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.
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.
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.
There's more to it than the fact the code is written on behalf of your company. You have written or modified the code, so now it's part of your history. And to some extent, even a part of you.
What we are isn't limited to what's inside our body and brain. The objects we interact with also count to an extent. (Being a cellist, makes me acutely aware of that.) What counts the most is any information stored in those objects, especially information you can't retrieve elsewhere —notes, journal, and other such personal data. Losing that information is like losing a memory. Being stored in a hard drive, a paper book, or a human brain doesn't make much of a difference.[1]
So, when I write some code for a company, I have the right to remember it, and I will exercise that right. That's basic human dignity. If our current power structure (err, "legal system") says otherwise, then it should be reformed.
On the other hand, I can restrain myself, and avoid to disclose all those memories, say, in a public SVN repository. I don't like to keep secrets, but let's face it, I already do, and it doesn't bother me too much. So, I treat corporate copyright as a form of non-disclosure agreement: I won't tell anyone.
But I will remember.
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[1] looong footnote:
Really it doesn't. One day, it may even make no difference at all. We don't have the technology yet, but imagine having a computer wired to our nervous system. It could act as a pair of Google glasses 5.0, or augment our intellect more directly: more working memory, more and more accurate term memories on silicon, even perfect recall.
Now you can't even make the difference between neuron memories and silicon memories. They're both equally a part of you. Heck, your whole brain could be turned into silicon, it probably wouldn't make any difference. (I happen to believe in "mind uploading". I won't justify why here.)
Now let an employer ask you to delete whatever copy of the code you may still hold. Now it is quite literally asking you to erase part of your memories. What exactly should you erase, anyway? Just enough to disable perfect recall? Keep whatever happens to be stored in neurons, and erase whatever is in the silicon part? What if you have stored everything about that company in silicon? (You may well have, if perfect recall makes you more productive, and requires silicon memory.)
If we had the technical means right now, I believe Goldman Sachs would have us forget everything we learned while working within their walls, if not more —like in the Paycheck movie (2003). I think we can all agree it wouldn't be acceptable.
I think there's a distinction between accruing and applying generic skills in a particular discipline and using intellectual property from one employer to benefit another. If you have agreed to protect the trade secrets of your (former) employer, you need to exercise your professional judgement to draw the line between contributions that stem from your experience in the field and those that are informed by work that you or others did for hire at your former employer.
Within that framework, plenty of things are clearly out of bounds, like copied source code. I would argue that re-implementing chunks of code that you know to be economically valuable and unique to your former employer from memory is just as problematic.
Now, by out of bounds, I mean breach of a civil contract. I don't see the criminal aspect.
Basically, there's no need to erase your memory, you just need to distinguish exchanging your time for money from exchanging your former employer's IP for money.
I've been working for a number of years on a product of similar nature.
If I switched companies to make a new system from scratch, it would take me a non-trivial amount of time to replicate a full system, and I probably wouldn't do it the same way. Even if I did it the same way, it would be hard work. During years of work one encounters many little problems, glitches, and even random ideas that don't come to mind so easily.
Obviously the previous experience helps a lot but having your old code basically bootstraps you. And the reason that coders in this sector are paid well, is that obviously the expertise is worth more than the code itself looking into the future. But still, if you do something really stupid like giving them an excuse to lock you up when you're going to a competitor, then you're screwed. I'm pretty sure Aleynikov would agree with me that he fucked up massively by taking his code home. If not, then he'd be out of touch with reality. The very thought of trying to do what he did makes me anxious. Big corporations are powerful and can fuck your life up.
Yo that's all fine and dandy. If you don't accept these conditions, don't take that job in the first place.
Otherwise, if they catch you violating trade secrets you'll get your arse in jail just like Aleynikov.
I doubt there will be a day when there are no secrets and no trade secrets. But in any case, that isn't the case right now. There's a part of the industry that can afford to work fully within Free Open Source, but it doesn't pay anywhere near as well as financial & banking (generally speaking). You can choose to make less money and not surrender completely your work done during office time to your company. Life is full of choices.
> If you don't accept these conditions, don't take that job in the first place.
Indeed, this article convinced me not to work for Goldman Sachs. Really, the way the story was depicted, it looked like they had the freaking Feds in their pocket. Less powerful firms however wouldn't be nearly as dangerous.
Also, don't confuse keeping a secret vs forgetting the secret altogether. When I take some source code home, I don't spill the secret, I merely remember it. The trade secret has not been violated yet. Though I reckon that putting it in a public svn repository would. So, when G.S. is asking me to not copy anything I have written at work home, it is asking me to forget.
