Excerpt from ‘Flash Boys’ about Serge Aleynikov and Goldman Sachs

http://cryptome.org/2014/04/goldman-sachs-code-thief.htm

by peterbotond • 12 years ago

335 200 12 years ago

cryptome.org

fenollp• 12 years ago

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov

DieBuche• 12 years ago

Did you even read it? It's about him.

pmorici3• 12 years ago

Probably because that is who this is about.

ig1• 12 years ago

Flagged because article completely misunderstands how GPL works. GPL doesn't apply if you modify source-code to use internally, it only applies if you distribute it externally to third party users.

[GPL not mentioned in article; my recollection from the original court documents is that the code was largely LGPL and GPL code]

ntakasaki4• 12 years ago

I believe the article didn't imply steal in the legal sense, but rather in the moral sense of not contributing changes back and assuming ownership.

I also see no mention of the GPL, only open source. So the license could've been BSD or MPL etc.

Also this part might be illegal:

Later, at his trial, his lawyer flashed two pages of computer code: the original, with its open source license on top, and a replica, with the open source license stripped off and replaced by the Goldman Sachs license.

zanny• 12 years ago

The latter is obviously illegal, but I am an advocate of the GPL and don't take issue with someone extending GPLed code for internal use and not releasing their changes. The point is to maintain user freedom of software, and if the users are the company itself modifying it and never distributing it to someone without source access, even if they never make it publicly available, that is still ethical.

I'd like them to share the information they create, but I think it steps on others rights if you start trying to force disclosure of information creation.

pmorici3• 12 years ago

That's not inherently true of open source and I didn't see where the article singled out a specific license. There are several variants of GPL the AGPL has clauses that say you still have to provide source in cases short of distribution of the software itself.

Mikeb8510• 12 years ago

Yes but AGPL is rarely used, the vast majority of FOSS uses GPL or a less restrictive license...

EGreg6• 12 years ago

I've wondered about this. Doesn't your non-disclosure and nob compete contract with your employees conflict with your organization's "distribution" of open source code to the employees? They should be able to do WHATEVER THEY WANT with it under the license. Or does GPL somehow handle "internally" vs "externally"?

HeyLaughingBoy6• 12 years ago

No conflict. You own your changes to GPL code unless you distribute that software to others. Only then do you need to distribute the source of your changes.

Mikeb8510• 12 years ago

The GPL specifically states that using code within an organization is not distributing it. Further, if employees (or even contractors) are paid to modify the code, the organization retains all rights to it, not the employees nor contractors. It's even within Goldman Sach's rights to prevent the release of the code, as they didn't distribute it to 3rd parties.

PeterisP3• 12 years ago

You don't distribute the GPL'ed code to your employees, in the same way that you don't 'distribute' your internal code, your MS Windows licences, and your computers,desks and everything else. All of those tools still belong to the organization, and employees are using them on behalf of it - they're not 'given' any of those items in the legal sense.

armored• 12 years ago

According to the article Goldman deleted the existing license and replaced it with their own. Probably a violation of most licenses.

matt_heimer• 12 years ago

If the application or source code is distributed then sometimes removing the license would be a violation. But most open source licenses allow you to make private forks that you keep private. If that is your desire then changing out the license disclaimer to say "Some or all of this code is the property of X, do not distribute under any circumstance" actually makes a lot of sense. If the original license was left in place it would be easy to think that the files in the private fork where publicly distributed. Obviously they don't have permission to change the actual license on the originally public content.

ntakasaki4• 12 years ago

Continuing the story from his Wiki page:

In March 2011, Aleynikov appealed the conviction, asking the Second Circuit to review the District Court's decision denying his original motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to state a claim.[9]

On February 16, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral argument on his appeal and, later that same day, unanimously ordered his conviction reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered, with opinion to follow.[10] Aleynikov was released from custody the next day.

On April 11, 2012, Dennis Jacobs, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, published a unanimous decision in a written opinion[10] stating:

On appeal, Aleynikov argues, inter alia, that his conduct did not constitute an offense under either statute. He argues that: [1] the source code was not a "stolen" "good" within the meaning of the NSPA, and [2] the source code was not “related to or included in a product that is produced for or placed in interstate or foreign commerce” within the meaning of the EEA. We agree, and reverse the judgment of the district court.[9]

In the course of these events, Aleynikov has spent 11 months in prison. Aleynikov has divorced, lost his savings, and his career is ruined.[11]

The government did not seek reconsideration of the Second Circuit's ruling, thus ending federal action against Aleynikov.[12]

dm27• 12 years ago

I'm guessing that there isn't any legal recourse (monetary) for him from Goldman Sachs and the FBI ruining his life.

