When Caroline Ellison Met Sam Bankman-Fried – WSJ

The situation inside Alameda Research wasn’t anything like Sam had led Caroline to expect. He’d recruited 20 or so effective altruists, most of them in their 20s, all but one without experience trading in financial markets. Most neither knew nor cared about crypto; they had just bought into Sam’s argument that it was this insanely inefficient market in which they might use his Jane Street-like approach to trading to extract billions. They were now all living in Sam’s world, and they weren’t hiding their unhappiness.

“He was demanding and expecting everyone to work 18-hour days and give up anything like a normal life, while he would not show up for meetings, not shower for weeks, have a mess all around him with old food everywhere, and fall asleep at his desk,” said Tara Mac Aulay, a young Australian mathematician who was, in theory, running the company with Sam. “He did zero management and thought that if people had any questions, they should just ask him. Then in his one-on-ones with people, he’d play videogames.”

Source: When Caroline Ellison Met Sam Bankman-Fried – WSJ