Re:NYC vs Silicon Valley
by yummyfajitas on Friday February 26, 2010 @11:33AM
(#1153452)
Are they less interesting? It's not obvious to me.
Hedge fund work tends to be more quantitative than most startup work, and tends to focus on different issues (less UI, latency vs scaling, minimizing transaction costs vs minimizing EC2 costs). Having looked at both hedge funds and startups, I'd say the work can be interesting at both.
To make a completely loaded comparison, I think programming a computer to beat the market is much more interesting than building a facebook/twitter "me too" site.
To make a less loaded comparison, I also find algorithmic trading more interesting (as a technical problem) than connecting $LOCAL_SELLER to $LOCAL_BUYER in $LOCAL_MARKET, or solving the problem of crappy restaurant websites (both of which I think are great business models).
Hedge fund work tends to be more quantitative than most startup work, and tends to focus on different issues (less UI, latency vs scaling, minimizing transaction costs vs minimizing EC2 costs). Having looked at both hedge funds and startups, I'd say the work can be interesting at both.
To make a completely loaded comparison, I think programming a computer to beat the market is much more interesting than building a facebook/twitter "me too" site.
To make a less loaded comparison, I also find algorithmic trading more interesting (as a technical problem) than connecting $LOCAL_SELLER to $LOCAL_BUYER in $LOCAL_MARKET, or solving the problem of crappy restaurant websites (both of which I think are great business models).