Should there be?

Goldman Sachs had every right to request that he be prosecuted, but no matter how the case turned out, his life would be ruined. I don't know of a good solution to this issue, but it just seems very wrong. I'm sure there have been countless instances of this happening though.

Maybe a good solution would be to lessen the penalties for this type of crime.

Maybe a legal requirement for a public apology and for the prosecutor to have to pay back legal costs? A portion of this restitution should come out of that courts budget or the department that perused the case without doing their due diligence.

Did Sergey sign something saying that he could never remove code from the building or use it in another project? I'm not sure that it simply being company policy is enough, in my opinion.

Has anyone here ever taken code from one employer with the intent of using it again if needed, simply to save time and not having to duplicate research? Should you be considered a criminal for that? Should you have to pay back the time the company paid you to write that code?

It seems like the lessons are:

1) Don't talk to police, even if you did nothing wrong and they tell you they are on your side. Lawyer up.

2) Don't steal code, but if you do then encrypt it and put it on a portable media device. Uploading to a foreign SVN repository using the companies network wasn't very smart, don't do that.

3) Ensure that your employees know the company's policy on removing code from the premises. It seems pretty obvious but I believe that Sergey honestly didn't think he was doing anything wrong.

karmajunkie• 12 years ago

Should there be recourse for facilitating malicious prosecution? It's a travesty if there isn't.

pmorici3• 12 years ago

If there are no consequences to wrongly prosecuting someone just to hassle them then wouldn't that encourage people like Goldman Sachs to use that tool to extract revenge on people?

dopamean• 12 years ago

IIRC the prosecutor in Durham, NC that went after the Duke lacrosse team was disbarred but I'm not sure what monetary penalties were allowed.

WiseWeasel• 12 years ago

0) Don't work for Goldman Sachs.

foobarian• 12 years ago

To me the lesson is:

1) Avoid GS like the Satan. Actually avoid the whole financial industry.

fchollet• 12 years ago

You forgot the biggest takeaway:

0) Don't work for Goldman Sachs. Dance with the sharks, and they'll bite your arm off eventually.

revelation• 12 years ago

And of course, continuing continuing:

On August 9, 2012, Aleynikov was re-arrested and charged by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.[14] on behalf of New York state, with the offenses of "unlawful use of secret scientific material" and "unlawful duplication of computer related material"[15] based on the same conduct. The state prosecution was initiated based on a signed complaint by the same federal agent, McSwain, who led the investigation of the failed federal prosecution.

[..]

[..] and rejected the prosecutors' plea offer of accepting a single count offense and serving no jail time.

If that isn't malicious, I don't know what is. Charging someone acquitted for the same conduct, only to then offer him a plea deal of no prison time? What is the point here?

dm27• 12 years ago

How did he lose the motion to dismiss because of double jeopardy? He's even already served time in prison.

EGreg6• 12 years ago

What about double jeopardy and incorporation against the states?

Justsignedup• 12 years ago

so he doesn't sue for wrongful imprisonment, and it creates a precedence for future cases.

droopyEyelids• 12 years ago

That conviction will probably prevent him from working in finance in the future.

Dolimiter2• 12 years ago

Just a clarification:

Goldman Sachs didn't "jail" this person. Goldman Sachs is a corporation, and therefore doesn't prosecute nor jail people.

Please leave this nonsense on Reddit.

patrickk3• 12 years ago

They didn't jail him, however they provided the impetus to the FBI to arrest him.

Quotes from the book, p.148 (EDIT: These quotes are in the article here also!!):

"What Serge did not yet know was that Goldman has discovered his downloads- of what appeared to be the code they used for their proprietary high speed trading stock market trading- just a few days earlier, even though Serge had sent himself the first batch of code months ago. They'd called the FBI in haste and had put McSwain [FBI agent who arrested Serge] through what amounted to a crash course in high-frequency trading and computer programming. McSwain later concluded that he didn't seek out independent expert advice to study the code that Serge Aleynikov had taken, or seek to find out why he might have taken it. "I relied on statements from Goldman employees", he said. He had no idea himself of the value of the stolen code ("representatives of Goldman told me it was worth a lot of money"),or if any of it was actually all that special ("representatives of Goldman told us there were trade secrets in the code")."

