Matt's said before that he reached a certain point at GS where he was expected to get more involved in sales, as opposed to just the structuring side of his desk, and felt he was quite bad at it.
Probably quite a bit of self depreciation on Matt's part though given that when he decided to quit his boss essentially said, "Why don't you just, you know, take some time off to think about it?"
I'd say someone with Matt's background and general mannerisms - even at GS where eccentricity and raw intellect, for lack of better descriptors, are traditionally valued - would be a significant outlier.
I worked at GS and I think the only people that fit the Levine mold were in weird structuring desks, like Matt was. In particular, PFI had quite a few characters that remind me of Matt. Ali Meli, who left GS recently and was written up by Bloomberg, comes to mind. Clearly intellectually above others with weird, interesting perspectives on things. Also given leash to go dream up and do weird and interesting things.
I don't think people like Matt actually have much value add in most areas of a modern investment bank, unfortunately. As Matt says: banking is boring now. I don't see how someone like Matt would succeed is traditional banking - or a flow trading desk - over the "average" GS employee who studied finance at Wharton or whatever. Most areas of banking strike me as having become very commoditized or routinized and outliers are viewed as more apt to cause tail risk than anything.
You have to be smart to trade flow derivatives. Not only is it necessary to understand the product and pricing tools, but also you have less time to examine any given trade than your customer does, you have to deal with weird correlations and dispersions that were forced upon you by customers, your social skills and sixth/"I'm getting played" sense are just as much a part of your toolkit as are your math skills, and you aren't given too much leeway with mark-to-market p&l.
You probably noticed at GS that a risk desk won't put an employee in front of a book just because he got good grades at UPenn.
I would recommend the following video that may not provide explicit answers, but will perhaps provide a contextual understanding for how you're feeling.
It sounds like you've slammed your new life full of ephemeral busywork to, well, keep yourself occupied. It also sounds like you don't have a professional network that relies on you and that you rely on (since you're financially independent and just poking around these days).
You may want to take a step back, enmesh yourself for a few weeks or months in all the possible paths you could focus yourself on (which will likely be chaotic and unenjoyable), and then just dedicate yourself to pursuing a given path. Try to build up a network, feel you are helping others in the network, and see where it all goes.
Whether this path ends up being financially fruitful or being conventionally successful along some other axis should be viewed as irrelevant given your current status. You'll likely find just having a thing to do, that other people are also working tangentially on or are interested in, will bring you all the success you need.
Watched the video. I am definitely the kind of person he describes, and I agree with the diagnosis he makes about the human condition. I honestly don't think the cure he is suggesting is working, otherwise, I wouldn't be here.
I am very very very far from being passive, indeed I (try to) fill (most of) my days with challenges and creative activities from which I get pride (cit.) pleasure, and make me feel alive.
I've always lived this way, and it starts to feel like a "challenge addiction" that doesn't really take me anywhere long term. It makes me perpetually and intermittently unsatisfied so that I need to go find "the next thing" to create/do/work on, that will make the discomfort go away, and let me feel PRIDE. For 10 minutes. And then back to it...
It's a hamster wheel, and it's the very reason I started this thread. I started to somehow look with envy at the "content people" which seem to get away with passive and superficial relaxing lives.
Ok, this is a very good reply and feedback. I am not even sure I am fully grasping it at the moment. I will get back after I watched the video. But it seems like you read between the lines pretty well.
>enmesh yourself for a few weeks or months in all the possible paths you could focus yourself on
Can you expand a bit on this? Maybe provide some examples...
Because sometimes with the "pocking around, keeping myself busy, ..." I do have the illusion I am exploring some paths. In a very shallow way
Do you happen to be from Quebec? I'm Canadian by birth and have wanted recently to learn Quebecois French, but have struggled with finding practical resources (as everyone seems to agree most French resources and learning programs are going to give you a rather half-baked understanding of Quebecois French).
