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I agree that his actions would end up in lawsuits anywhere in modern world, and I understand the attempt of former employers to block him as much as legally pos

I agree that his actions would end up in lawsuits anywhere in modern world, and I understand the attempt of former employers to block him as much as legally possible. Kudos to employer for not simply hiring a hitman. That said - who in all honesty will root for some paranoid vengeful billionaire? I couldn't care less if he loses some 30 millions in his multi-billion empire. Which, according to the article, shouldn't be the case - strategies expired, the secret isn't worth anything anymore, and this is just bullying and revenge, because he can and his ego got hurt. With almost 100% guarantee he is 'optimizing' everything to Guernsey he can tax-wise, so British citizens don't see anything from his vast income. Not much sympathy for some little man with big ego and even bigger wallet.

moate 8y ago
Here's the thing though: Even knowing the whole story, that a jerk billionaire is flexing his full legal force on Xu to make his life as hellacious as possible, doesn't change that Xu is a complete shitbird. Xu did a bad thing. End. It doesn't matter who he did the bad thing, we can all agree that it's a bad thing to lie cheat and steal for personal financial gain. The other player in the story doesn't make it acceptable. But people want to shift the narrative to "but what about how bad G-Research is" and that's just the consequence of the first bad action.
Traster 8y ago
Well let's be clear about the stakes of this. Firstly, the billionaire isn't going to lose anything - he owns a company with dozens of different strategies. The people who will lose out are the other engineers who designed and built those strategies and now can't use them anymore. Even the risk of those stategies being out in the wild opens them up to the risk of a competitor exploiting their expected behaviour, so lot's of their work is going to have to be re-engineered. Secondly, whilst $30m doesn't threaten the company, having former employees thinking they can walk off with the secret sauce does threaten the existence of the company. So it's not surprising the most famous example of this is the one that's going to get the strongest enforcement.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  There is standard codified punishment for what you describe - it isn't anything special to quant trading, we can talk about secret sauce of many IT companies, or companies in general. Some dev walks out of Google with their Search code/data would be much more scary and damaging. What we see here is punishment for the sake of punishment, from person who is clearly amoral according to anything you can find on him online (quite a bit). All I say is I have no sympathy for him and the case, which btw even the company itself originally claimed would expire in +-August 2018. Yet they still go for revenge. That's pathetic and clear abuse of legal system from my viewpoint.

moate 8y ago

Here's the thing though: Even knowing the whole story, that a jerk billionaire is flexing his full legal force on Xu to make his life as hellacious as possible, doesn't change that Xu is a complete shitbird. Xu did a bad thing. End. It doesn't matter who he did the bad thing, we can all agree that it's a bad thing to lie cheat and steal for personal financial gain. The other player in the story doesn't make it acceptable. But people want to shift the narrative to "but what about how bad G-Research is" and that's just the consequence of the first bad action.

Traster 8y ago

Well let's be clear about the stakes of this. Firstly, the billionaire isn't going to lose anything - he owns a company with dozens of different strategies. The people who will lose out are the other engineers who designed and built those strategies and now can't use them anymore. Even the risk of those stategies being out in the wild opens them up to the risk of a competitor exploiting their expected behaviour, so lot's of their work is going to have to be re-engineered. Secondly, whilst $30m doesn't threaten the company, having former employees thinking they can walk off with the secret sauce does threaten the existence of the company. So it's not surprising the most famous example of this is the one that's going to get the strongest enforcement.

saiya-jin 8y ago
There is standard codified punishment for what you describe - it isn't anything special to quant trading, we can talk about secret sauce of many IT companies, or companies in general. Some dev walks out of Google with their Search code/data would be much more scary and damaging. What we see here is punishment for the sake of punishment, from person who is clearly amoral according to anything you can find on him online (quite a bit). All I say is I have no sympathy for him and the case, which btw even the company itself originally claimed would expire in +-August 2018. Yet they still go for revenge. That's pathetic and clear abuse of legal system from my viewpoint.