"The FBI's investigation before the arrest consisted of Goldman explaining some extremely complicated stuff to McSwain that he admitted that he didn't fully understand- but trusted that Goldman did. Forty-eight hours after Goldman called the FBI, McSwain arrested Serge."

So effectively Goldman got Serge arrested, using a clueless agent as a pawn. Some of the code was originally open source, none of the code involved trading strategies (the really valuable stuff) and Goldman's word was enough to convince the FBI that Serge was a dangerous criminal and a flight risk, and ruined his life.

pessimizer• 12 years ago

His career definitely isn't ruined. He's well liked, well respected, and computer literate people generally saw these charges as incoherent.

gflateman• 12 years ago

flash boys also talks about the FBI's suspicion when they heard Aleynikov was using software called 'subversion', and assuming he was thus doing something 'subversive'

that cracked me up!

ithought• 12 years ago

His federal conviction was overturned then they later recharged him for the same incident in state court. Also Congressman Lamar Smith, who sponsored SOPA, amended the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 with the Theft of Trade Secrets Clarification Act of 2012 specifically related to this case.

Sergey's Legal Defense Fund - http://www.aleynikov.org/

yukichan2• 12 years ago

This sucks, but seriously never talk to the police. Don't write anything down. Don't say anything. Don't sign anything. Tell them your name and otherwise just stay silent. They are never trying to help you, they're trying to close their case.

malloreon• 12 years ago

Obligatory: "Don't talk to cops" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik

notastartup3• 12 years ago

Man, that was some informative video. I was shocked to learn innocent people get convicted because they talked to the cops. It's clear to me that doing such thing cannot do anything positive, it can only do negative.

I'd love to attend that guy's lecture (what school is this? what is his name?), it's informative, he's funny. Makes me want to retake the LSAT.

SixSigma• 12 years ago

while I appreciate this is a US legal case, in the UK the right to silence can be used against a defendant. One thing that puzzles me, though, is how am I supposed to know what I will rely on in court before I am on trial?

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 provides statutory rules under which adverse inferences may be drawn from silence.

Adverse inferences may be drawn in certain circumstances where before or on being charged, the accused:

* fails to mention any fact which he later relies upon and which in the circumstances at the time the accused could reasonably be expected to mention;

* fails to give evidence at trial or answer any question;

* fails to account on arrest for objects, substances or marks on his person, clothing or footwear, in his possession, or in the place where he is arrested; or

* fails to account on arrest for his presence at a place.

Where inferences may be drawn from silence, the court must direct the jury as to the limits to the inferences which may properly be drawn from silence. There may be no conviction based wholly on silence. Further it is questionable whether a conviction based mainly on silence would be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

foxhill• 12 years ago

you most certainly have the right to silence in the UK.

while I appreciate this is a US legal case, in the UK the right to silence can be used against a defendant

as you correctly identified, only inferences in a somewhat defined range of cases can be made.

One thing that puzzles me, though, is how am I supposed to know what I will rely on in court before I am on trial?

if you fail to answer a question during the investigation, and then later rely on the answer of that question in court. before you get anywhere near a court room, you must know what you have been charged with, arrested, and interviewed, etc. (unless of course you're a terrorist, then, you know, fuck you)

and yes, the ECHR wouldn't be happy with any inferences drawn from silence. i'm sure if a case hinged on these inferences, and the defendant was found guilty, an appeal to them would likely be successful.

although you wont want to hold your breath waiting for it, ~7 years is a long time..

demallien• 12 years ago

This is true, but inferences from silence are much more problematic when you haven't said anything. If I tell the police a story about what I had been up to that afternoon, and then they say "right so if that's true, why was the victim's blood on your shoes?", and I choose at that point not to answer, it's suspicious, and can be played as such in court.