I’m Québécois. Honestly, I’m not aware of any Quebec-specific online resources. If you’re still living in Canada, there’s a good chance that you can get night classes at a University that would be taught by a Quebec expat. Otherwise, I wouldn’t agree that other resources will give you a half-baked understanding. It’s mostly a question of training your ear for the accent, which you can do by watching shows, for example. Differences in vocabulary are well-documented and easy to memorize (probably, as someone who’s done the reverse and learned the France equivalent).
Mango languages app offers Canadian French/Québécois - I find their approach to language learning much better than Duolingo. Plus it comes free with your library card if you’re in Ontario!
My primary personal account is with HSBC. A few years ago the login infrastructure - with the little keypad you had to use, etc. - was ridiculous and their app was only a bit better.
However, over the past few years they've really improved. The website is now consistent across all tabs (at least that I use for personal banking) and the app is simplified with most functionality needed for personal use in there.
On the personal side, I've always found the people at branches of HSBC (regardless of where you go) to be courteous and professional relative to the few others banks I have accounts with. I'm not in the UK, so perhaps things are different there, but in North America I've found them to be a slight step above average (insofar as you can be for retail banking --- it's all relative!).
This reads like a moral screed. That's fine. They're entitled to their own views, to voice those views internally, and if they aren't adopted to leave the company and write a polemic.
Ultimately, two thirds of their complaints involve taking a position counter to the stated national interest of the United States. Sure, maybe they believe that national interest is wrong, morally objectionable, or whatever, but the inference you draw from the writing is that it clearly is. That everyone at Google knows this is wrong, should be stopped, but isn't because of the monetary gains of doing these things.
> 2. Google Cloud sales to the oil and gas industry
I mean, if Google Cloud makes the extraction of natural gas more efficient then that strikes me as a net good for the planet. A large part of the emissions decrease in the U.S. over the past decade is from the economic viability of natural gas relative to coal. Dream of a bucolic lifestyle all you want, but reality should be confronted in these matters.
3. Expansion into the weapons industry and the business of killing
The business of killing terrorists - with increasing levels of precision - strikes me (and every administration in memory) as clearly being in the national best interest. The better targeting capacity available, the less collateral damage and need for U.S. boots on the ground abroad there will be.
You can, of course, find drone strikes morally objectionable. You can find killing what are deemed threats to the homeland as objectionable. That's fine. But to state this as an objective truth is to find yourself holding a position at odds with nearly all elected law makers.
If you, as a company, agree or disagree with U.S. domestic and national security policy, fill your boots. But Google working in concert with the U.S. domestic and national security policies isn't choosing money over morality per se.
People have different perspectives and these people clearly have perspectives unaligned with their former employers. Good on them for leaving. However, I have to say reading this screed makes it seem like the adults in the room are the executives they lambast.
First of all Google affects a lot more than just the USA and while HQed in the USA is in many ways an international company.
Secondly, even if you take a US centric view of things, just because someone at the Pentagon claims something is the US best interests doesn't mean it is. People say, "oh we need these dangerous AI based weapons or other countries will win an arms race". Arms races benefit military contractors but few other people. The 20th century taught us lessons about arms races and we should learn from them. The USA does not build nuclear weapons anymore, instead it invests heavily in diplomacy to prevent other countries from building nuclear weapons. For some reason, few people seem to consider that we could take the same approach to AI weaponry.
People simply underestimate the dangers of AI weaponry. Suppose you are an evil dictator who wants to oppress and enslave a group of people, and you can choose between a nuclear bomb, or a drone that has enough intelligence to hunt down journalists, political opponents, and any other dissidents that dare defy you. Which weapon would this hypothetical tyrant pick?
Yes, wealthy, powerful people at the top ranks of politics and business in this country, who stand to gain more wealth and power via the development of these weapons, support Google developing them. However, your position that since they're the authority figures, anybody who questions them is not an "adult", strikes me as extremely asinine and highly dangerous.
> The USA does not build nuclear weapons anymore, instead it invests heavily in diplomacy to prevent other countries from building nuclear weapons. For some reason, few people seem to consider that we could take the same approach to AI weaponry.
Because it didn't work with nuclear weapons. Just look at North Korea to name the most recent example.
