written themselves. So it goes. No longer with the firm."<p>I suspect he plagiarized this whole anecdode from the autobiography "My Life as a Quant", in which Emanuel Derman is talking about his experience at <i>Salomon Brothers</i>, rather than GS:<p><a href="http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/my_life-excerpt.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ederman.com/new/docs/my_life-excerpt.html</a><p>"The level of fear that permeated Salomon was more evident, too. Friends of mine who wanted to leave the firm were semi paranoid that their bosses would discover that they were interviewing elsewhere and then fire them before they left. I never heard anyone at Goldman speak this way; despite the natural tension between employer and employee, most Goldman workers never imagined that exercising their right to look at other jobs would naturally lead to being fired.<p>There were other signs of Salomon's take-no-prisoners culture. In the 1980s, the Bond Portfolio Analysis (BPA) group had written a series of renowned reports for clients on valuing swaps and other recently invented derivatives contracts. Each report's distinctive light brown cover bore the names of its authors printed in a darker brown. Then, over the years, as one or more of the original authors left the firm for other banks or trading houses, BPA would reprint the report, having removed the departed authors' names. Eventually there were old but popular reports still being distributed that apparently had no author at all. This Orwellian rewriting of history struck me as particularly petty and ineffective, an affront to the notion of research."<p>From "My Life as a Quant"...<p>If so, what else did he make up? Did he directly experience <i>any</i> of this during his brief stay as a junior member of GS? Or is it all just a bunch of crap he's been reading in books like "Liar's Poker"?
"...and with the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers."<p>Minor correction to that: theoretically ADHD kids given stimulants should become more calm, not more hyper.
I respect the author's point of view, and I have to agree that Wall Street has .. well.. no moral compass (or maybe its compass points continually to $$$).
But I don't completely agree with his description of what a quant does. It all depends on where they work and what asset class they focus on.
Some quants determine the trading strategy of a desk. They are in charge of making strategic and technical decisions. Some tech driven trading desks actually are structured as a sort of "start up" within the main bank. The team would have a couple of quants and a bunch of programmers working together. The quants specify the strategy and the algorithm, the programmers code, test and deploy it. In these situations, the quant is not a subordinate to the trader, but a peer.
This post reflect's the author's own experience and it makes for interesting and entertaining reading. I doubt, however, that it is a true reflection of what a quant's job is.
"Giving sophisticated models and fast computers to traders is like giving handguns and tequila to teenage boys."<p>This seems to be a riff on PJ O'Rourke's remark about giving money and power to governments.
Another reason:
<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-close-to-acquiring-adgrok/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/twitter-close-to-acquiring-...</a>
This is beautifully written and a genuinely entertaining read. I love it just for that, without the politics or without judging the validity of it's message. I just really enjoyed reading it.
I can understand Argyris Zymnis got his PhD in Electrical Engineering, probably did some research in signal processing, data fusion, etc. A Physics PhD ends up become a advertisement algorithm coder? How does that academic experience help though...no idea quantum mechanics applies in this area.
" the attention span of an ADHD kid hopped up on meth and Jolly Ranchers"<p>I think meth and sugar actually makes ADHD kids more calm because it allows for the easily triggered mental satisfaction obtained from normal everyday interactions, which ADHD kids crave and require constant attention and running around in circles to obtain, something we naturally get without drugs. But moving on with the article. :)