If, on the other hand, I have said nothing other than "I'm not speaking without discussing with my lawyer first", it's much easier for your legal counsel to paint you as just a cautious individual, rather than someone that is trying to cover up a lie.

tldr, "don't talk to the police" is also good advice in Commonwealth countries, not just the US.

mcv• 12 years ago

Old story. Definitely sucks for him, but mailing yourself proprietary code of a very secretive and ruthless bank is not exactly the smartest thing to do.

zx2c42• 12 years ago

He deleted his bash history— the commands he had typed into his own Goldman computer keyboard. To access the computer, he was required to type his password . If he didn’t delete his bash history, his password would be there to see, for anyone who had access to the system.

Wait, what?

nmrm2• 12 years ago

$> some_command --username myusername --password mypassword

$> history

...

12345 some_command --username myusername --password mypassword

This comes up fairly often with poorly designed CLI's. Wiping your bash history after running the command isn't an unreasaonble hack.

Edit/Addendum: Although there are other (perhaps better) ways to achieve the same effect, the main point is that doing a "history -c" should be considered no more suspicious than e.g. closing a document to clear your "undo" history.

zx2c42• 12 years ago

Fair enough. Though,

    read -p "Password: " -s password; some_command --username myusername --password "$password"

NoodleIncident• 12 years ago

A space before the command stops it from going in your history, though.

dolzenko• 12 years ago

Exactly my feeling, this just doesn't make sense, if he was so paranoid about his password being stolen it's unreasonable to rely on something like "remember to remove the shell history on logout". Then he also uploads the code to some random SVN server...

fredgrott• 12 years ago

the problem I have with the article is that FOSS/OSS used internally and modified for that use and not distributed would mean under normal copyright and work rules that yes GS did own the changes to OSS/FOSS used internally but never distributed.

hynahmwxsbyb• 12 years ago

I wonder how much this cost Goldman from a talent perspective.

pritambaral2• 12 years ago

Do you mean coders refusing to work for GS?

emn137• 12 years ago

It would certainly make me think twice. I mean why risk jail time over a bit of petty cash?

mattdeboard• 12 years ago

Probably nothing. The checklist goes:

1. Do I want to make unbelievable amounts of money?

2. Can I do so without running afoul of the law?

doktrin2• 12 years ago

1. Do I want to make unbelievable amounts of money?

It's worth noting Aleynikov had over a decade of very relevant work experience prior to joining Goldman with a starting salary of $260k.

Yes, that's a good salary. However, it's not like top 1% developers with 10+ years of experience will have a tough time matching that outside of the financial sector.

infinotize• 12 years ago

Amazing how naive in some regards a very smart person can be. You don't send yourself source code, and you definitely don't talk to police without a lawyer, or invite them into your house.

rdtsc4• 12 years ago

For those that don't know, Serge is a great Erlang and C++ programmer and he contributes to open source (had some pull requests to Erlang itself).

Here is his Github account:

https://github.com/saleyn

You can find his posts on Erlang's mailing list once a while.

Two of his interesting project I am following:

https://github.com/saleyn/erlexec -- a utility to control OS process from Erlang.

https://github.com/saleyn/eixx/ -- Erlang to C++ interface.

davidw3• 12 years ago

I contributed several pieces of code to erlexec without having any idea of just who he was, only later realizing it when I read the Michael Lewis piece on him.

He's a very friendly guy and was quite willing to work with me on the patches I contributed to erlexec.

muyuu5• 12 years ago

Sounds to me like it was Aleynikov who didn't understand the severity of the crime he committed.

I work in a similar environment and I'm fully aware that if I do something remotely like bringing my code from work home, holy crap I'm committing a very VERY serious crime and my employer would go after me as viciously as they could. Very especially if I were to be going somewhere else where this code would set me up to make a new competing engine.

Pushing stuff to SVN and mailing seem innocuous... but depending on what you are actually passing around they can be extremely serious crimes.

avoutthere• 12 years ago

I have also worked in similar environments. The company policies regarding treatment of source code was spelled out very clearly in the employment contract. I imagine Goldman has a very explicit contract.

daenz• 12 years ago

Remind me to never work for an institution like that.

muyuu5• 12 years ago

Well, if they pay you high 6 figures it's not so you can take the work that you made for them (which is not yours) and use it to set up a competing product and fuck them over.