> Yes, wealthy, powerful people at the top ranks of politics and business in this country, who stand to gain more wealth and power via the development of these weapons, support Google developing them. However, your position that since they're the authority figures, anybody who questions them is not an "adult", strikes me as extremely asinine and highly dangerous.
And your reflexive attitude towards "authority figures" strikes me as extremely adolescent.
Extremely intelligent people developing sophisticated technology for military applications is not an inherently bad thing.
> Arms races benefit military contractors but few other people. The 20th century taught us lessons about arms races and we should learn from them.
Indeed, but I don't think you've learned those lessons yourself. During the Second World War, if it weren't for the countless Allied scientists and engineers who designed weapons, broke codes, designed manufacturing processes, invented such things as the Mulberry harbors--the war would have, at minimum, lasted much longer than it did, and may have reached a much worse conclusion than it did.
I agree that evil dictators would probably find some profitable uses for AI technology. That's exactly why evil dictatorships are going to develop that technology anyway, regardless of whether we do or not. Oppenheimer, von Neumann, Feynman, and others refusing to help with the Manhattan Project wouldn't have made a whit of difference to whether or not Heisenberg was going to develop an atomic bomb for the Germans. And if Turing, Browning, Garand, Mitchell, and others refused to build weapons for the Allies, Heisenberg might have had the time and resources necessary to complete that bomb.
Your default perspective appears to be that U.S. domestic and national security policy is the sole remit of unelected authority figures (e.g. "...just because someone at the Pentagon claims something is the US best interests doesn't mean it is.").
U.S. domestic and national security policy is certainly refined by unelected folks within various departments and agencies, but the overarching direction comes via elected representatives selected by the people.
Senator Warren and Senator Sanders - if elected president - would likely make the contracts in question (related to oil/gas and AI in the military) obsolete. If the American people feel aligned with their views on these issues - among others - and elect them and folks like them to the house and senate then you'll see a fundamentally different set of domestic and foreign policy objectives.
> However, your position that since they're the authority figures, anybody who questions them is not an "adult", strikes me as extremely asinine and highly dangerous.
There is also an increasing issue in Canada of minor operations being delayed to the point where major surgical intervention is eventually needed.
With the medical system over-burdened, the system is now fundamentally reactionary in many specialties; delaying anything that can possibly be delayed.
It's saving a penny today to pay a dollar (or a loonie, I should say) tomorrow. It's economically burdensome and, obviously, creates a great deal of unnecessary hardship for those in line.
Nearly every Canadian has anecdotal stories of elderly relatively who had a minor ailment that needed surgery - were delayed for months because they were
low priority - and then needed a larger intervention as the problem compounded over said months.
Where does this show up in the data? How do you measure and value up to a year - which can be more than 10% of an elderly persons remaining life - being mired in uncertainty, discomfort, and pain waiting for a procedure? How do you measure medical efficiency and patient outcomes in this context?
The best way to describe the current system is that doctors (surgeons, in particular) are forced not to look out for the individual patient's best interest, but the best interest of their entire surgical waiting list in aggregate (and this can be dozens of names long).
So, yes, it is in the best interest of Patient X to have the minor operation done this week as there is a strong likelihood of further complications and a worse patient outcome if delayed. However, Patient Y needs a major surgery this week so Patient Y, rationally, gets the higher priority.
Depends on your definition of practically unknown. With that said, these are the four that immediately spring to mind as being both worth reading and relatively obscure (judging by date of publication in conjunction with being either out of print or with very few star ratings on Amazon).
Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? - Peter Termin, 1975
Termin is still going strong at MIT. His 1975 book was foundational for challenging Friedman on the cause of the Great Depression. Given what was to come in the 1980s this book quickly became overshadowed and destined for obscurity. However, it still provides an appropriate, timely lens to analyze monetary theory without the abstraction that has engrossed economics as of late.
