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Goldman Sachs Code Theft Not Quite So Cut and Dried
The New York Times has some interesting details that are surfacing about the recent charges brought against Sergey Aleynikov, the programmer who allegedly stole code from Goldman Sachs on his way out the door to another job. "This spring, Mr. Aleynikov quit Goldman to join Teza Technologies, a new trading firm, tripling his salary to about $1.2 million, according to the complaint. He left Goldman on June 5. In the days before he left, he transferred code to a server in Germany that offers free data hosting. [...] After his arrest, Mr. Aleynikov was taken for interrogation to F.B.I. offices in Manhattan. Mr. Aleynikov waived his rights against self-incrimination, and agreed to allow agents to search his house. He said that he had inadvertently downloaded a portion of Goldman's proprietary code while trying to take files of open source software — programs that are not proprietary and can be used freely by anyone. He said he had not used the Goldman code at his new job or distributed it to anyone else, and the criminal complaint offers no evidence that he has."
For GS, he was making approx 400k. That's not outlandish for the kind of optimized programming on optimized hardware required for automatic trade execution, which is highly time-sensitive.
:)
But it's not just the programming skills that demand that much pay. There's lots of specialized knowledge, and some ability that likely you or I are not capable of[1].
1.2 MM for a different company? Likely the extra $800k was for the inside knowledge of what GS was doing.
[1] I don't know what your abilities are. But given my own geek-normal tendencies to overestimate my own abilities, I think it's quite possible that others do the same
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
this is something that scares me a bit about the work i do. i've had employers get really pissed off at me leaving before, my greatest fear is that one day they might pursue me in this kind of manner out of spite. a perfect example was one of my early gigs - a fully automated laboratory system that ran linux. i developed it, supported it 24/7 and saved the company a fortune. in 3 years they never gave me a single pay rise. so i was forced to leave to better my financial situation, and my god my last 2 weeks consisted of snide remarks and petty shots at my work. I handled it by just going about my work as normal and tieing up as many loose ends as possible, not taking the bait at their attempts at rattling me. once my notice was up i offered them a very fair rate if they ever wanted me back as a contractor to fix things or do new developements, and it was turned down without even a moments consideration.
the fearful part comes from how much work i took home with me, a really committed employee who enjoys his work will tend to wrap his life around his work. at that time it would have been hard to separate personal life from work. i don't think anyone should be penalised for that.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I used to work at Lehman Brothers years ago. I was developing new trading software. Once a buddy brought me a PC game. He put a CD in a drive, copied the files to his PC and burned it to a new blank CD.
The network admins got an alert from the CD burning and within 15 minutes security was making sure nobody entered or left the section we were in. We both almost got fired from the shit-storm that followed. They didn't overreact one bit. We were wrong. We were being paid good money to know better than to copy our personal files on the same network as proprietary company software. It was a good thing they reacted so quickly so we could hand them both CDs to prove we hadn't been stealing the company's proprietary competitive advantage to sell it to a competitor. That kind of inter-company espionage goes on ALL THE TIME.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I work for a linux vendor that does business in the finance industry, and you would be amazed at how many patches for software come through these firms. Of course it never appears that way, because the code is copyright Goldman or Morgan or whatever, and it can't be licensed under the GPL without jumping through a million hoops. The Lawyers don't get it, so people in the field wind up sending the patches out email and stuff. Technically any of these people could get picked up the same way.
That's not to say that he is innocent. As TFA states there is a large "firewall" between proprietary code and OSS code, and it is highly unlikely that he accidentally copied over core market trading code with some random OSS project. And I dispise his use of OSS as a scapegoat, because of all the resulting FUD.
Unless of course it's a password to your laptop that the police want. Then you can go to jail for not providing it apparently.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/03/court-self-incrimination-privilege-stops-with-passwords.ars
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
How much is 3 years of missing 16 hours/day of your kids lives worth, versus 20 years of missing 8 hours/day?
Last post!
I think everyone (or almost everyone) is missing the larger point here. This software, from Goldman Sachs, is what they are using to get the jump on everyone as part of their HFT (high frequency trading gambit). What they are doing is technically fraudulent and illegal, which was why they used their extraordinary influence with the US Government - which they, and the rest of the banksters now officially own - to IMMEDIATELY have Sergey arrested.
Also, all the Euro papers and blogs I perused stated that the code was originally uploaded to a server in London, United Kingdom. Something appears amiss here (and the game is still afoot, BTW).
Goldman Sachs alumni also found at World Bank and IMF, as well as at least ten people in the Obama Administration (probably even more than that).
GS doesn't have a statistically impossible earnings record with HFT because they are smart, it's called cheating..cheating...cheating....what they have always excelled at. Didn't anyone read Matt Taibbi's outstanding article in the Rolling Stone mag the other month? Geez, they have their hardware positioned exactly right to make a killing -- no brains involved -- plus they own all the frigging exchanges (via a series of holding companies, 'natch). You others here, catch a clue, doods....