I often see in HN comments about how trading and Wall St in general is evil - when I feel completely the opposite. The two inventors of Figgie may not have contributed directly to curing cancer, saving the dolphins or the whales - dare I posit that most of tech building enterprise JIRA-esque todo-lists, e-commerce middleware and ad trackers don't either.

What I love about their friendship is that I see poker/gambler-mindset of always going for it, shoving the chips to the middle of the table when the pot-odds are good and it is a +EV play. I think they went all-in on several projects such as Figgie, AI Poker and teaching - seemingly all without the whole LinkedIn life coach-advised manner of building up your brand, client-base etc.

The older I get, I find more value too in the honesty of finance and trader types. Yes trading is about money but being honest about that is ironically one of the most altruistic things that can happen for a person. I find that most traders and gamblers who become aware of their greed and selfishness in their work - ironically also causes them to be very generous and selfless people in life due to their constant awareness of that limitation; and to also have zero fox given about what other people think of them professionally and socially (vs. in tech nowadays).

As an options trader/gambler, I'm thankful for the author's eulogy and their efforts in inventing the game. It's a bittersweet story. I read from the eulogy that Max Chiswick embraced the variance of life. Their friendship albeit short and sweet for me is like a fat right tail call option - the holding period might've only been a year and change - but the payoff is one that enriches the soul for life.

Trading is one of the least evil things that goes on on Wall Street. Starting wars for profit (e.g., Blackwater) and buying additional houses as investments (as private equity firms do) and making massive job cuts while posting record profits, are all evil. I loathe capitalism but I agree that quants and traders are some of the least compromised people, whereas “change the world” techies and now techzis are the worst. Traders are, as you said, honest about their motivations.

Ultimately there is no ethical production or consumption in a system as rotten as ours, and everyone has to make a choice. Graveyards are full of moral people, and country clubs are full of humanity’s absolute worst. And if one has children, the argument can be made that failing to provide for them is ethically worse than taking a job within capitalism so long as one isn’t directly harming anyone.

But the evolution from trading x for y to trading x for y governed by z ie introducing fiat currency is the issue.

Lightning trades and trading in general that produces nothing of value is the issue. It goes deeper, with the wealthy able to lobby and keep tax havens legal but I don't expect anything to change so why say anything more on it.

No small number of examples of places with plenty of financiers that have said "aha, we need to have [thing X], let's [throw some money at it]" without much useful results because they don't actually have the necessary people, knowhow, networks, or institutions.

unlocking liquidity of currently hard to value assets will remove distractions for a broader set of people to get education, apply their intellect, and be inspired including to cure. many people are not applying their intellect because they are distracted by their illiquidity, basically all of their life.

> plenty of financiers that have said "aha, we need to have [thing X], let's [throw some money at it]" without much useful results

misallocated capital is a symptom of current market inefficiencies and has nothing to do with the concept of people working in finance versus whatever you prefer

What I'm trying to say is I don't buy the notion of humans "conquering" a disease or the virtue of somehow "elevating" ourselves beyond greed. We are just player-actors in both the beautiful cycle of life-and-death and the madness of crowds participating in markets of life (airbnb rental, dating, job, you name it). To pretend otherwise that somehow we can solve and tame uncertainty is -EV.

But the argument would go for a SaaS, you're paying for (1) potentially upgrades and support, and (2) the ease-of-mind to off-load self hosting to someone else. So yes I agree, only SaaS business people who offer customers a buy-to-own option (open-source their SaaS suites with a push-button to deploy and host on AWS) should be able to comment on thread!

>Can someone give a reasonable argument as to why we should read WSJ? Or WaPo? Or NYT or any other large publication of this nature (looking particularly at The Economist). We know they post propaganda, spin stories however they please, and we know their fact checking is awful. I don’t think they have any journalistic integrity left.Please enlighten, am curious.

I find it useful to understand the other side and the echo chamber/bubble they are in; and by extension, leads to better insight and critique of the echo chamber my side is in.

As a right-winger (I put my bias forward to help communicate up-front my angle/bias as everybody has their biases) - for instance, I stopped reacting to NYT, NPR and WaPo's headlines and instead just categorized and label mechanically (as an AI sentiment bot might do) what their purpose for "manufactured consent" is; the headline behind the headline, for example for the left:

Many headline news if you flip to any NYT headlines any time of day, you can categorize them as "climate insecurity" (Global Warming is eating up a local area, Maui/Florida), the "MAGA threat" (a minority group is being persecuted by the vengeful "white right"), "neo-conservative foreign policy endorsements" (Ukraine is 'wining the war; Ughyur human rights violations; America is winning against Russia/China bloc and always on the progressive side of human rights).

