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by robocat 810 days ago
Are Hedge Funds selection machines for extremely competitive immoral engineer-types?

The cliché is CEO positions select for soiciopathy.

Different games seem to select for certain types of antisocial thinking.

Is there a pattern to the type of person (a) selected by hedge funds, (b) successful at hedge funds?

I don't believe we should stereotyping individuals based on their group categories. Neither do I think that we can apply psych labels to groups.

But we don't seem to have better ways to question the issue...

2 comments

Getting a job at a hedge fund is not particularly noteworthy. Being really good at it, however, is rare and those people don’t simply leave, as you’re earning the equivalent of a successful startup exit every year.

Someone leaving a hedge fund while still early in their career is a strong negative signal. e.g. SBF and Caroline both from Jane Street.

Didn’t Bezos leave a hedge fund?
I started as a hedge fund manager at 23 doing global macro at Pictet & quit when my son was diagnosed with autism to build an NLP team to analyse clinical trial & other data and undertook pathway analysis of neurotransmitters focusing on GABA/Glutamate balance to repurpose medicine to help him filter, after which he went to mainstream school.

One of the things I am focused on now is bringing that research with the new medical LMs so for autism, cancer, MS, Alzheimer’s & more everyone has comprehensive, authoritative and up to date knowledge at their fingertips on these and also a guide so they never feel alone and helps them on their journey if they or a loved one gets this diagnosis.

It will be open and transparent, took a while to build to here but looking forward to next steps.

There is more to life than power and money.

> There is more to life than power and money.

I've never tried either end of the power or money scales so I'm not qualified to agree or disagree.

Your story is about personal power - applying your skills to a problem that most people are powerless to solve.

For some reason your story made me think of this: https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/please-be-dying-but-not-... -- Where's the accessible database of trials?

Yes, after 8 years.
The only other tech CEO I can think of who has a Hedge Fund background is Jeff Bezos; are there enough other examples to start stereotyping?
Yeah, I'm probably thinking of the perceived motives of some outspoken capitalists (Note that I would call myself a hippy capitalist). And amoral is probably a better word than immoral. I only have near experience with one hedge fund manager - not so common in New Zealand. So my own biases are coloured by the mediums I learn from.