Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:05PM

when have computer programmers ever made as much as traders?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:07PM

@1 you left that comment yesterday and it got no traction. back for another shot?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:08PM

"This is what happens when you fuck an employee in the ass (*by not compensating him as much as he thought was deserved)"

Actually, I literally fucked him in the ass, so that could be what this is about.

--LB

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:08PM

Bernie Madoff is about to have a lot to say about this (the fucked up the ass part).

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:10PM

I don't think I'm being compensated enough so I might give this tactic a shot.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:11PM

@1 I wasn't the guy who posted it yesterday, stop osting with the guest handle Bess

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:14PM

@7 what is 'osting'?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:17PM

400k is plenty good for a sloppy programmer like him who didn't even know how to delete all traces of his little theft.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:19PM

Lets put together a spaghetti fund raiser dinner for Sergey. I'll bring the pot. MCS, you bring the coke and Trojan you bring the Indian chicks with big ta ta's.

SPODE

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:19PM

@9 for real. what kind of programmer wouldn't know his scam could be easily traced?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:20PM

I'm going to send some Oreos to him in prison.

--Teddy KGB

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:26PM

I just 'osted' all over my secretary's ass.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:27PM

#7 is really me.

Bess, you no damn good and well what 'osting' is you silly little A2M freak.

SPODE

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:29PM

@ tax chick, good call.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:32PM

In Soviet Russia everyone take prop code home.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:35PM

I think Sergey implemented the Dealbreaker PHP code. I'd arrest and deport him just for that.

PS. Tax Chick is H O T !!!!

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:38PM

@14 Nice try. He did try to explicitly clear his history file but GS had a backup method and was able to trace all his commands. So unfortunately, that won't hold.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 4:40PM

400k is already way too much for a programmer; only 25-year-olds whose parents put them through an Ivy League school and then pulled strings to get them a job at a trading desk and who lose money every time they hit the Enter key should be getting that kind of compensation.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:04PM

do any programmers make more than 400k?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:05PM

And we're sending a message right back: not in our house, Russkie fuck!

--LB

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:08PM

Fucking GS seems to know what everybody else is doing, but nobody knows (or can prove) what they're doing.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:10PM

@24 i'm talking about at financial institutions. in the video goldstein/cnbc seemed to be saying maybe the guy did it because he didn't make as much as traders, and thought he should be.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:14PM

People do this kind of thing all of the time (not that it's right). The moral of the story has to be don't cross GS.

Also, who knows what sort of hardware would be needed to replicate this strategy? How many firms have the servers/routers/switches needed to process data and execute trades at this speed?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:16PM

Anyone have first year programming numbers?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:19PM

@24

Rentec, some hedge funds, algo trading firms.

Gs/old leh/ms if you were over svp and were any good. But at that point you're not coding anyway.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:26PM

@analyst-- huh? I'm saying that in the video, goldstein suggests sergey did this because he, as a computer programmer, didn't make as much as traders at gs. how is that what kerveil did? (not trying to be an ass, just not sure what you mean/if i get the joke.)

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:27PM

I guess this guy never watched Office Space....

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:36PM

What is an example of the kind of trade this mystery super double-secret trading system does?

How did GS get the govt to take this guy down over the holiday?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:44PM

@33 front running their customers.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 5:51PM

34 FTW

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 6:38PM

@34
That doesn't compute. Frontrunning is illegal. Who wants this guy to testify in his defense that he really is a whistleblower who was about to expose the illegal activities of his employers?

Oops, I just gave ZH another conspiracy theory to exploit. And his defense lawyer owes me big time.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 7:08PM

maybe this is about detracting from Michael Jackson's funeral festivities.....

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 8:08PM

@2. bill gates, paul allen, steve jobs, steve wozniak,and larry ellison, for starters.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 8:17PM

Why are people complaining about programmers making money? Why has no-one complained that traders are making "way more"? WFT have those guys accomplished that is so special?

