An interesting peek behind the curtain.
Michael Lewis [author of “Liar’s Poker” and “The Big Short”] bashes Goldman Sachs in his Vanity Fair story on Serge Aleynikov, the GS Programmer who was convicted of stealing “”proprietary source code”” (which was mostly “open-source code” but GS believed it was their “wholly owned property”).
On HFT: “The top high-frequency-trading firms chuck out their old gear and buy new stuff every few months.”
On the crash:
“Day after volatile day in September 2008, Goldman’s supposedly brilliant traders were losing tens of millions of dollars. “All of the expectations didn’t work,” recalls Serge. “They thought they controlled the market, but it was an illusion. Everyone would come into work and were blown away by the fact that they couldn’t control anything at all.”
On programming code on Wall Street:
“...more than half the programmers at Goldman were Russians. Russians had a reputation for being the best programmers on Wall Street...”
“By the time the financial crisis hit, Serge had a reputation of which he himself was unaware: he was known to corporate recruiters outside Goldman as the best programmer in the firm. “There were 20 guys on Wall Street who could do what Serge could do,” says a headhunter who works often for high-frequency-trading firms. “And he was one of the best, if not the best.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013 ... programmer