Reply #95: I think you are being fair to some extent

[Lucky Luciano]

Personality is important. Education is important. You mention Drive too. That is the "want" part of the equation. A lot of people don't know what that word really means. "It would ne nice if I could...blah blah blah" is not want. "want" requires sacrifice and an ALL-IN perspective. I bet everything. I would not submit. I refused to fail when others told me I would. I would not back down and I was as stubborn in my quest as * is in his stupid war. Some told me to accept a lower job and try to move up the ladder - no way. I remained unemployed until the score came. I was almost bankrupt as I lived off of credit cards for 18 months. It was the toughest period of my life, but I won goddammit. I learned to program on my own - including some of the C++ design patterns that people grill you on in interviews. I learned as much as I could about option pricing. Then I went to war once I got an intern/contractor job - you see at the end, they were prepared to offer me an IT job. I intentionally pissed off the IT people so they would not hire me - That way, if they really wanted me, they would be forced to offer me a trading job. I forced their hand. Either I was stupid or the bank was stupid - better to find out now rather than later - part of the reason I was willing to risk my opportunity to get what I really wanted. They could have fired me for that aggression, but they promoted me instead. That is "want." Why bother? I am an adrenaline junky. Simple really.

My quest didn't kill anyone though. I am not materialistic, I love numbers and using data to my advantage (hence my sig lines). I look forward to helping others - I want to find extremely intelligent but underprivileged kids and mentor them - I want them to enter college knowing advanced Partial Differential equations, probability, stochastic calculus, and a full understanding of the derivation of the Black-Scholes Option Pricing formula. It is really cool stuff. That does bring another point - one needs passion. Passion is crucial to any success. For the record, I am not successful yet, but I am in a very good position to be.

I definitely want to do my part to help society. There is no question about it. In addition to a mentoring program, I would probably try to set up a public healthcare action committee. I think that is the most important domestic issue of the day.