3 ms·

> il Serge was sent to jail for doing it, Wall Street programmers routinely took code they had worked on when they left for new jobs. This is a huge grey area,

> il Serge was sent to jail for doing it, Wall Street programmers routinely took code they had worked on when they left for new jobs. This is a huge grey area, well maybe not so grey right now. Often you can't seperate quants from their excel sheet( or R models) and they will keep these models as they move to new firms. As far as programmers keeping the code they wrote, This is the first time I've ever heard of a programmer, and I'm one, leaving a shop and bringing their code with them. Let's just say, there is no ambiguity what-so-ever about how employers feel about this in the finance industry.

riskable 13y ago
The best way to keep your code after you leave an employer is to make it public to begin with. The key is to get permission to make your library open source from the get-go. I've done it before and it worked out very well: People who did not work for my employer contributed patches that made it better. Essentially, we got people to work for us for free! How can you say no to that? If there's nothing proprietary (i.e. trade secrets) you're really better off making it open source. Many employers seem to think that every line of code their developers write is 100% proprietary but they're really doing themselves a disservice with this attitude. That widget library your developers wrote? It is probably less than 1% of your code base and even less of a priority for them. Wouldn't it be better to just put it on the web under an open source license and hope for the best? If your competitors get their hands on it then... What, exactly? They might improve it for you?