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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   3120 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Can I ask if you actually in the finance industry? It's OK if you don't, I just want to calibrate whether you're speaking from experience or your personal opinions.

My background is programming, where it's relatively common for people to come in without formal CS degrees, but having experience in other ways. Someone who built their own app that's "like an existing big name service, but better" would be very impressive! Even if it doesn't scale up, that's OK, we all know that scaling is a difficult problem and that's why we have huge engineering teams. Just the fact that someone could do that on a small scale is still impressive and would at least get them an interview, or possibly some funding to try a startup if they apply somewhere like YC. It's very odd to me that the big finance industry seems to take the opposite view, where first-hand experience and small startups count for nothing, it's much more about "who you know" and "where did you go to school."

I'm just an amateur investor. I haven't worked in the field.

I didn't say that personal experience is not valuable. I'm sure it is. But the bar is much higher for what's impressive when you're investing your own small amounts of money. The very best private investors manage to earn more than double the index, sometimes a lot more, although beating the market by 2x is really good in itself!

If you do run a fund you'll have to deal with all sorts of dumb rules meant to provide safety, like not having more than, I think it was 5 or 10 percent invested in a single stock. You can't go big on a few well chosen bets. Try getting great returns when you're forced to hold 20+ stocks at all times and you can't jump in and out when you feel like it. It's a different ball game, that's what I'm trying to say.

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