You know how many sugar laden pitchers of Kool-Aid I drank waiting for a massive jolly anthropomorphic red pitcher to burst through the side of my house?
Those are surge protectors. They are to stop fires if something is drawing too much power, or if lightning hits they save equipment.
Please do not disable them.
If you think those "surge protectors" are going to save your gear from any significant surge, you've got another think coming. Those flimsy "circuit breakers" built in to them are more of a liability than they are a protection. Besides, do you really think a lightning strike is going to get from your electrical primaries, through your transfer switches, through your UPS, several breakers (with trip units), and come all the way through the PDU? Time to lose the power strip, it's bad practice.
I hate to defend the guy, but you have to admit that he knows how to make money. True, he did it by bludgeoning the staff, but from a strictly Wall Street point of view, he was definitely worth the salary.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes Everybody knows
I do not know for certain whether or not there was a permit issued. Suffice to say, that's a job for the investigators. With that said, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that the proper permits might not have been issues, or more importantly the proper inspections were performed in this scenario. It seems a little unusual, to say the least.
I am not suggesting that permits can magically prevent tragedies (but nice troll though).
So somehow people with industrial strength educations, most of them Masters level, or higher, graduates from BigName Schools with *years* of study in Statistics, Modelling, and Programming are equivalent to Bank Tellers?
No, not at all, but nice attempt to deflect the issue to a completely different argument.
I'm not seeing how your analogy works at all...These high frequency trading companies though are built SOLELY on their systems ability to execute trades faster than the next firm...and you can't do that without extremely educated and talented people doing the technical work.
While I agree with you that the essential component to these HFT Firms is their ability to execute trades at faster and faster speeds, this does not mean that those people who write the algorithms are the only component of that very finely tuned machine. More importantly, these very important and often educated people are entitled to a better salary than others in their field (which they are receiving), but to expect to get a cut of all the company's profits is ludicrous. If my purposefully exaggerated Bank Teller example it too much to get your head around, let's try something else from my comment. In my own example, I run a large Data Center for a major IT company that makes literally millions of dollars per hour. I am very good at what I do, and guys with my experience do not grow on trees. Is it reasonable that I should get a cut of all the revenue coming through the facility? You' can't replace me with just any average joe either.
Look, the point I'm trying to make is that it sounds like these particular programmers might have a bloated sense of importance, and might not be considering the whole picture. If I'm wrong, hey, they can all go out and start hugely successful brokerage houses, and we'll have hundreds of AIG's out there. I'll gladly eat some crow when they all succeed. Or maybe, just maybe, they're not seeing the whole picture.
In my exit interview, I told the person straight up... we're the ones providing the traders with timely data and faster calculations so that they don't have to go back to using a stubby pencil.
To be fair, I hope you included everyone else, like the people running the Data Center. After all, if those servers aren't kept cool and provided with nice, clean UPS power, neither the algorithms nor those administering the systems are going to be doing much....thus you're back to the stubby pencil. Same goes for the guys driving the trucks that deliver the servers, and take the backup tapes off site every day, without them.....stubby pencil. Let's not forget the Security folks, without them, you can't have access to the various rooms where the gear is and can't get to your equipment as you need to and thus....stubby pencil. Let's not forget about the various telecom people/providers, after all without them, the servers/algorithms wouldn't be able to talk to the market....stubby pencil.
Where does it all stop? I hear what you're saying, but you have to keep in mind that there are a LOT of moving parts to running a successful brokerage firm. Yes, IT is a very crucial part of that chain, but it's not an island.
Speak for yourself. There area plenty of people who are perfectly happy with the salary and bonus structure they've been able to negotiate. If this is a case of you feeling resentful because you have a job that is considered "exempt" but you feel that you're putting in more hours than you should be for your pay, then you need to negotiate (either with your current employer or with another one). This doesn't mean that any salaried position is bad by default.
I would recommend that anyone really ambitious work a salaried job in their chosen field for about 2 years (just like these guys did) and then strike out with their own company, ownership of IP and profits, etc. (just like these guys did).
And I wish you (and everyone who follows your advice) good luck. However, law of averages dictates that a whole lot of you are going to end up in some financially dire straits. Entrepreneurship isn't always the greener pasture. There are a whole lot of inherent risks and costs when one chooses to go it alone. That's not to say that it's a bad strategy, but assuming that it's better than accepting a well negotiated, salaried position with an established company is just silly, and in some cases, absolutely moronic.
The programmer who writes the algorithm is, in many of these firms, the main driver of profits
Incorrect, and this is the reason you (and several others) are missing the point. You are assuming (with no evidence to back up your claim) that these algorithms are essentially the "machine" that makes the money. You're completely overlooking the various infrastructure and investment that it takes to make these things happen. I don't have the energy to list the many, many components that must exist to have a successful brokerage firm, but suffice to say, it's far more than just algorithms, otherwise any programmer worth his/her salt would be making a killing on Wall Street.
