Just occurred to me that Q is sourcing a global labor pool. A couple considerations:
- Is it legal? If the army of 200,000 quants were in Boston, but not in the U.S. legally, it would be a problem, right? So how is it different that they are scattered around the globe, yet presumably, Quantopian is a U.S. company (although maybe the 1337 Street Fund is not...). Is there some kind of loophole?
- Is it a risk? Suppose the isolationist forces in Washington D.C. catch wind of this approach? Wouldn't it be viewed as low-hanging fruit to "Make America Great Again" by imposing a restriction that companies headquartered on American soil can only employ Americans? Wouldn't want all of the manufacturing jobs to come back, and lose all of the white-collar tech jobs, right?
I'm not saying the global sourcing is a bad thing; it's on the whole probably a good thing, on a variety of fronts. But as the saying goes, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