It helps me frame critically the right-wing biases in my own echo chamber. For instance, it makes me realize that WSJ's more endorsement for "holier-than-thou" free-wheeling enterprise/business is really the equivalent right-wing propaganda to indoctrinate its side against left's efforts to union and regulate businesses for consumer rights and the environment. Similarly, the anti-SJW, exodus from California to Texas theme in Fox News is parallel to the "MAGA threat" stories from the left; and is just right-wing identity politics - just as bad as left-wing identity politics. And foreign policy-wise, both left and right are surprisingly uniform and orthodox to American exceptionalism and interventionism.

It makes me realize that American politics and journalism is at large a game of sports, marketing where both sides hype up the "brand-values" of their sides and vilify the other side; but at the end of the day, the owners in the box seats at the top of the arena have the same values; and the fans/citizens though may spit and belittle each other in the spirit of factional rivalary, surprisingly have so much in common with each other as jersey-wearing blue collar tailgating fans - than the NFL owners in their suites and boardrooms. And this notion of simultaneously gives me both great cynicism and hope for the state of America.

Biased in both how stories are covered as well in _which_ stories are covered.

The bias may not line up neatly to the prevailing major US political partys' platform or narrative - it's still bias.

Very simplistic example; NYT is biased pro-New York. WaPo is biased pro-D.C. The Economist is pro-EU. All are pro-full-time 9-to-5 jobs.

I've been a subscriber to all at one more or another. Those biases means a solid chunk of their articles are irrelevant or just real weird for readers (me) in a different locale and life situations.

The comparison to sports is apt. Unless you're on the field - sports is entertainment. Same is true of media - unless you care how a story you're directly involved in is being discussed - it's all entertainment.

However I'd take it a step further and disagree with Dr.Chomsky and argue that increasingly "the consent is not manufactured" per-se by the evil advertisers, politicians or Illuminati who are attempting to keep control; but rather I believe by Americans themselves who feel otherwise powerless in the political and capital processes. By that I mean, both a working-class black American in Detroit voting for the pro-immigration policy of the Democratic party - or a working-class white American in Detroit voting for a regressive tax policy of the Republican party is voting for policies extremely to hostile to their own economic interests.

But they do so anyways in a quasi-religious manner like the working-class of Europeans did in the 18th century prior to the Manifesto - precisely because of faith (in Christ, humility and work ethics) which gave meaning and sublimation to their otherwise horrendously and explicitly exploited livelihoods by the nobility. And this religious zeal of "humility" to one's tribe trumps even one's economic interests and gets then in terms co-opted and amplified by political, marketing consultants and the "invisible hand" of the YouTube algorithms of our 20th century - looking to capture and monetize a "demographic authenticity".

If George Orwell was alive today, he might be tickled to add the addendum to Marx's quote "religion is the opiate of the masses" (a la "all animals are equal...") to that of "religion is the opiate of the masses; some identity-based religions however are more profitable than others".

I'll start. I felt like OP maybe about ~7 years ago. I hated the grind of learning and re-learning frameworks, ageism etc. I pivoted into data science for my day-job because I found it more interesting (and to do something more meaningful particularly if you're doing something related to research/public healthy/policy etc.). On the side, I also started applying my coding skills to option trading and making my own trading bots (where I re-gained a lot of my enthusiasm for coding back without the grind of agile and coding for myself and just for fun). I'm happier (and financially better off) today and my only regret is I didn't start sooner. Hope to hear more from others who exited coding monkey careers!

This is a general question, I'm wondering is there any good framework/wrappers out there that one can learn from to code up a complex trading application?

Like dealing with all the asynchronous nature of process/submitting trading and quotes messages.

I had bought a license purely on a whim as I was browsing HN on company-time. I was in 20's, bored and ambitious with no concrete plans and I proceeded to play on company-time in my cubicle the rest of the day and planned out my life plan on Preceden instead of working, like the timeline for when I should get my next promotion (maybe in 2 years for at least 10K, rite??), when I should buy my 1st house etc (maybe a fix upper? duplex so I can rent it out?), when I should get married etc (in 5 years). I showed my entire life plan to my co-workers whom all laughed at me b/c (a) I planned everything out in my life, and (b) I paid for a $19 license to plot out my life plan.

To get to the bottom-line, I never got that promotion, am still renting and still haven't gotten married! So definitely you who got my $19 license fees and my co-workers got the last laugh!

(But like you I kept on and off workin' my side-hustles since 2010 even when it seemed entire hopeless - which was building a trading bot; and like anything in life after so many false starts, it eventually started becoming consistent and compounded; and my capital gains from trading has been significantly greater than my W-2 as a SWE for the last 3 years. So much has changed on HN since 2010: crypto, Web3, new JS frameworks that pop up every year, unicorns; but the only thing that has paid off at least for me - it seems is sticking to something and showing up for it every day for 13 years and counting... thanks again for sharing!)

It's great to hear you got some use out of the tool and hopefully continue to do so. I look forward to your next life update in 13 years when Preceden makes the HackerNews homepage again :).

