5 ms·

A lot of the other points in the article are "headline grabbing". That's a rather disappointing article. I'd have liked to have seen a deeper analysis of the ar

by egwor 11y ago

A lot of the other points in the article are "headline grabbing". That's a rather disappointing article. I'd have liked to have seen a deeper analysis of the arguments used. It seems to be a skim-read summary of all of the articles I've already read on this, but with less actual substance/no new content. From the article: "Imagine you're a highly skilled programmer, perhaps an immigrant like Aleynikov, unfamiliar with the intricacies of the U.S. legal system and not 100 percent confident in your English skills. You're probably more at ease dealing with machines and the abstract tasks they solve when interpreting code than with people -- otherwise you'd do something else for a living. " What the heck?! What kind of professional writer writes something so child-like/troll-like? Another: "Traditional banks tend not to be such smart employers." We're talking about Goldman Sachs here. You know, the guys who employ people in tech (their CEO even referred to them as a Tech company) to keep ahead of the curve and who regularly make some serious profit. Yahoo, https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=GS https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=GS , shows I think 2 billion USD net profit per quarter. And another: "Goldman may be hoping Aleynikov's case will set an example to others like him, teach them to respect the bank's rules. Instead, it will tell good programmers to go elsewhere and perhaps, sooner than necessary, make Goldman obsolete." Perhaps this has changed GS, I don't know. Look at GSCollections (https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections), something internal that they've open sourced and is now used by a fair few projects including spring. [edit: better layout/formatting/grammar]

tptacek 11y ago
In his capacity as a columnist for Bloomberg View, he's no kind of reporter; that's literally not his job. He's a pundit. Some BV writers (most notably Matt Levine) do a fair amount of reporting for their columns, but many of them do nothing but digest other news sources and then opine on them. That seems to be what happened in this piece, which betrays no evidence of being informed by any of the court filings.
cm2187 11y ago
Agree. And I find the idea of the poor immigrant who doesn't speak english and didn't know it was bad to steal intellectual property very amusing. I have not followed the case but I think I remember that Goldman caught him because he was trying to temper with the logs on his machine to cover his tracks!
- smsm42 11y ago
  Being an immigrant myself and working in the Silicon Valley where there are many immigrants from various places around, I can not help but chuckle when the author goes to "poor immigrant, hardly understands English" sob story. Come on, we're talking about highly intelligent people in the field where practically everything is in English. It may be a good one to try on an unsuspecting jury (worst thing, it doesn't work, but maybe it does) but really, you can't take it seriously. Yes, some of the immigrants working in tech may speak with a considerable accent, and some may struggle when reading original Shakespeare, but you will be very hard pressed to find one that can't understand English enough to understand the basic confidentiality requirements. Now, the intricacies of the US legal system is another thing - you don't have to be an immigrant to get lost in it, I'm pretty sure 99.99% of US-born population have pretty vague idea of the vast corpus of the existing law. But that's much bigger question that does not get the fair treatment by trying to sell us a condescending caricature of "poor immigrant doofus caught in the world of complicated English words".

by egwor 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

In his capacity as a columnist for Bloomberg View, he's no kind of reporter; that's literally not his job. He's a pundit. Some BV writers (most notably Matt Levine) do a fair amount of reporting for their columns, but many of them do nothing but digest other news sources and then opine on them. That seems to be what happened in this piece, which betrays no evidence of being informed by any of the court filings.

cm2187 11y ago

Agree. And I find the idea of the poor immigrant who doesn't speak english and didn't know it was bad to steal intellectual property very amusing. I have not followed the case but I think I remember that Goldman caught him because he was trying to temper with the logs on his machine to cover his tracks!

smsm42 11y ago
Being an immigrant myself and working in the Silicon Valley where there are many immigrants from various places around, I can not help but chuckle when the author goes to "poor immigrant, hardly understands English" sob story. Come on, we're talking about highly intelligent people in the field where practically everything is in English. It may be a good one to try on an unsuspecting jury (worst thing, it doesn't work, but maybe it does) but really, you can't take it seriously. Yes, some of the immigrants working in tech may speak with a considerable accent, and some may struggle when reading original Shakespeare, but you will be very hard pressed to find one that can't understand English enough to understand the basic confidentiality requirements. Now, the intricacies of the US legal system is another thing - you don't have to be an immigrant to get lost in it, I'm pretty sure 99.99% of US-born population have pretty vague idea of the vast corpus of the existing law. But that's much bigger question that does not get the fair treatment by trying to sell us a condescending caricature of "poor immigrant doofus caught in the world of complicated English words".