It's really not that difficult to comprehend. And it's really not as bad as it sounds, if you want to work in your projects for fun, you do it in your own time. And you can still leave, it's just that if they catch you doing shit like this, it's not going to go down well.

auggierose• 12 years ago

There is a simple solution to this. When you publish open source software, make sure that in your license it says that Goldman Sachs is not allowed to use this code for any purpose whatsoever.

pritambaral2• 12 years ago

Why not throw in a lot of other "evil" entities too. Soon, we'll have jslint's license!

optymizer• 12 years ago

Rule #5 of an Open Source license: "The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons."

http://opensource.org/osd-annotated

GhotiFish2• 12 years ago

There's nothing that stops you from actually putting that clause in your license, just don't call it the GPL or MIT or whatever.

"My code is freely licensed open source, Based on GPL, with the addendum that Goldman Sachs can go stick their head in a pig"

As I understand it, there is nothing preventing this from happening.

dfc11• 12 years ago

I am pretty sure this is a violation of one of the four freedoms, namely freedom 0:

   The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

e28eta• 12 years ago

I wonder if they'd care. Sounds like they don't particularly care about the licenses on the open source code they use, and I doubt you'd find out that they're violating your license.

bayesianhorse• 12 years ago

Moral of the story: If you don't want to be thrown in jail for stealing something you didn't steal, don't sign a confession...

In fact it sounds as if the defendant actually phrased most of the confession himself...

dannypgh• 12 years ago

I'll take it one step further: don't talk to the police at all. Had he said nothing and asked for a lawyer who knows what the outcome would have been?

Obligatory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

senthilnayagam• 12 years ago

so effectively Goldman Sacks killed the potential competing high performance trading platform

Mikeb8510• 12 years ago

Read the GPL carefully, very carefully...

An organisation counts the same as an individual, and as long as code stays within the organization that doesn't count as 'distribution', and Goldman Sachs is under no obligation to release the code. They even retain the rights to prevent the code being released.

It's easy to hate on Goldman Sachs for many things, but in this case they didn't violate the GPL, and Aleynikov did commit a crime.

nwmcsween2• 12 years ago

Ah but you cannot change the copyright of source to something else that you want, also I'm pretty sure you cannot distribute it to subsidiaries as I'm sure was done.

jeremyjh2• 12 years ago

How is that you have become sure of these things?

beejiu• 12 years ago

What do you mean? Goldman Sachs would have owned the copyright, not the employee. (It gets a little more complicated for contractors.) And even if you distributed to a subsidiary, you can simply provide the code to the subsidiary, too. That's fully within the license terms of the GPL.

vdaniuk3• 12 years ago

I remember you. You are the one who was defending Eich and then HFT and now you are defending Goldman Sachs.

You state in your profile that you are a student of philosophy. As a person who studies philosophy too, I am really curious, how would you describe your philosophical views?

Mikeb8510• 12 years ago

I believe that individuals are allowed to hold private opinions (like Eich), and we as a society have decided as much.

As for HFT and Goldman Sachs, people are simply bashing based on jealousy of more successful individuals in a different sector, without actually investigating the topic. Like here, where apparently many don't actually read the GPL.

As for philosophy, that's a topic in itself, but let's just put it this way - I had one foot inside the door of a monastery (figuratively), instead chose a different path. Regardless, in worldly matters I prefer a rational approach to knee jerk sentimentality and sensationalism..

to3m2• 12 years ago

Are you thinking of one of the FAQ entries? http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#GP...

A strange exception - somewhat at odds with the GPL's goals, surely? - but it doesn't seem to follow from the text of the GPL itself.

Mikeb8510• 12 years ago

No, I'm talking about the licence.

Each licensee is addressed as “you”. “Licensees” and “recipients” may be individuals or organizations.
To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.
You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force.

https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

dfc11• 12 years ago

I don't understand this bit about the DNI:

  US master  spy Clapper says  spies steal open source,  then immediately
  claims ownership and  classifies it, and prosecutes if  the material is
  disclosed, like Goldman Sachs.

What did Clapper do?

leccine• 12 years ago

Lesson learned, don't ever work for Wall Street.

zorbo• 12 years ago

Okay, so.

* misleading title. Goldman Sachs stole nothing.

* This guy steals code from Goldman Sachs.

* Covers his tracks. There is almost no reason why your password ever ends up in your bash history. If it does, you edit out only the password. Or you put a space before the command you run. At any rate, this guy should have known how to prevent his password from getting in the shell history and had no reason to delete his history.