I'll need a whole heap of money before I accept such scandalous terms.
> Life is full of choices.
For now. Depends what becomes the norm later. And I must say, I am genuinely afraid of the sci-fi scenario I have depicted above. One day, we will have these direct brain-computer interfaces, and corporations, if they still exist, will try and have you genuinely forget about the work you have done for them upon departure. It will be like working for 5 years at a firm, going out, and not being more experienced than you were before. This cyberpunk outcome is a very real possibility, and in some ways, it has already began.
But let's speak about right now. We're supposed to have rights we can't waive. Like many forms of freedom: you can't enslave yourself, no matter how much they pay you or your family. 'Cause you know, if it were possible, people would enslave themselves. You'd have to be a die-hard right-wing libertarian to believe it's an acceptable downside for the additional freedom to enslave oneself.
Likewise, I believe the right to remember should not be revocable. Our memories are part of our identity. When we lose them, we lose ourselves. To the extent we can lose them, we must do so freely. Doing it for money is not doing it freely (there are similar arguments against prostitution).
> Indeed, this article convinced me not to work for Goldman Sachs. Really, the way the story was depicted, it looked like they had the freaking Feds in their pocket. Less powerful firms however wouldn't be nearly as dangerous.
It's not just Goldman Sachs. Even a company like EA or Activision, which make videogames, would crack down hard on you if you took source code produced during company time and brought it home or to your next employer.
> Also, don't confuse keeping a secret vs forgetting the secret altogether. When I take some source code home, I don't spill the secret, I merely remember it. The trade secret has not been violated yet. Though I reckon that putting it in a public svn repository would. So, when G.S. is asking me to not copy anything I have written at work home, it is asking me to forget.
Nobody can reproduce an exact piece of software of high complexity from memory. Nobody. Re-doing it implies some redevelopment and it's accepted that you can do that. Same for the reuse of expertise gained during your stay in the company. These are legally different things and a distinction between these can be made in court.
> I'll need a whole heap of money before I accept such scandalous terms.
These terms are absolutely logical in the environment of that work. If you were the employer in that situation you would do the same. If you take what is essentially a competitive betting bot and take it to the competition, you immediately destroyed a massive amount of future wealth for your ex-employer. This is why these terms are agreed in the contract, because your work would be worth a fuck-ton less under the premises that it won't be useful in the very near future.
HFT Markets are a bit like a game of team poker. If a member of the team violates your pact and goes around explaining your exact strategy and giving away your cards, he's actively damaging your bottom line. And he's doing so against contract and law, without which life would be a lawless nightmarish jungle.
> We're supposed to have rights we can't waive. Like many forms of freedom: you can't enslave yourself, no matter how much they pay you or your family. 'Cause you know, if it were possible, people would enslave themselves. You'd have to be a die-hard right-wing libertarian to believe it's an acceptable downside for the additional freedom to enslave oneself.
Working is typically surrendering part of your life and your freedom for money, so you can have more time and more freedom without having to worry about things like having a roof above you to sleep and eating every day (slaveries we're born with). And generally satisfying your needs and wishes.
> Likewise, I believe the right to remember should not be revocable. Our memories are part of our identity. When we lose them, we lose ourselves. To the extent we can lose them, we must do so freely. Doing it for money is not doing it freely (there are similar arguments against prostitution).
Remembering is one thing, keeping verbatim copies of your work (and its interactions that imply the work of others, but even leaving that aside) is a very different thing.
It takes a massive sense of entitlement to violate your extremely generous contract in such a way.
My company pays me well, takes no more than 37-40 hours a week of my time and gives me full weekends and around 30 days a year that I can choose to my heart's content. The amount of freedom that this affords me, I honestly don't think I could get it elsewhere. If I thought otherwise I would be doing that instead. I do what I want most of the time. If I was, say, in the African savannah worried for my life day and night, I'd be extremely less free that I am now. Same for a work that paid me so little that I had to be worrying about my basic needs being covered in the near future, or forcing me to make many choices in basic things like food or living space. Freedom is not an absolute and it's always a matter of compromise.
I suspect Aleynikov's case wasn't too different. Just because sometimes work is boring and you have to deal with a codebase that is not like you'd dream to have, it doesn't entitle you to do what he did, which is being a massive twat, on top of a criminal. I think he's likely a great guy, but he fucked up. He seems to trivialise what he did and he may think it's not severe enough to go to prison. He's (or was) wrong. Hopefully he learnt the lesson.
