[p4wnc6]

The tool is also extremely messy internally, written in a proprietary language that resembled a very early version of Python and has accrued nearly unthinkable technical debt. Delivering usage via webservice lets them better hide the dysfunction on the other end of a service call.

This whole topic is not all that newsworthy. The team within Goldman that had architected and developed this years ago had spun out into a consulting group that essentially reimplemented the same thing in Bank of America (Quartz), JPMorgan (Athena) and many others, now including Morgan Stanley, and even trickling down to smaller banks like PNC.

I consider it one of the biggest ripoffs in modern finance that those organizations have paid untold fortunes to adopt the Goldman-like approach, sometimes even with new or additional proprietary languages brought in on the project. It also adds systemic risk for society because it further correlates these internal banking systems between the largest banks. If something goes systematically wrong with it in one place, there's a comparatively high risk the same sort of thing can or will go wrong in another too.

If we were bearing that risk for a good reason it might be OK. But really we're only bearing it because of the superficial branding of Goldman, and the pressure on banks to hand wave and appear to be doing something in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. And so they go for what looks politically defensible (e.g. "well, this is what Goldman did and they survived the crash" -- despite it being widely researched and reported that Goldman's position in the crash truly had nothing at all to do with superior risk management systems and was a mixture of political favors and luck) instead of anything sensible from a system design point of view.

[jnordwick]

Last I heard Quartz and Athena are both failed projects. Quartz's lead left years ago, Netezza DB was having massive issues, and Python was way too slow. They had to reboot the project and it is nowhere close to what they wanted it. Athena has similar issues with developers constantly changing, no direction, and still isn't anywhere close to real-time risk. I know Credit Suisse had something working, but I haven't heard where that project was going since they moved it from C# to Java.

SecDB is still, even with its warts, the leader.

[Maven911]

Would you have any insights on why other places are perceived to not to be able replicate Goldman's success (since you mentioned failed projects) ? Is it really the tech, and not because of GS's business practices instead ?

[p4wnc6]

I can't speak for the other commenters, but my view is that not even Goldman has really any success to show for it. The whole Slang/SecDB thing is a colossal failure even inside of Goldman. That they nonetheless ratchet pay upwards to entice overqualified engineers to babysit a clearly defunct and ineffectual system is no surprise though, because keeping the lid on its badness is paramount to their marketing efforts, which in turn drives GSAM's ability to get high AUM, and more recently has driven the ability to sell this nonsense to others.

The software is junk software. There's no other secret thing going on -- no misdirection or duplicitous motives. A certain class of high-paying customers responds more to the Goldman brand name -- or at least believes it buys them cache with regulators or investors. For that class of customers, vetting the reliability and quality of the tech stack is at best an afterthought. Since that pile of money exists as a thing for Goldman to target, they do target it.

I advocate that more people should prioritize vetting the technology. If so, they would see it is not of sufficient quality to justify its use, let alone paying to perpetuate it elsewhere. But I'm not naive -- the political approach will always matter more to a wide range of people than will a more objective assessment.

[TheLarch]

Besides introducing systematic risk, the sale of this software by Goldman smells fishy. Despite the Blankfein quote about maybe selling for $5 billion back in the day, if the software is what they purport it to be, wouldn't selling it be akin to Amazon licensing their product distribution to Walmart?

I've wondered what these million dollar per month programmers do on Wall Street. This really puts it in perspective.

On that note, it's completely depressing to see many of the best minds of our time working on shit software that adds nothing to society. Another swath of them are working on getting people to click on ads for Facebook and Google.

[dmix]

> Another swath of them are working on getting people to click on ads for Facebook and Google.

Which finances Google's driverless car efforts and an untold other amount of businesses (like gmail). Plus the salaries of thousands of developers and the myriad of other people who work for Google, and the subindustries it supports (bus drivers, chefs, real estate, etc). Just because their specific job isn't world-changing doesn't mean it has no positive effect on the world.

Silicon Valley has benefited greatly from the ad industry which is why the popularity of this type of complaint bothers me.

Same with Goldman. They do contribute to the world by facilitating commerce. Although they likely contribute far less to the world than SV developers since they siphon so much off the top for ultimately marginal longterm ROI. They also ultimately wouldn't make so much money unless they did provide some value to the economy beyond exploitation of byzantine financial systems.

[TheLarch]

I grant that Google is more of a social good than Facebook.

Your claim that Goldman has contributed is a debated topic. Paul Krugman favorably mentioned a study that purports to demonstrate that Wall Street's endeavors are largely unproductive. I can't find it now unfortunately.

[notlefthanded]

Wall street programmers are solving humanity's resource allocation problem ;)

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-24/are-index...

[TheLarch]

Please see my last comment, this is a debated topic.

However, I've read Mike Milken and, despite his warts, I believe he did radically improve capital allocation. So it certainly has happened over the years. -- edit: I meant about Mike Milken

[JackFr]

+1. This is spot on.

Somewhere along the line CTO's or their juniors with budgeting authority were convinced that Goldman's success was due in some measure to SecDB and Slang, which is pure nonsense.

[YuriNiyazov]

Kirat and his buddy are now "Washington square partners", and working on the same product to sell to "the masses."

F9

[InternetPerson]

haha, but of course you mean ctrl+F9 -- you probably edited multiple files...

I completely agree with the parent and grandparent posts! I worked with one of the SecDB clones for three years at a Too Big To Fail bank, and it was criminally bad (imho). It's snake oil.

[Maven911]

Sorry for being dense, but can you expand: Why was it snake oil ?

[InternetPerson]

I agree with jnordwick that "Quartz and Athena are both failed projects." For example, Mike Dubno, Kirat Singh, and three other managing directors on the Quartz project are all gone [1].

I agree with the grandparent post that "Goldman's position in the crash truly had nothing at all to do with superior risk management systems and was a mixture of political favors and luck"

The snake oil in this case is what p4wnc6 (who's spot on) highlighted: "The team within Goldman that had architected and developed this years ago had spun out into a consulting group that essentially reimplemented the same thing" [at other banks].

The product that they sold (a SecDB clone) is pure snake oil, and the projects (which were massively expensive) delivered very little value.

Consider: If SecDB really lives up to the hype, then why would Goldman let all these other banks steal Goldman developers and straight-up copy it?

[1] http://news.efinancialcareers.com/us-en/253040/three-bank-of...