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 8:21PM

there is something else to this. for starters, i have no idea why they are saying "computer codes" everywhere rather than "computer software". "codes" is terribly vague.

also, the story i read said he transfered like 32mb, which is really nothing. which implies either he had access to gigs of code and picked out this tiny portion as he already figured out his new job and this code was specific to his new firm's expertise, or he managed to magically pick out generic code that is the magic sauce, which, in 32mb, is impossible.

the guy though obviously can't be that good of a programmer. at the very least all he had to do was, with access to the source, one-time pad encrypt it and dump it to a flash drive. it would be practically impossible to get caught doing that which means he probably did something completely stupid like threaten GS before he left and then GS then monitored everything.

plus, he probably didn't know what he was copying. if he had actually worked on the code that he copied he wouldn't have needed to copy it verbatim, he could have easily just rewrote it from memory.

or he's dumb.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 8:58PM

@41 All good points.

I have no problem/difficulty reproducing anything I've worked on, ever. Whether I do that or not is entirely down to my own internal 'honor' code.

As to copying to flash drives, etc, I think you'll find that outfits where that could be a vector tend to have those avenues shutdown.

However, where there's a will and the smarts ...

Just sayin'

@40 some traders actually make money? while programmers are often viewed as a cost center. Besides, most [but not all] programmers I've dealt with recently are fucking clueless idiot talking heads with accents.

Posted by guest , Jul 06, 2009 9:52PM

This guy is an idiot. He probably oversold himself to some algo shop for the reported $1mil+ package (if that is even true). "Da! I build all of Goldman's high-frequency, low-latency, systems!" If he was really the man he a) wouldn't need the source code in the first place as he would have the knowledge of how things worked in his head, and/or b) he would have figured out a way to take the code without anyone being the wiser. Instead he's spending the hoiday weekend in the Tombs.

Posted by guest , Jul 07, 2009 8:34AM

Only the lowest paid programmers try to steal from companies in the financial sector.

Come on have you seen office space the movie?

Posted by guest , Jul 07, 2009 9:13AM

russian people are all shady

Posted by guest , Jul 07, 2009 10:44AM

@41

Those times are gone, when somebody could write the whole system and then be able to re-write each part of it from memory. These days, even if you create really authentic profit generating code, it usually depends on the number of existing frameworks: quantitative, numerical, optimization, market data, order entry, etc. And those in Goldman I figure should be quite useful and convenient to work with. As far as low latency trading is concerned, that pure analytical, decision making business logic can not be well decoupled from the rest of the code due to the performance requirements. The guy spent only 2 years with the company, so even if he wrote something authentic he could rewrite later, that code was the most probably based on Goldman's infrastructure and it would take some time to extract the logic from there.
I figure, he copied it in chunks with the intention to examine and re-engineer everything later. Some useful framework code could make its way there as well.

----------------------------------

The whole story smells rotten. The thing they claim he did is way too stupid: you don't leave GS for noname competitor in MM$ business and take your 'belongings' with you. There should be something behind all this. If he was so important and knew too much, GS could enforce its NCA and keep him fed but jobless for some significant amount of time.

If that 'Russian ex-Citadel start-up' wasn't part of the scam itself, trying to chip off some of the GS money, I would agree that he probably just oversold himself, and being blinded by tripled salary, completely lost his mind and did what he did.

The real victims though are his wife and kids, since he will be flushed in the toilet.

Posted by guest , Jul 07, 2009 10:44AM

@26 - Chief Technology Officer of BAC made 10 million. Thus is the path of middle office programmers.

Posted by guest , Jul 07, 2009 10:52AM

47 Doubt the CTO of BAC ever programmed anything beyond his voice mail. CTO is a typical senior staff function. Requires managing thousands of well paid people and overseeing a very big budget. Responsibility for a core critical function of the organization. Knowledge of info tech yes, but no programming skills required.

Posted by guest , Jul 07, 2009 10:55AM

What the F**k? I am so sick of people claiming that people steal and cheat because they are underpaid. They do it because they are unethical scumbags.... period... end of story. Does this excuse also apply to the guy who robs little old ladies, etc?

Posted by guest , Jul 07, 2009 10:59AM

@49 True