> 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.
Depending on who you are, half a million dollars a year is not necessarily 'petty' cash. Also, people risk jail time over petty cash constantly in all walks of life.
It's petty in the sense that you're likely to be able to get sufficient fraction of that not to need to worry about money.
At that point if you're motivated by more cash rather than not being seriously screwed, well, you don't sounds rational to me. That cash just doesn't have much value to you, and the risk does have cost to you.
You risk jail time stealing code from any company.
The penalty here was disproportionate to the crime, sure, but Serge clearly took code owned by GS and uploaded it, without permission, to a 3rd party. Pretty cut and dry case of corporate theft here...
Not really. He worked in a culture that by the sounds of it encourages individual action and initiative. It sounds like the code he shared was utility code, i.e. typically the kind of thing that would be fine to share if it were allowed since it doesn't undermine the companies position.
He was stupid. He should have made his intentions clear from the start, and he might well have simply gotten permission. As is, what he stole may well have been more akin to a using company laptop solely for personal use - certainly some kind of fraud, but probably also the kind of activity that the company might well have condoned if he'd only have asked.
Of course, without knowing what that code was and to what extent it was written on company dime, it's hard to say whether this was more like a bureaucratic oversight, a minor but intentional infraction, or a serious bit of fraud.
Regardless, it definitely sounds like Goldman really abused this guy. Keeping people in the dark about their true worth as negotiating strategy, and encouraging single-person whatever-works-goes work ethics (which may well be a form of intentional plausible deniability given the firms history) sounds to me like they treat their employees like exploitable resources.
So sure, I'd hope everyone would think twice before accepting a job offer there - because they clearly will stab you in the back when it serves them to do so.