PS for any aspiring entrepreneurs: don't offer lifetime plans, and definitely not for $19, lol.

>don't offer lifetime plans

Yep! https://successfulsoftware.net/2008/09/08/should-i-give-free...

I have been reading Andy's blog for some years now. Though the main focus is on his own products and his product development experiments and experiences, many of the posts have good advice for those wanting to create their own products for sale. There are also some interesting interviews with other product creators.

To be fair though, the chances of your service still being around and GP still getting value from it 13y later were pretty slim weren't they? After all, you listed some other SaaS products shutdown in the interim in OP, did any of those have lifetime [of the product] plans?

Of course, I do realise non-recurring sales (coupled with the non-recurring sales not continuing, growth in users slowing) hurts those chances itself.

And for those aspiring to find the lifetime plans by startups, go look through offers on AppSumo.

grabbing the wheel and jerking hard left on the conversation, but this comment struck me as funny.

rite?? like getting a 10K raise in 2 years is a rite of passage that we should all be expecting to happen to all of us, right?

I actually got a 10k raise in one company, but only because I really didn't earn enough before. When I quit a year later anyway for another job (which offered me another 14k raise), my employer made a counter-offer of 30k. I did not take it, but at least it gave me a perspective how much I apparently was really worth to them.

The author was amused at his younger self’s naïveté and entitlement in assuming such a raise was a given and planning it on a timeline app.

So I think you are actually in agreement.

i felt this so hard. similarish boat. how do we unstick ourselves?

> To get to the bottom-line, I never got that promotion

To state the obvious .. these two are likely related.

I have friends who work very boring jobs in the gov't or non-profits (who make 90K but have a 10% 403b matching or pension; a 750K house; and a 1 million liquid investment account of CAGR of 20%), drive beater cars but through shrewd investments and frugality are multi-millionaires. I also have friends who flex in fancy cars, fancy luxury downtown condos and fancy jobs (who make 200K+ but never contribute to 401K, no house b/c lives in HCoL and only a ~150K in savings b/c travels, eat out etc.) but spend it all and when I talk to them in confidence, am shocked they have a fraction of what I think they are worth net-worth in the bank.

I used to think these stories were some kind of Suzy Orman/Dave Ramsey made-up morality tales or exceptional one-off stories - but older I get, I realize they are not. It's just most people start off the same - and it's only after years, people's money habits dramatically compound over the years that these differences become exponentially large and comical.

And yes, savings and savings rate is the biggest determinant in eventual net worth. I know bond traders and FAANG engineers that make $200K+/year and live paycheck to paycheck because their expenses eat up all of that and then some. One guy literally blew it all on hookers & blow and then died of a fentanyl OD. I also know people that saved about 1/3 of their take-home on a grad student or Whole Foods salary and are now living a reasonable life as a homeowning family despite never breaking $100K/year in income.

First the comp, most people think about the income they get as in levels.fyi TC. IMHO, The no. 1 value add is working for an academic center is the freedom in both time and spirit you get in pursuing your interest and the side ventures & hustles which eventually compounds. The hours are very reasonable in academia and in most places, you can take classes internally on campus or get reimbursed for it and get supportive managers who let you take time off from work to study. Or just great WLB to pursue something you really enjoy. And this compounds both spiritually and financially.

Just a data point of one, I took an online data science degree whilst working like 15hrs/week and 25hrs on classes. From the classes, I got the bug to apply data science I learned on my degree and on the genomics analysis job to apply to the financial markets/automated trading. Now over the past 4 years, I've achieved CAGR of 35%, and sharpe of 2.5 where my options trading portfolio capital gains outsizes consistently my W-2 pay and keep me par on L5 of FAANG engineer. To give you an idea, my other co-workers have gone into side-hustles real estate (not sure about now) or running day-care to great success. Yes because you have that much free time.

Now autonomy/academic stimulation, I would not give it up for the world even if I was doing it for free. Previously I was working for a "hot tech" company where I was bored out of my minds cranking CRUD widgets and re-learning JS frameworks every year and attending BS lunch n' learn work sessions of new crappy libraries with hipster names. In genomics, you get to apply traditional stat techniques (bioconductor), deep learning techniques (tensorflow, AlphaFold, GANs) and learn latest sequencing protocols (scRNASeq, ChIPSeq, CRISPR screenings) and learn the biology domain too (immunology, viral responses, cell regulatory networks, synthetic biology. It's like being on the front-seat to a movie cinema or basketball court where the scientific evolution is happening. You're learning something new everyday and you are at the center of it all as PIs, wet lab bench scientists all depend on you to perform the analysis and build the pipelines... and 8 years in, and I'm still excited with the only disappointment that I will never learn it all.

Obv. a subjective data point of one, but I just want to add my data point just in case somebody out there on the fence. Yes sometimes you can truly have it all.