* The guy talks to the cops

* Waves his rights to a lawyer

* Signs a confession

* Lets cops into his house without a search warrant.

* Doesn't testify at this trial.

This guy fully deserved what was coming to him. Goldman Sachs did nothing wrong here.

emn137• 12 years ago

You're being totally unreasonable. Being naive (waiving rights, signing a "confession") doesn't mean you deserve to be abused. That's just barbaric.

As to clearing bash history, this isn't criminal, it's just a wise security measure. I've certainly cleared various log files when I knew they contained exploitable credentials. Why the heck would you waste time editing out specific statements? It's not like a bash history is valuable in any normal circumstance.

By the sound of it, he certainly didn't think he was doing anything wrong, otherwise he wouldn't have been helped the FBI so thoroughly.

Sounds to me like nothing he did would have been a problem if he'd have been upfront about it. Basically, Goldman encouraged an atmosphere where people went it alone, implicitly (but not formally) giving them permission to do what they want as long as it gets the job done. Now, after the job got done, they change the rules and screw their employee, who by all accounts did get the job done.

Frankly, if somebody needs to go to jail, it's his boss, by the sound of it.

nmrm2• 12 years ago

Bottom-line: "history -c" should never be interpreted as "covering your tracks". No one should be treating .history as a log file!

* First and most importantly, if you want a true log of history this can and should be achieved using a different mechanism (not effected by history -c).

* There exist bad CLI's which require entering the password on the command line. See the conversation below -- it took six posts on HN before the correct solution (make sure certain env vars are set to the right values) came out. So, hardly common knowledge.

- In fact, you space trick doesn't always work. Can I fire you for negligence if someone finds your .history since everyone should obviously know everything about bash history?

* If you run "man history", the very first thing you see is the -c option. Therefore, if you want to clear a password from your history file, this is mostly likely how you'll do it. You're effectively attributing criminal intent to anyone who's not sufficiently unix savvy.

* If you're treating .history is a log file, then you're being pretty damn close to criminally negligent with your logging practices (equivalent of providing an editor for apache's access.log on your homepage).

* Bash history files are not backed up, except perhaps accidentally with the rest of ~.

* History files rotate out after X commands. There is no way of guaranteeing that temporally-defined backup policies snapshot ~ before X commands are run.

Bash history is a "log file" in the same sense as the stack used for Word's "undo" mechanism is a "log file".

GhotiFish2• 12 years ago

There is almost no reason why your password ever ends up in your bash history. If it does, you edit out only the password. Or you put a space before the command you run.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6475524/making-sure-comma...

TIL! Good tip!

rwallace• 12 years ago

That's like saying if you walk down a dark alley you deserve to be mugged. It may well have been a mistake to walk down the alley, but that doesn't mean you deserved what was coming to you or that the mugger did nothing wrong.

FD3SA• 12 years ago

The programmer types were different from the trader types. The trader types were far more alive to the bigger picture, to their context. They knew their worth in the marketplace down to the last penny. They understood the connection between what they did and how much money was made , and they were good at exaggerating the importance of the link. Serge wasn’t like that. He was a little-picture person, a narrow problem solver. “I think he didn’t know his own value,” says the recruiter.

This infuriates me to no end. These engineers need to be rounded up, and given a serious life lesson on the reality of markets. Knowing your product/service's worth is step 1 of any free market activity.

Engineering is the only profession where the most talented engineers occupy the lowest compensation brackets with respect to their worth. All sorts of bullshit excuses are made up for this (my favorite - they're "Specialists"), but the bottom line is they are not being compensated at anywhere near what they're worth.

This is why startups, and consulting firms, are so key. If the market you're trying to enter is too big for a small operation (like Wall St.), then just consult. Those 20 superstar programmers need to meet up and start a consulting firm. Then, they sell their services to these banks and charge them whatever they want (read: a lot).

They then use this compensation to hire the best engineers from across the world, and keep them out of Wall St's hands. This wouldn't be too difficult, because Wall St would never match salaries because they are traders, and would die before they paid an engineer more than themselves.