Your logic is like telling Edison he doesn't deserve the bulk of profits from the light bulb
That's right! Edison wouldn't have inherently deserved the lion's share of any/all revenues derived from various companies making/selling/using his invention "the lightbulb". If he invented it, but Sylvania makes millions of them in their factories, then sells them via Sears, where they are bought by customers who install them in their homes in fixtures made by various light fixture manufacturers, and power then from various electrical utility providers, Edison should not be entitled to a piece of each part of the chain's profits.
This really isn't that difficult. As others have pointed out, it's a combination of how difficult it would be to replace a person combined with their measurable/demonstrative monetary contributions to a company that determine the salary. The issue with these programmers is that the profits seem high because this is a game of scale, not profit margin. The big brokerage firms are making big bucks on millions and millions of very tiny profit margins. However, they're also taking on all the risk, putting up all the money, and providing all of the other parts of the working machine (employees, facilities, communication, etc).
I think the real problem isn't that the programmers should make more, it is that the traders should make LESS
I don't know that I agree. I think this is a very subjective issue. The reality is, the amount of revenue derived partially from these programmers has absolutely nothing to do with what their compensation is or should be. By their rationale, every teller at a bank should have salaries commensurate with that bank's revenue, since they're an element in processing deposits/checks/payments/etc. Hell, the data center I run makes millions every hour, but I don't expect that I should make 7 or 8 figures because of it.
The lesson here is: negotiate well on the way in. Do your homework, find out what the job entails and what responsibilities/liabilities you will have and determine for yourself if the compensation being offered is worth it. Once you cut the deal, that's it. If you don't like it, you can do as the programmers in the article are doing, go somewhere else and try to negotiate a better deal. It ain't personal, it's business.
If it turns out these crashes are Windows blue screens, the media will jump all over Microsoft
Well, before all the Microsoft Haters pile on, according to this the Control System in place was something called Cameron Multiplex Control System, which I've also seen referred to as Cameron MUX and CAMITROL. I am not pretending to be an expert in these things, just thought I'd share what little Googling turned up.
In short, it looks pretty unlikely that there's going to be a red hot poker headed toward Redmond over this.
I think the point being made is that many of the criteria for qualifying if someone is abusing something has to do with how it affects their ability to do everyday, necessary things
That may indeed be what he meant, however in his original post (the one I replied to), his statement wasn't so discerning, so I was pointing out the often held misconceptions. While I do agree that it's not the amount of substance(s) that one is taking that determine whether or not one has "a problem", I would point out that it doesn't mean that one has to have large, major, and obvious impact in their life to indicate a problem.
To your point, if someone is using something (drugs, alcohol, etc), it's true that it's really not a big deal so long as it's not negatively impacting that person (or other people's) life. This doesn't mean that the impact has to be dramatic though. That is, a person who drinks doesn't have to get several DUIs or lose his/her job due to drinking to indicate there is a problem. Lots of people fool themselves into thinking that they're "in control" of their drinking/drug use, when in fact they're not.
Now to reiterate, I'm not suggesting that the OP's friends have problems, nor am I implying this about you or your friends. Rather pointing out the distinction that small, regular habits can indeed become problematic and can progress slowly over time. Just because you don't pull a David Hasselhoff and make a fool out of yourself doesn't mean you don't have some issues. Remember, most professionals agree, if you feel you have to "control" something or keep something "in check", you are at some level dealing with a dependency that you are choosing to resist. This doesn't mean that everyone who touches anything (drink/drugs) has problems, and I'm not suggesting a puritanical view, just that these things can be tricky.
You try listening to Aphex Twin - Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels Mount.
Somewhat related (and if you're feeling experimental), let me recommend Sunn O))). Their newest CD Monoliths and Dimensions is admittedly an acquired taste, but if you can get into the zone, it's pretty interesting stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
You know how many sugar laden pitchers of Kool-Aid I drank waiting for a massive jolly anthropomorphic red pitcher to burst through the side of my house?
OH YEEAAHHHH!!!
at my dormitory, my absolute favorite way to open the locked door (magnetic strike) controlled by a RFID reader is to open the door with my ass
So nice to see the fruit of higher education.
5 - Thanshin (1188877)* has a few alternate SlashDot accounts which currently have mod points, and decided to reward him/herself with a little karma.
*don't get mad, I'm just busting your chops.
;-)
Those are surge protectors. They are to stop fires if something is drawing too much power, or if lightning hits they save equipment. Please do not disable them.