The Supreme Court in the American System of Government - Robert Jackson, 1955
A series of lectures created for a Harvard lecture series in 1954-55 by Justice Jackson. He suddenly died before being able to deliver them, but they were compiled in a book now out of print. Justice Jackson is widely regarded - across the aisle - as one of the most brilliant legal writers of our time (or perhaps of any time). While this book doesn't set out his entire judicial philosophy, or even do what the title says due to his untimely death, it does lay a valuable conception of the proper role of the SCOTUS within the Republic. Also recommended, to see both his pen and intellect in action, are his opinions in Korematsu v. United States and West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.
The Opium of the Intellectuals - Aron, 1955
Amazon does a better job of summarizing than I could off the top of my head, so here you go: "Raymond Aron's 1955 masterpiece The Opium of the Intellectuals, is one of the great works of twentieth- century political reflection. Aron shows how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of "secular religion" and emphasizes how political thought has the profound responsibility of telling the truth about social and political reality-in all its mundane imperfections and tragic complexities."
An incredibly difficult read that is worth trying to get through. Brimming with ideas and not without its own pitfalls. Tells the story of 20th Century intellectual history and thought as well as any could, although in a rather indirect way.
The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (Aristocracy & Caste in America) - Baltzell, 1987
I'll let Amazon summarize again: "This classic account of the traditional upper class in America traces its origins, lifestyles, and political and social attitudes from the time of Theodore Roosevelt to that of John F. Kennedy. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell describes the problems of exclusion and prejudice within the community of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (or WASPs, an acronym he coined) and predicts with amazing accuracy what will happen when this inbred group is forced to share privilege and power with talented members of minority groups."
My summary would be: what will happen (hypothetically, remember the date of publication) when an ephemeral class (WASPs) suddenly disappear from their previous pedestal of influence? Prescient, widely applicable to other countries with their own quasi-classes, and deeply interesting for those less familiar with the subject.
Thanks very much. These were all read before the 2016 election, if that's what you mean. I think they are important books for our times certainly though.
USA seems like it's going to hit a crisis as fundamental productivity metrics have split from stock valuations, in favor of stocks... either the Fed has cracked the inflation nut with Modern Monetary Theory's promise of unlimited liquidity or we're absolutely super-duper screwed.
Because your post is quite far down, I'm not sure it'll get many views/replies. Just wanted to say that I read it all and it's both informative, interesting, and (regrettably) demoralizing.
In my first year of college I wanted to be a doctor and landed an absurd position - in hindsight - over my freshman summer where I was in the operating room with my surgeon nearly everyday (he led the residents). I tagged along through all the rounds, operations, and (of course) the tedious paperwork and billings.
By the end of the summer I was entirely jaded and switched programs. I still often think about whether or not I should have stuck it out.
However, what I ultimately saw (as you mentioned) were residents at this top, well-funded hospital who deeply loved medicine when they began medical school fall into a deeply jaded, pessimistic state. They made no money (while living in a high CoL city), were consistently overworked, and riddled with anxiety about where they would actually get a job post-residency.
Becoming a doctor - a surgeon in particular - struck me as a dozen year journey of constant make-or-break tests, quasi-lotteries with regards to residencies/fellowships, and then complete ambiguity as to where you would actually work when it was all done and you hit your mid-thirties. It also seemed increasingly devoid of any kind of professional autonomy and, most surprising to me, was how ungrateful and mean-spirited many patients were. Their lives would be saved, but they would yell at the surgeons over cosmetic concerns about the scars.
I often wonder whether my experience was not representative or simply too much to absorb as an 18-year-old at the time. However, the only folks I've talked to who seem to be truly satisfied and content with their careers are family doctors operating (largely) on their own terms and making 200-300k a year.
EDIT: I should say, I wish you the best moving forward and hope you find a level of contentment and happiness in a bruising - to put it mildly - system.
> I often wonder whether my experience was not representative
Everything you described is concordant with what I saw on my surgery rotations in medical school, and everything I've seen of surgeons in the hospital since then. Especially the mean-spirited and ungrateful patients. The ones that hurt, though, are the ones that come into the hospital hostile and confrontational from the outset.