To all of HN: please don't underestimate your worth. It hurts everyone, including yourself.

philbarr• 12 years ago

but how do these engineers find out how much to charge if no one will tell them?

and aren't they being underpaid because they are seen as replaceable?

eriktrautman• 12 years ago

I don't normally bring this up but in this case the site formatting is essentially unreadable for someone with poor eyesight who needs to expand the text and make the container narrow to avoid constant left/right scrolling.

zenbowman• 12 years ago

Goldman is a nest of parasites and vultures, do we really expect anything more from them?

dreamdu5t• 12 years ago

They are criminal co-conspirators in the capital theft of $10 billion (that we know of) from US citizens. Goldman repaid TARP loans using money given to them by the Fed by selling $11 billion of failed mortgage securities to the Fed to balance their books. We now know that more than $100 billion in MBS was purchased from Goldman by the Fed.

kayoone• 12 years ago

"Aleynikov was employed for two years, from May 2007 to June 2009, at Goldman at a salary of $400,000.[1] He left Goldman to join Teza Technologies, a competing trading firm which offered to triple his pay.[5]"

jeez, those banks pay a pretty penny.

cmiles74• 12 years ago

This is probably the most important bit of information, in regards to Goldman Sachs' motivation. I think it is very likely that they simply did not want him working for competitors. They then searched high and low for ways to remove him form the market.

The actions this guy was sued over are likely all things that he had done before.

yoamro• 12 years ago

Trying to sympathize with the guy, but signing a confession?....just doesn't make sense

PythonicAlpha• 12 years ago

That is the problem with invention vs. "intellectual property". Inventions belong to the inventor -- property belongs to the owner.

caycep3• 12 years ago

probably OT...but Cryptome posting an excerpt from a Michael Lewis book? that's a bit out of character...

dfc11• 12 years ago

Why?

caycep3• 12 years ago

My understanding is the guy that runs the site bills himself as someone who posts top secret documents, usually government or corporate, from secret or anonymous sources. Kind of like a wikileaks before wikileaks came around. For him to post an excerpt from a book you can buy on Amazon is a bit, well, anticlimactic.

crystaln• 12 years ago

So, he emailed source code to himself (yes that was illegal and violated his employment contract,) deleted the bash history (there are plenty of other ways to prevent your password from showing up in history,) waived his right to a lawyer, talked endlessly with an FBI agent and was surprised (?!) that the agent was not a computer expert, then signed a confession.

Sorry if I fail to have much sympathy. If you play in the big leagues, you should at least have some sense of self preservation.

Natsu4• 12 years ago

On the night of his arrest, Serge waived his right to call a lawyer. [...] Then he sat down and politely tried to clear up the confusion of this FBI agent who had arrested him without an arrest warrant.

These are things no sane person should do, especially if they're innocent.

kylemaxwell• 12 years ago

I thought the policy here was to use the actual title of the article, not to edit it. Why did the moderators change it?

dang• 12 years ago

The guidelines say to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait.

doktrin2• 12 years ago

What repeatedly stands out every time I read of this account is the relative ineptitude of the federal agents handling the investigation.

There appears to be every indication that agent McSwain did everything short of taking explicit marching orders from GS.

The FBI either lacked the will or ability to understand the crimes they were tasked with investigating. I find that disturbing.

james-bronze• 12 years ago

(I'm sorry if I do this incorrectly; first time posting plus I'm on an app)

"Serge tried to explain why he always erased his bash history, but McSwain had no interest in his story. “The way he did it seemed nefarious,” the FBI agent would later testify." Whom is the FBI agent referring to, McSwain or Serge?

artellectual• 12 years ago

Seems to me here, the biggest lesson one can learn from this story is don't work for companies like Goldman Sachs. if they don't want to get with the times and understand how the world they don't understand works then they deserve to be technically behind. So on top of not understanding your work as a developer instead of learning how things work, they choose to abuse the law. Worse part is the law is like a big spider web where it traps the small guys while the tigers and elephants walk right through, there is no justice here no matter how many sections you quote or how many laws you read. Best thing is to just be smart and not get involved. There are many opportunities out there for talented developers.

ececconi• 12 years ago

The original link didn't mention this was an excerpt from Flash Boys so I had no clues Michael Lewis wrote it. I've never read any of his books. Now I want to because he actually writes pretty well.

notastartup3• 12 years ago

This is batshit insane. Wall Street is fucking insane. I hope Serge wins a huge lawsuit.

Excerpt from ‘Flash Boys’ about Serge Aleynikov and Goldman Sachs

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