If you think those "surge protectors" are going to save your gear from any significant surge, you've got another think coming. Those flimsy "circuit breakers" built in to them are more of a liability than they are a protection. Besides, do you really think a lightning strike is going to get from your electrical primaries, through your transfer switches, through your UPS, several breakers (with trip units), and come all the way through the PDU? Time to lose the power strip, it's bad practice.
He turned that company around.
I hate to defend the guy, but you have to admit that he knows how to make money. True, he did it by bludgeoning the staff, but from a strictly Wall Street point of view, he was definitely worth the salary.
The Skype founders got their pretty cars when Ebay payed $1 billion for the company.
Actually, they paid $2.6 Billion..
Mandatory Leonard Cohen:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
This man would beg to differ.
Where's the VAN??????
Thanks, dude. I hate when that happens.
You should have sprung for the extra money and gotten the model that's shielded against solar radiation.
I do not know for certain whether or not there was a permit issued. Suffice to say, that's a job for the investigators. With that said, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that the proper permits might not have been issues, or more importantly the proper inspections were performed in this scenario. It seems a little unusual, to say the least.
I am not suggesting that permits can magically prevent tragedies (but nice troll though).
This sort of thing may stimulate a wider interest in practical application of camouflage techniques.
I can't help but think of this.
If you want a pool, you get an inspector, they ensure there's no rogue wiring or geographic problems,
On a slight tangent, sometimes a proper permit/inspection can prevent a tragedy.
Thanks (geez, I wish you were the boss). I promise you, if I can wrangle such a deal, I'll send you some of those Cubans.
So somehow people with industrial strength educations, most of them Masters level, or higher, graduates from BigName Schools with *years* of study in Statistics, Modelling, and Programming are equivalent to Bank Tellers?
No, not at all, but nice attempt to deflect the issue to a completely different argument.
I'm not seeing how your analogy works at all...These high frequency trading companies though are built SOLELY on their systems ability to execute trades faster than the next firm...and you can't do that without extremely educated and talented people doing the technical work.
While I agree with you that the essential component to these HFT Firms is their ability to execute trades at faster and faster speeds, this does not mean that those people who write the algorithms are the only component of that very finely tuned machine. More importantly, these very important and often educated people are entitled to a better salary than others in their field (which they are receiving), but to expect to get a cut of all the company's profits is ludicrous. If my purposefully exaggerated Bank Teller example it too much to get your head around, let's try something else from my comment. In my own example, I run a large Data Center for a major IT company that makes literally millions of dollars per hour. I am very good at what I do, and guys with my experience do not grow on trees. Is it reasonable that I should get a cut of all the revenue coming through the facility? You' can't replace me with just any average joe either.
Look, the point I'm trying to make is that it sounds like these particular programmers might have a bloated sense of importance, and might not be considering the whole picture. If I'm wrong, hey, they can all go out and start hugely successful brokerage houses, and we'll have hundreds of AIG's out there. I'll gladly eat some crow when they all succeed. Or maybe, just maybe, they're not seeing the whole picture.
In my exit interview, I told the person straight up... we're the ones providing the traders with timely data and faster calculations so that they don't have to go back to using a stubby pencil.
To be fair, I hope you included everyone else, like the people running the Data Center. After all, if those servers aren't kept cool and provided with nice, clean UPS power, neither the algorithms nor those administering the systems are going to be doing much....thus you're back to the stubby pencil. Same goes for the guys driving the trucks that deliver the servers, and take the backup tapes off site every day, without them.....stubby pencil. Let's not forget the Security folks, without them, you can't have access to the various rooms where the gear is and can't get to your equipment as you need to and thus....stubby pencil. Let's not forget about the various telecom people/providers, after all without them, the servers/algorithms wouldn't be able to talk to the market....stubby pencil.
Where does it all stop? I hear what you're saying, but you have to keep in mind that there are a LOT of moving parts to running a successful brokerage firm. Yes, IT is a very crucial part of that chain, but it's not an island.
Salaried employment is mostly a dead-end deal.
Speak for yourself. There area plenty of people who are perfectly happy with the salary and bonus structure they've been able to negotiate. If this is a case of you feeling resentful because you have a job that is considered "exempt" but you feel that you're putting in more hours than you should be for your pay, then you need to negotiate (either with your current employer or with another one). This doesn't mean that any salaried position is bad by default.
I would recommend that anyone really ambitious work a salaried job in their chosen field for about 2 years (just like these guys did) and then strike out with their own company, ownership of IP and profits, etc. (just like these guys did).
And I wish you (and everyone who follows your advice) good luck. However, law of averages dictates that a whole lot of you are going to end up in some financially dire straits. Entrepreneurship isn't always the greener pasture. There are a whole lot of inherent risks and costs when one chooses to go it alone. That's not to say that it's a bad strategy, but assuming that it's better than accepting a well negotiated, salaried position with an established company is just silly, and in some cases, absolutely moronic.
