> From a bank/fund perspective - we get tons and tons of training about how we should not insider trade, money launder, etc. They have people who have gone to jail come give talks about how it's not worth it, it was the biggest mistake of their lives, etc. Never ever, across half a dozen firms and 20 years, have I had training that was like "so hey don't use these terms that are used by insider traders because that would give the wrong impression when you are um.. doing your job and stuff..".
I got the same takeaway when I was at Google as when I was in the hedge fund space: be careful what you say, regulators and judges might not be very charitable. In both cases, the concept of something you say being in the New York Times was present for me.
The Googlewide training and messaging when I was there did focus on not using anti-trust-triggering _language_ over the specific acts, but I don't think it's fair to interpret this as "Violate anti-trust regulations" but rather a recognition that the common fuck-up some random employee can make isn't to commit a material anti-trust violation, but to provide nasty evidence by writing a puffy email about "crushing the competition". Telling people to write emails about "making users happy" rather than "owning the market" is not telling people to behave badly.
I don't know what you're doing in finance, but it's my understanding that folks who are actually involved in stuff where their job could look like insider trading probably do get subtler lines drawn than I ever sought (I was in systematic/program trading.) Places where doing my job well could be confused for something bad, e.g., tax optimization, we did discuss how to properly communicate in order to avoid misunderstanding if a regulator, court, or journalist ever read our communication.
My experience is that funds & staff that do have exposure to opportunities for insider info because they talk to outsiders like (brokers, company execs & IR, research providers, etc) actually get even brighter lines & rigid boxes around them.
For example - all emails to above go through compliance first & include a disclaimer that you are a market participant and do not wish to receive MNPI. Meetings with above have compliance sit in, etc. People are urged to self report if someone does volunteer something stupid to you that they shouldn't have, and then you sit out from trading it for some period, etc.
They make it very clear that the upside/downside risk is asymmetric. Hey maybe you can cheat and make 10% more this year. Or you can go to prison for 10 years, lose your home, have your wife leave you, and never work in the industry again.
Really? I doubt it. Most insiders never get caught, and those that do get relatively small fines and sentences. Many sentences are suspended or deferred. Remember: To clawback (fine) insider trading, you need to clearly prove specific profits were gained via insider trading. It is insanely hard. Even when caught, it is a tiny fraction of their wealth.
Raj Rajaratnam is one of the most notorious in the current generation. He only did 7.5 years. And Stephen Cohen had so many layers in his onion legal strategy that SEC could never nail him down.
For many normal people, having a case broaght against you is soul destroying. Yes you might get off but you have legal expenses, stress of not knowing what's going to happen, you may be unable to work at your job in the meantime. Just because you don't go to jail does not mean you are getting off free.
> The Googlewide training and messaging when I was there did focus on not using anti-trust-triggering _language_ over the specific acts, but I don't think it's fair to interpret this as "Violate anti-trust regulations"
that's fair - did they also provide training on actually not violating anti-trust regulations, or was it just how to avoid leaving evidence of violations?
Again, there's not a ton rank-and-file people could _do_ to impact anti-trust-related behavior. The fear is reputational, so that's what that explicit training was about
The additional rank-and-file training and process that ties into actual anti-trust-related behavior is how to contact a lawyer as well as the fact that a lawyer and executive needs to review and approve all of the most minor of launches.
Do you have an idea of what the relevant training you would prescribe for a random mid-career engineer or UX researcher or whatever would be?
I'm looking for what was done. Were employees even told that anticompetitive behavior itself was bad? Were they given training on what it looks like, and when to report it for further investigation?
If they can develop training that says "don't say bundle", they can develop training that says "don't bundle", and in both cases they might want their employees to talk to a company lawyer if they have any questions anyways
also curious if the lawyers themselves had rules like "don't bundle" that they would pass along to employees with questions, or if google was okay with bundling
If you worked at Google and you weren’t aware that the whole thing (including your and your colleagues’ big comps) was built on capturing the online ad market then I don’t know how else people like you can be made to see that they worked for something at the limit of breaking the law.
It’s like an investment banker back in 2006 saying that he was doing everything by the book, which he might of well have done, but the whole thing was crooked nevertheless.
I got the same takeaway when I was at Google as when I was in the hedge fund space: be careful what you say, regulators and judges might not be very charitable. In both cases, the concept of something you say being in the New York Times was present for me.
The Googlewide training and messaging when I was there did focus on not using anti-trust-triggering _language_ over the specific acts, but I don't think it's fair to interpret this as "Violate anti-trust regulations" but rather a recognition that the common fuck-up some random employee can make isn't to commit a material anti-trust violation, but to provide nasty evidence by writing a puffy email about "crushing the competition". Telling people to write emails about "making users happy" rather than "owning the market" is not telling people to behave badly.
I don't know what you're doing in finance, but it's my understanding that folks who are actually involved in stuff where their job could look like insider trading probably do get subtler lines drawn than I ever sought (I was in systematic/program trading.) Places where doing my job well could be confused for something bad, e.g., tax optimization, we did discuss how to properly communicate in order to avoid misunderstanding if a regulator, court, or journalist ever read our communication.