If I pay good money for a painting, the author can, generally speaking, freely paint the same again or even an improved version of my painting. But he cannot come and pick my painting claiming that I cannot keep his memories because they're part of his life or some bullshit of that sort. With software that competes in the market based on its trade secrets, it's similar. By copying it and making it available to others you are subtracting value from the original rendering it basically worthless (especially so in the case of an HFT engine). Not all duplication of encoded information is the same.
In anglo-saxon cultures crimes against property are very, very serious. And they're so for very good reason. Property is money and money is basically everything. Money is what buys you freedom, even life. Denying this reality is self destructive both in the individual and the societal level.
There is not much disagreement left. Just some remarks:
> Nobody can reproduce an exact piece of software […] from memory. […] Re-doing it implies some redevelopment […]. Same for the reuse of expertise […]. These are legally different things […].
I agree 100%. But I'm not debating the facts, nor their legality. I'm questioning the law itself. I'm saying the distinction is somewhat arbitrary to begin with. Speaking of which:
> Remembering is one thing, keeping verbatim copies of your work […] is a very different thing.
This we disagree about. As I said in my first comment above, it is not so different. In a few decades, it may even become utterly meaningless (I mentioned perfect recall enabled by brain-computer interfaces). I welcome any further counter-argument. In the meantime, I will just add this quote from Gwern http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition
> I’ve had to say many times that I don’t know what I think about something, but whatever that is, it’s on my website. (A more extreme form of the Evernote/Mnemosyne neuroprosthetic.) A commenter once wrote that reading gwern.net felt like he was crawling around in my head. He was more right than he realized.
More generally, where is the limit between you and the outside world? In my opinion, the answer is not as obvious as it looks, especially when considering transhumanist ideas.
> HFT Markets are a bit like a game of team poker.
Yeah, that bothers me: it looks like a zero sum game, with very little benefits for the world as a whole (actually, I have seen argument saying it's bad for the world —mini krashes and such). I mean, is it even fun?
> If I pay good money for a painting, the author can, generally speaking, freely paint the same again or even an improved version of my painting. But he cannot come and pick my painting claiming that I cannot keep his memories because they're part of his life or some bullshit of that sort. With software that competes in the market based on its trade secrets, it's similar.
While I see the similarity, I cannot help but notice the difference. Your enjoying a painting doesn't rely on others not having a perfect copy. (Unless you must be "the one" or something.) The value of your trading software however does rely on the ignorance of others. Your right to keep it secret suspiciously looks like a right to take advantage of others.
I have another problem: competition is the zero-sum part of the game. By itself it is useless. The idea is to get positive externalities, such as plain better products on the market. Keeping your algorithms to yourself doesn't sound a good way to foster these positive externalities. Especially when the whole game is a big, complicated variant of rock paper scissors.
Overall, I distrust entities that rely on secrecy.
> My company pays me well, […] The amount of freedom that this affords me, I honestly don't think I could get it elsewhere.
Looks like you have made the right selfish choice. Others aren't so lucky. Many are overworked, and many others are unemployed. The sheer numbers suggest it can't be all their fault. It would be like feeding 100 dogs with 95 pieces of meat, then scolding the 5 starving dogs for not being competitive enough. There is a case for collective action. There is a case for changing society. More specifically, there is a case for a 4 day work-week: it would grant many people more freedom, including you.
> In anglo-saxon cultures crimes against property are very, very serious. And they're so for very good reason.
Again, I agree.
I will note however that the so called "intellectual property" you hint at have very little to do with actual property. It is a misleading term, with inaccurate connotations. Both "intellectual exclusivity" and "intellectual monopoly" would be more accurate.
So, when you take source code back home, you're not violating property. You're potentially violating secrecy. Which may or may not be just as serious. Nevertheless, we have a case of conflicting rights: the right to remember on the one hand, and the right to secrecy on the other hand. Since companies are not persons (except legally), I would tend to give the priority to the humans' right to remember. That said, I'll do my best not to harm my former employers: last time I saw him, my boss was still human —I worked at a small company where the two CEOs own most of the stock.
> money is basically everything. […] Denying this reality is self destructive both in the individual and the societal level.
Couldn't agree more. Which I why I'm so scared of the fact so few people have a say in our monetary policy. Those who control money have far more power over us than any politician ever had. (Except dictators. Maybe.)
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.