"I know exactly what I need, and exactly what you need to do, and you're going to do it, or I'm going to have your balls!" I mean, that might be true. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. But nothing about talking to me like a rabid dog is going to make the process any better. And honestly, if you know your health, that's great - that will be very helpful. But ignoring other things it can be that masquerade as what you've got would be tragically irresponsible, so please don't bite my head off when I address the other conditions on my differential. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just trying not to be negligent.
Some patients will understand that, if we're given time to talk to them like human beings. But we basically never are, which makes things terrible for everyone.
The constant make-or-break tests and quasi-lotteries are a particularly apt description of medical school, and why - IIRC - the most recent stats put medical student rates of anxiety disorders at almost 50% of med students, and depression at approximately 30%. We absolutely destroy young physicians right at the outset. Studies of physician compassion have found that med students' compassion drives into the ground somewhere in third year - not with their first "your entire career relies on this" exam, but with their first exposure of what medicine has become, and how patients will be treating them.
If you're interested in this, you'll likely enjoy Gregory's interview on Masters in Business (a Bloomberg podcast) from last Wednesday. Also, Gregory's book will be out in a few days.
If memory serves, in the aforementioned podcast Gregory mentions that the RenTech generally holds most things for a few days (sometimes a few hours). However, they don't engage in HFT or HFT-like trading. This was surprising to me as I assumed it was all reasonably short holdings (relatively speaking), although I knew they weren't a pure HFT firm.
I also seem to recall Gregory mentioning there's some kind of running joke internally that their trading systems aren't nearly as good as they should be (or like what you would find at HFT firms). Given the intellectual and monetary heft within RenTech perhaps that's a bit of false modesty on their part.
I'll be interested in reading Gregory's book as he does seem to have put together a lot of novel information on RenTech. However, he does seem to suggest that very little of the day-to-day workings of the firm will be explored, which would obviously be immensely interesting.
EDIT: RenTech has several funds, it should be noted. Some of which still take outside capital. What I've said above may have only been applicable to the Medallion fund.
This is exactly right. Although your suggestion that a congressional law would overturn Citizens United is not necessarily true. It's a difficult question given the basis of the original decision.
With that said, I'm rather surprised at how poorly constructed this letter is. If you're going to trot out trivial platitudes, you might as well go full bore and craft a persuasive polemic.
Instead this letter reads to me as a mealy-mouthed, mushy argument crafted by people who self-evidently favor paternalistic oversight when their letter does little to persuade me these are the people who should have any oversight over anything at all.
Ironically, if a politician of a favourable political persuasion linked to this letter in an ad I'm not sure how it could not be labeled as "misleading". It posits things that directly render many of the underlying "solutions" moot. The argument is broken almost immediately after it begins.
The best treatment of Citizens United I've seen is by Laurence Tribe - who no one of any merit would consider an apologist for Republicans or a textualist - in his book "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution". The actual decision itself reads well and is worth everyone's time.
> This is exactly right. Although your suggestion that a congressional law would overturn Citizens United is not necessarily true. It's a difficult question given the basis of the original decision.
Probably quite a bit of self depreciation on Matt's part though given that when he decided to quit his boss essentially said, "Why don't you just, you know, take some time off to think about it?"
I'd say someone with Matt's background and general mannerisms - even at GS where eccentricity and raw intellect, for lack of better descriptors, are traditionally valued - would be a significant outlier.
I worked at GS and I think the only people that fit the Levine mold were in weird structuring desks, like Matt was. In particular, PFI had quite a few characters that remind me of Matt. Ali Meli, who left GS recently and was written up by Bloomberg, comes to mind. Clearly intellectually above others with weird, interesting perspectives on things. Also given leash to go dream up and do weird and interesting things.
I don't think people like Matt actually have much value add in most areas of a modern investment bank, unfortunately. As Matt says: banking is boring now. I don't see how someone like Matt would succeed is traditional banking - or a flow trading desk - over the "average" GS employee who studied finance at Wharton or whatever. Most areas of banking strike me as having become very commoditized or routinized and outliers are viewed as more apt to cause tail risk than anything.