BridgeWater Associates Secrets’ Revealed by Former Employee on Blog

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Bridgewater Associates is one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Despite its size, CEO Ray Dalio, keeps a tight lid on his employees. Bridgewater has a reputation of being one of the most secretive hedge funds. ValueWalk has confirmed that Dalio personally makes the best efforts possible to keep fund secrets out of the media.

However, kathleen Ogrady who worked for Dalio for six months posted a blog with some information on Bridgewater, which reveals some previous undisclosed information.

Kathleen learned more about self leadership in  six months than most people learn in a lifetime. After seeing the recent article on Ray Dalio in The New Yorker, titled Mastering the Machine, she felt compelled to write about her experience on her blog.

Kathleen states that she learned the following five lessons at Bridgewater:

Lession #1: Don’t waste time on formalities.

Lesson #2: Be confident, make friends, and ask questions. Gambling on assumptions leads to chaos.

Lesson #3: Play is inherently linked to productivity. Whenever possible inject humor and fun into your work.

 

Lesson #3 is interesting and includes the very laid bad dress of Dalio in the office (emphasis is ours):

 One day in the summer of 2004 employees from the marketing and client service department deiced they were going to coordinate a race, or “scrum” as they called it, through the moat-like stream that surrounded the buildings. When Ray got wind if this he was ‘all-in’. Emails of the scrum went intra-company-viral in minutes, projections and statistics of who would be the winner came next, and then an official email from Ray himself, instructing all willing participants to “suit up” in the gym. There were a few candidates in that day and Ray walked into the offices where they were interviewing dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and his then famous Crocs…he wore them before they were widely popular…I know this because at the time I thought “who besides Ray would be caught dead in those things?” – Clearly, Ray is the Master Trend Spotter! Ray then invited the candidates to participate in the scrum. If I recall, two out of three of them agreed. Footage of the scrum was captured by interns and later turned into a slow-motion video set to Eye of the Tiger. I’ve searched YouTube on numerous occasions to see if anyone has uploaded it…but to no avail.

We wonder if Dalio had a hand in removing any of those videos, and wonder if this blog, which is now discovered will be up much longer.

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