Deutsche Bank seeks options as sanctions threaten Russian dev unit International trade sanctions threaten to cut off Deutsche Bank from its near-shore IT support and software development unit in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. The global bank's Russian technology centre employs around 1,500 staff, including software developers and systems maintenance experts who work on its global …
> > "We have no code and no data housed in the Russia tech centre."
> Bullshit. Where you have devs they have a local copy of the code.
Yeah. I suspect what they meant was "We have no code running in the Russia tech centre." i.e. prod is in Germany somewhere. Still doesn't get them out their hole though. :-)
Where you have devs they have a local copy of the code
Not necessarily? The code I work on is only stored on a remote machine; I connect to that machine to open and edit the files, but the files stay there, and everything is compiled on the remote machine. It's rather like working on a Google Docs. The file is, at least technically, never on my machine.
During the Boeing MAX airplane crashes, wasnt it mentioned somewhere that Boeing has people in Russia doing development work for the aircraft?
I imagine there are many big organisations with development / IT departments (or even other departments) in Russia. Wonder how they all plan to handle this with the sanctions in place now.
Still, I question the decision to have code developed for airplanes by a nation in possible military contention when there was that particular incident on the September the 11th 2001, but maybe that's just my background talking.
A decade or so ago making the very suggestion could have your clearance stripped..
>Wait, really? So MCAS was possibly not an accident?
MCAS was made by Raytheon. Of course that just moves the conspiracy up a level
>Bad jokes aside, WTF? Why on Earth would you outsource to a nation with which your home country has at best an uncomfortable relation with?
1, It's cheap
2, Countries require you to build a certain proportion there to get favorable import duties
>Bad jokes aside, WTF? Why on Earth would you outsource to a nation with which your home country has at best an uncomfortable relation with?
It happens all the time. While the politicians hate each up the .., the businesses seek better value. At a time having software R&D in Russia, Ukraine or Belarus offered fantastic returns. Things changed too quickly now, we'll see research centres and key developers being evacuated to Europe as already happened in 2014.
The Russian government understands the risk of brain drain and dropped corporate income tax to 0% for the next 3 years for IT companies, advertises subsidized mortgage for IT specialists. I expect there will be a lot of fakers shortly and yet another exodus wave of qualified IT people.
To clarify any misunderstanding, by now any form of peaceful protest is criminalized in Russia with retroactive law. When people stay silent it does not mean they support the government, it means they are victims too.
When I read the bit about "fast-track knowledge transfer" my immediate thought was... so, they're relying on the goodwill of the Russian employees whose knowledge (i.e. job security) is being transferred in the first place. And given that they likely understand full well why this is being done, and that they'll likely soon be out of a job once the process is complete, what incentive do *they* have to cooperate?
Not saying this shouldn't be done (quite the opposite) nor defending the Russian state (ditto), just pointing out that DB seem to be in a position where they're reliant upon turkeys voting for Christmas knowing full well the consequences.
Then again, we shouldn't have much sympathy for Deutsche Bank, given that they've been *very* happy in the past to get their hands dirty with Russian money from dubious sources others wouldn't touch. (Which of course includes a certain ex-US president who was- and is- no doubt up to his neck in that).
AC for obvious reasons.
I have worked with a number of guys (and they were exclusively guys) in DB's Russian operation and they were the smart ones herding the less than smart or independent, cheaper drones in other off-shore locations. Without these guys DB will have real problems - it's not just traditional devs but lots of level 2 and 3 ops people too.
Well, it's not like DB doesn't have a history in making bad choices. One of their customers is an orange chap with a ferret on his head who sued them when they had the temerity to ask their money back after a loan and whose entire business life is now under a microsocope for a whole raft of issues..
Try a search on "Deutsche Bank and Trump" for more on that.
But I have found there are people who believe the bank is the German "Bank of England".
Looking at what Wikipedia has on the bank we find this right at the beginning.
" Not to be confused with Deutsche Bundesbank, Deutsche Postbank, or Deutsche Bahn.".
I suppose people could make the same mistake with "The Bank of America" too.
More quotes.
" According to the New Yorker, Deutsche Bank has long had an "abject" reputation among major banks, as it has been involved in major scandals across different issue areas.[5]".
It is a big bank.
"Since 2012, Deutsche Bank had paid more than €12 billion for litigation, including a deal with U.S. mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.[121]"
Well connected perhaps also to the British government with Sajid Javid a Chief executives of Deutsche Bank (2007–2009).
To be honest the whole German banking system has a bad reputation.
There are lots of hardworking German savers who put the money in the bank, the banks all want to play at doing Wall St stuff like London does, so you get tiny local banks suddenly being invited to play poker with the big boys. Somehow it all gets funnelled through DB.
Germany's financial regulator also has a very lenient attitude to German banks - if they are doing stuff with foreigners that's an export and anything to do with exports must be supported at all costs.
DB have already admitted they don’t have the technical knowledge of the codebase outside Russia. In other words, no technical oversight at the code level. So, you’d have to assume some patriotic Russian would have installed a backdoor in the code years ago. It doesn’t need to be explicit - just comment out the sanitisation of some strategic input, or initialise key randomisation from a source without entropy, and job done.
Muppets.
It really seems like, when you have a large, complex system that is also bespoke, that it'd be a REALLY good idea to have IT, development, and operations in-house*. Forget whether they're Russian or not, you could have a domestic firm still go bankrupt or something and you'd be SOL having it all outsourced to them too.
Well, good luck to ya! Hopefully that cross-training goes quick enough!
*Not to say the physical servers must be in-house, do cloud if you want, but the people operating that it's probably good to have in-house.
Let’s be honest (we’re among friends), this is just a bloody stupid comment by some stupid muppet in the PR department: DB is no more exposed than any other financial institution.
What’s concerning is the apparent lack of “adult” supervision - what they really meant to say is “we have some resources in Moscow that are [insert excuse that matches visa criteria] critical, and like to get them out quick”.
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