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Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

bloomberg.com

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Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, does that make your job search harder when you leave to a place that doesn't hand out VP titles? People seem to be very particular about titles. Edit: Why did someone down vote me for asking a question? Don't be so goddam sensitive .

>Why did someone down vote me for asking a question? Don't be so goddam sensitive. It's getting to the point now where people are downvoting on HN not just bad or off-topic posts, or posts they disagree with (which is already pretty close to ridiculous), but even just posts they don't think they themselves would have taken the time to write out. I'm pretty sure this post will be downvoted to a very light grey, for ex…

Hacker News is well on its way to turning into a closed-minded circlejerk just like reddit. Do you know of any alternatives?

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, does that make your job search harder when you leave to a place that doesn't hand out VP titles? People seem to be very particular about titles. Edit: Why did someone down vote me for asking a question? Don't be so goddam sensitive .

>Why did someone down vote me for asking a question? Don't be so goddam sensitive. It's getting to the point now where people are downvoting on HN not just bad or off-topic posts, or posts they disagree with (which is already pretty close to ridiculous), but even just posts they don't think they themselves would have taken the time to write out. I'm pretty sure this post will be downvoted to a very light grey, for ex…

aianus you appear to be hellbanned. Looking at your post history it isn't clear to me why, but your post is dead anyway. Seems it was recent?

Kinda ironic considering the subject at hand. FWIW, to answer your question, reddit with a good list of subscribed subreddits, still does the trick IMO. Good enough, anyway.

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#43

Goddam the links on that article are annoying. None of them are sources, just links to general "topics" under bloomberg. Completely confusing. Read this instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov That being said, this just shows how much power Goldman wields with the establishment and it was kind of a scary insight into their recorded weirdness. Basically they just said to the FBI that he stole the source…

Goddam the links on that article are annoying. None of them are sources, just links to general "topics" under bloomberg. Completely confusing.

It's ILA: Internal Link Architecture. It was the hot thing several years back.

http://www.seobook.com/archives/002332.shtml

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The letter of the law does not impinge on this question, since there is no law mapping bank employee designations to legally-defined officers of a bank.

Here's the law in question, for the record: >Expenses (including attorneys’ fees) incurred by an officer or director of the corporation in defending any civil, criminal, administrative or investigative action, suit or proceeding may be paid by the corporation in advance of the final disposition of such action, suit or proceeding upon receipt of an undertaking by or on behalf of such director or officer to repay such…

On the quote you say "may be paid", and not "must be paid". That to me gives Goldman the optionality to pay, but not the obligation. Don't you think?

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#45
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how Bear Stearns was when I was there, 26, and a VP. The title is pegged to the salary, not responsibilities.

Serious question, does that make your job search harder when you leave to a place that doesn't hand out VP titles? People seem to be very particular about titles. Edit: Why did someone down vote me for asking a question? Don't be so goddam sensitive .

Yes, it makes searching for a job harder. If you start looking for a position outside the banking/finance industry as a developer, nobody understands what a "VP" or an "Analyst" is and that it's meaningless (especially if you don't live in the US or on the east coast of the US).

Recruiters encouraged me to change it and/or edited my resume to read "Software Engineer" and then "Senior Software Engineer."

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#46
I hope everything ends up well for him. I've been a very appreciative user, and occasional committer to erlexec: https://github.com/saleyn/erlexec

It was kind of a shock when I put 2 and 2 together and realized who the author was, as I'd already been using the code for a while.

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, does that make your job search harder when you leave to a place that doesn't hand out VP titles? People seem to be very particular about titles. Edit: Why did someone down vote me for asking a question? Don't be so goddam sensitive .

Yes, it makes searching for a job harder. If you start looking for a position outside the banking/finance industry as a developer, nobody understands what a "VP" or an "Analyst" is and that it's meaningless (especially if you don't live in the US or on the east coast of the US). Recruiters encouraged me to change it and/or edited my resume to read "Software Engineer" and then "Senior Software Engineer."

The recruiters are probably right but you could always just put (aka Software Developer) in brackets of something if you want to represent yourself with the title you were given.

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The letter of the law does not impinge on this question, since there is no law mapping bank employee designations to legally-defined officers of a bank.

Here's the law in question, for the record: >Expenses (including attorneys’ fees) incurred by an officer or director of the corporation in defending any civil, criminal, administrative or investigative action, suit or proceeding may be paid by the corporation in advance of the final disposition of such action, suit or proceeding upon receipt of an undertaking by or on behalf of such director or officer to repay such…

Its not ambiguous whether he's an officer. The word "officer" is an term of art. It means someone who has official management roles in the corporation, someone who has special fiduciary duties, etc. A VP at Goldman has none of those things.

A good question to ask is: can a VP at Goldman be sued for injuring the corporation through transactions involving a conflict of interest? An officer can, because he has a fiduciary duty to the corporation. An employee does not.

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#49
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we have many rich people and corporations willing to spend a lot of money to make sure they don't lose their cases. According to Wikipedia, Aleynikov was making over $1m per year at a Goldman competitor after he left. And it looks like he got his money's worth. There was no dispute that he took the code. His "open source" defense apparently fell through, and a jury convicted him. He only won on appeal because…

So then your parent's question degenerates to, why does spending more money correlate with winning more cases? Which is a much more interesting question.

Three pathways.

1. Money is a means of resource allocation. More money, more resources.

2. War of attrition. Raising costs on the other guy makes settling or coming to some sort of settlement more likely.

3. Scorched earth. GS may be trying to send a message not so much to Alyenkov as to any other programmers who'd be willing to entertain a similar stunt. See recent coverage of Amazon's frequent, but nearly entirely unsuccessful, pursuit of noncompetes against former employees.

In particular, bcantrill's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975428

the fact that we had prevailed against Amazon also gave these engineers the confidence that we could and would do so again -- and ultimately, it didn't prevent anyone from matriculating. It did, however, have one lasting effect: the engineer that was pursued went from thinking fondly of his years at AWS to hating AWS and Amazon with a white-hot passion that still burns today. In the end, enforcing a non-compete is like erecting a Berlin Wall: if you feel you need it, you have much deeper problems...

Re: Sergey Aleynikov Loses in Goldman Fight Over Fees

#50
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how Bear Stearns was when I was there, 26, and a VP. The title is pegged to the salary, not responsibilities.

Serious question, does that make your job search harder when you leave to a place that doesn't hand out VP titles? People seem to be very particular about titles. Edit: Why did someone down vote me for asking a question? Don't be so goddam sensitive .

It had no serious effect on me. If anything, it made it easier because of the perceived importance, but not in any serious way. The name "bear stearns" was provocative enough.
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