The programmer who writes the algorithm is, in many of these firms, the main driver of profits
Incorrect, and this is the reason you (and several others) are missing the point. You are assuming (with no evidence to back up your claim) that these algorithms are essentially the "machine" that makes the money. You're completely overlooking the various infrastructure and investment that it takes to make these things happen. I don't have the energy to list the many, many components that must exist to have a successful brokerage firm, but suffice to say, it's far more than just algorithms, otherwise any programmer worth his/her salt would be making a killing on Wall Street.
Your logic is like telling Edison he doesn't deserve the bulk of profits from the light bulb
That's right! Edison wouldn't have inherently deserved the lion's share of any/all revenues derived from various companies making/selling/using his invention "the lightbulb". If he invented it, but Sylvania makes millions of them in their factories, then sells them via Sears, where they are bought by customers who install them in their homes in fixtures made by various light fixture manufacturers, and power then from various electrical utility providers, Edison should not be entitled to a piece of each part of the chain's profits.
This really isn't that difficult. As others have pointed out, it's a combination of how difficult it would be to replace a person combined with their measurable/demonstrative monetary contributions to a company that determine the salary. The issue with these programmers is that the profits seem high because this is a game of scale, not profit margin. The big brokerage firms are making big bucks on millions and millions of very tiny profit margins. However, they're also taking on all the risk, putting up all the money, and providing all of the other parts of the working machine (employees, facilities, communication, etc).
I think the real problem isn't that the programmers should make more, it is that the traders should make LESS
I don't know that I agree. I think this is a very subjective issue. The reality is, the amount of revenue derived partially from these programmers has absolutely nothing to do with what their compensation is or should be. By their rationale, every teller at a bank should have salaries commensurate with that bank's revenue, since they're an element in processing deposits/checks/payments/etc. Hell, the data center I run makes millions every hour, but I don't expect that I should make 7 or 8 figures because of it.
The lesson here is: negotiate well on the way in. Do your homework, find out what the job entails and what responsibilities/liabilities you will have and determine for yourself if the compensation being offered is worth it. Once you cut the deal, that's it. If you don't like it, you can do as the programmers in the article are doing, go somewhere else and try to negotiate a better deal. It ain't personal, it's business.
can we just start calling them 'M' Class ?
Nah. That's just going to cause confusion and would get people fighting over gas mileage.
If it turns out these crashes are Windows blue screens, the media will jump all over Microsoft
Well, before all the Microsoft Haters pile on, according to this the Control System in place was something called Cameron Multiplex Control System, which I've also seen referred to as Cameron MUX and CAMITROL. I am not pretending to be an expert in these things, just thought I'd share what little Googling turned up.
In short, it looks pretty unlikely that there's going to be a red hot poker headed toward Redmond over this.
I think the point being made is that many of the criteria for qualifying if someone is abusing something has to do with how it affects their ability to do everyday, necessary things
That may indeed be what he meant, however in his original post (the one I replied to), his statement wasn't so discerning, so I was pointing out the often held misconceptions. While I do agree that it's not the amount of substance(s) that one is taking that determine whether or not one has "a problem", I would point out that it doesn't mean that one has to have large, major, and obvious impact in their life to indicate a problem.
To your point, if someone is using something (drugs, alcohol, etc), it's true that it's really not a big deal so long as it's not negatively impacting that person (or other people's) life. This doesn't mean that the impact has to be dramatic though. That is, a person who drinks doesn't have to get several DUIs or lose his/her job due to drinking to indicate there is a problem. Lots of people fool themselves into thinking that they're "in control" of their drinking/drug use, when in fact they're not.
Now to reiterate, I'm not suggesting that the OP's friends have problems, nor am I implying this about you or your friends. Rather pointing out the distinction that small, regular habits can indeed become problematic and can progress slowly over time. Just because you don't pull a David Hasselhoff and make a fool out of yourself doesn't mean you don't have some issues. Remember, most professionals agree, if you feel you have to "control" something or keep something "in check", you are at some level dealing with a dependency that you are choosing to resist. This doesn't mean that everyone who touches anything (drink/drugs) has problems, and I'm not suggesting a puritanical view, just that these things can be tricky.
You try listening to Aphex Twin - Mt Saint Michel + Saint Michaels Mount.
Somewhat related (and if you're feeling experimental), let me recommend Sunn O))). Their newest CD Monoliths and Dimensions is admittedly an acquired taste, but if you can get into the zone, it's pretty interesting stuff.
Well, good luck outlawing this. You will DEFINITELY alter your consciousness, and experience major waves of euphoria if you do it right.