&gt; If a hedge fund manager earns $1 billion, you can be assured that he grew his customers investments by something like $4 billion.
&gt; For every guy that makes $1 billion, there are a thousand or more that don&#x27;t get anything close to the salary that a medium-salaried employee at a decent startup gets because they LOST their investors money.<p>Given the 2&#x2F;20 rules that a lot of funds follow, that&#x27;s not strictly true.<p>If you&#x27;re managing a $10bn fund, and working on 2&#x2F;20 (2% fee, 20% performance), you&#x27;re taking $200m off the front just for managing the money. Regardless of profit or loss, you&#x27;ve got that money.<p>You&#x27;re then taking another 20% off of any profits you&#x27;re making, when you&#x27;re making them. And then keeping them even if you end up losing money the next quarter, that money&#x27;s still yours.