He was speaking at a summit…sponsored by…the Milken Institute. Can’t make this stuff up…
What’s next, the Skilling foundation? Lol.
Let’s talk.
(I’m not serious.)
Stuff like this makes me resent the insane measures I had to go through to satisfy internal audit’s insatiable appetite for proof that I wasn’t lying.
(I can see that IT gave you 943,246 records and you used 943,246 records but how can we prove that you didn’t change the records? Oh, the counts by age and sex and product tie, and the volume of insurance ties, and you’ve shown that the 25 random policies we gave you all tie but how can you prove that you didn’t deliberately manipulate one of the other 943,221 records???)
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that’s what I said to you the other night about my calculus homework. Also not serious.
I am half-assed serious about what I posted. I think it’s a great idea for a startup. Everyone loves crypto ,and the big problem to solve right now is credibility. NO, not that kind of credibility. And a bunch of actuaries would solve that.
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And is credibility even still on the SOA exams? I used to love that herzog book. I wish I’d have kept my copy.
Love audits. Our auditor isn’t too bad, I get that the whole point is for them to pry and ask a bunch of questions. We pulled random things out to show that we weren’t manipulating anything and he was cool.
The only sticky point is we have one database we use a lot. It’s a government database and it’s live, and that was a problem. They wanted to watch us extract data and send it to them, and while it’s close to what we used for last month’s model, it’s not the same. They accepted the fact that this is beyond our control but they didn’t like it. Nothing I can do about it, sorry.
These auditors I never figured out. They asked for 10 random samples. Here you go. How do we know you didn’t cheat on the rest?
Aside from everything tying, you mean? I guess you could check more samples.
Ok, give us these additional 10.
Sure thing, here you go.
Ok, but how do we know you didn’t cheat on the rest?
Um, you’ve verified that everything ties and you checked 20 samples. Do you want to pull more samples and watch me pull them so you know I didn’t change anything?
Yes! We want to see that. Let’s meet tomorrow at noon for that.
Ok, sure.
Ok, here’s 5 more samples to pull.
Ok, here’s 1, here’s 2, here’s 3, 4 is in this other database as the first database only has policies issued after 1970 and as you can see, this one was issued in 1948… here’s 4, and… back to the first database… here’s 5.
Holy shit, why does 4 look different?
Because policies issued more than 50 years ago look different from recently issued policies.
How can we tell that you’re not lying to us about that?
Because it’s all written out here where our records are stored and we specifically discuss pre-1970 policies in there.
Ok, but… there’s still 943,221 records we haven’t checked… how do we know you’re lying about all of them???
I mean, you are welcome to individually check all nine hundred thousand if you want. Is there something else I can do that would help you feel comfortable?
You’re being difficult and uncooperative.
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Well? How did you plead!?
That’s too far
I quit the job! In part because I was tired of dealing with the soul-sucking auditors. I don’t mind reasonable questions. I roll my eyes and later mock (on AO) auditors who ask idiotic questions showing that they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about or how to ascertain that I’m doing my job correctly, but I will also calmly work with them and patiently explain things using small words.
But the constant insinuation that I was being dishonest coupled with a refusal to say what I could possibly do to satisfy them was just more than I could take.
So, they don’t understand how random samples work. That’s a tough walk to be up against with auditors.
Wow. Just…wow. 
“Do you understand how random samples work?”
“Really? You DO understand how random samples work?”
“Then what I’m not getting is, why are you asking these questions?”
Eh, maybe a bit passive aggressive.
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https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1593343781243437060
FTX was supposedly worth $32 billion, but it appears to have had less documentation, structure, and organization than my fantasy baseball league.
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That quote is even crazier when you realize that the new CEO is who took over during the Enron bankruptcy
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Yes, that tidbit was in the news alert, because it’s just so wild.
My response: “Prove that we did.”
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They made it clear that it was up to me to prove that I wasn’t lying. It was a bad situation.
I was later asked to lie to lie to them about something completely unrelated and completely mundane. Another part of why I left. I wasn’t comfortable doing that. It was essentially a little white lie, but I’m not comfortable lying to auditors in any capacity, or really just lying in any capacity for that matter.
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