A relevant thread from Wilmott Forums: <a href="http://www.wilmott.com/messageview.cfm?catid=16&threadid=59857" rel="nofollow">http://www.wilmott.com/messageview.cfm?catid=16&threadid...</a><p>In particular, this quote from Dominic Connor is telling:<p>"...[snip]... As Zmei says [SLang] a GS only language, which even within GS is not exactly universally loved. I hear tales of tragically poor performance, and the inability to cope with modern programming. Think of it as a equivalent to C# 1.0, ie old fashioned.<p>I don't know how much it is seen as protecting IP, but it is not clear how GS can give it up within the next decade even if they tried. There is just so much of it there.<p>There are spots of Java, VBA, and C++ in GS, who often value C++ experience in new hires, even if they don't use it.<p>The GS IT bonus pool is better than most people's IT bonus pool, but it's several tiers down.
Mobility is no worse at GS than many other firms, but that is not saying much of course.
Slang does in this context work to your advantage. Many IT department technologies have no value in quant and/or front office roles, but since Slang is prevalent in all aspects of GS, this barrier is much smaller.
But of course the politics in all banks is far more of a problem than the technology."<p>Dominic is a very well known Quant head hunter. Well informed and generally well liked within the community. I'd wager that they don't want to use Slang in the spinoff simply because they have a change to do a reset and don't want the baggage.
I read this article a while back, that said that Microsoft employs more millionaire secretary's that any other company in the world. They took stock options over Christmas bonuses. It was a good move. I remember there was this picture, of one of the groundskeepers next to his Ferrari. Blew my mind. you see shit like that, and it just plants seeds, makes you think its possible, even easy. And then you turn on the TV, and there's just more of it. The $87 Million lottery winner, that kid actor that just made 20 million o his last movie, that internet stock that shot through the roof, you could have made millions if you had just gotten in early, and that's exactly what I wanted to do: get in. I didn't want to be an innovator any more, i just wanted to make the quick and easy buck, i just wanted in. The Notorious BIG said it best: "Either you're slangin' crack-rock, or you've got a wicked jump-shot." Nobody wants to work for it anymore. There's no honor in taking that after school job at Mickey Dee's, honor's in the dollar, kid. So I went the white boy way of slanging crack-rock: I became a stock broker.<p>- Seth Davis, Boiler Room
<i>At initial stages, potential recruits are not even told that Goldman is the client.</i><p>Well, yeah. That's because if the recruiter tells you where the job is, you'll go directly to the client and keep the 30% of your salary that the recruiter gets to yourself.
Slang is a proprietory language developed by GS, it's been around for ~15 years I think. If I remember correctly they have a development/analysis environment called SecDB in which all coding is done with Slang. All their modelling, pricing and risking is done in SecDB across all asset classes so it's pretty widely embedded.
"That language plays a vital role in Goldman's prop trading, including it's computer driven high-frequency trading."<p>John Carney, Senior Editor, CNBC.com, needs to get himself an editor. :-)
It will be interesting to find out what the 'more standard' language that they decide on will be. With the resurgence of new Lisp-like languages, F# (which is already in wide use at Credit Suisse), and other functional types getting a little more mainstream, I wonder if something like that will be chosen over Java, C++ or C#.
Unrelated to the story (looking at the stock price) Why would GS be worth $154 a share when they're paying dividends of $.35 a share?<p>Of course I guess the last time Apple paid a dividend was 1995, and they're trading at $259 a share.
"The problem is that Goldman's traders use a special computer language called "Slang" that was developed for internal use only."<p>^^^ What in God's name are traders doing going anywhere near a programming language? Surely this is some mistake.