Taking Firm Files Before Quitting your Job
I will be moving from my consulting firm to a MF this summer and before leaving, would like to save a few files that I've worked on while at the company. Hoping to bring deliverables, CIMs, and models so I can reference them in my next role. What is the best way to do this without getting caught?
A few ideas I've had:
1) Screenshot pages on my work phone and transfer those photos over to my personal phone after my work phone is disconnected from the server (won't be able to save PowerPoint documents or models)
2) Send files from one personal email to another personal email
3) Draft messages on my personal email with the attachments included (once my work computer is shutdown, I should have the files in the email without having sent them, potentially no flags raised)
4) Print everything (won't be able to save models)
5) Take photos with my iPhone and recreate the models on my personal computer
Which is best and does anyone have other other ideas? Also curious if current PE professionals actually wished they saved files from their banking or consulting days?
Option 3 is ingenious.
.
Some Canadian got caught doing that selling secrets to the Russians a few years ago
Just read Black Edge. An insider exchanged inside info to an SAC Portfolio manager like that. Only caught bc someone flipped for the FBI and wore a wiretap.
Shhhh remove this post this is how this shit gets caught. There’s only one option here here and the musketeers would agree
I’m sorry, but you are asking a forum full of strangers on how to steal your company’s IP as you transfer to another role? Are you serious?
Here is some advice, don’t do it.
Let’s start with the fact that it is most likely (I would bet on it) against your employment agreement. It is something you can and will get fired for (if you were staying there). On top of that, it is something your new firm would not appreciate one bit, if they get caught using stolen IP (yes it is stealing) it can be a major headache. Then there is the legal risk (personal, already mentioned your future firms risk), in that they can accuse you of hurting their bottom line by using their IP.
I can’t believe I even spent time responding to this. You are raising huge red flags even thinking of doing this.
how tf would the new firm know
That’s your metric? Whether or not the firm will know? Geez, this forum is more behind than I thought.
1) I wouldn’t use that as your metric on whether or not to do this
2) if you don’t think firms (if they care enough) can and do find this out, you are naive
3) risk reward, why have we stopped thinking in these terms? 1% chance you get caught and then get fired and have to explain that for all future roles, is that worth it? How much value you really think you are getting from this?
4) seriously, it is stealing, if you have to ask how to do it without getting caught, you shouldn’t be doing it.
Not that uncommon, have heard of seniors doing this before.
Everyone takes a couple things here and there. Just be cool about it... make sure you have plausible deniability...
If this is in China, it's ok to just send it all to your personal email.
I would not recommend doing any of this. If you do, you better have a good idea of your IT department's tracking capabilities. Many places have monitoring software that tracks any time a file is uploaded, even as an attachment without sending, so you may still get caught.
You won't need them for your new job, trust me. The risk is not big, esp as you're junior, but still not worth it.
I agree with the comments above. I have switched jobs a few times in my career and can tell you that the models, templates, and general info that you have will not be valuable at your new firm. It isn't worth the risk.
The only exception I've found is if you want to keep information on particular deals you worked on for the purposes of future job interviews. One of my prior firms had a carve out where we could keep information for companies on which we served on the board. The idea is that you want to be able to speak intelligibly about the investment, the role you played, etc. In these cases, keeping a few board decks, the CIM, a market study, and maybe a couple other files is sufficient. You may want to consider asking your current firm if they will permit you to keep a very few, select files for these purposes. I would not recommend just taking them - it just isn't worth it.
don’t fucking do it. someone in my office that had left did a bunch of the shit you’re asking about doing and they got caught big time and it was not a good situation - burned a ton of bridges and goodwill earned over the years in a matter of seconds. plus the senior guys were seriously contemplating contacting the new firm she was going to about what she did.
trust me when I say, IT is easily able to find out everything you do on your computer - EVERYTHING
not the most efficient but when I left banking all the analysts just printed out copies of everything they wanted to keep and bound them into PIBs for future reference. Maybe just combine the files into 1 PDF so you don’t raise flags by printing out like 50 documents at once.
I would also add, if you know you're leaving in advance...do this all beforehand. Generally they look back over the last month or so for suspicious behaviors/trends in printing etc. So if you do this 6 months in advance - no one is really looking back that far. Obviously if you like send models from your work e-mail then yeah you're screwed regardless of however long before you plan on leaving.
As others have said, it's probably not worth it. Any of the files I've carried over from past firms have been mostly useless. Anyways, you're going into PE so you should probably start familiarizing yourself with risk/reward.
If I told you that you could take the files, but there was a 10% chance you'd get caught, and get your offer rescinded from the new PE firm, and you'd get blackballed across the industry, would that be worth it?
At the end of the day it's up to you. Plenty of people do it without issue, but you never know when you're going to get made an example of. Also, I think there's a higher risk when leaving a big firm vs a smaller one. If you're at any institutional firm with a IT issued computer, I'd assume everything you're doing can be tracked.
If you are going to do it, printing is probably the safest. Sometimes people put stuff on USBs. WSO is probably not the right forum for asking how to circumvent IT security.
As manyof the smarter posters have said, there is a very low chance you will end up needing or looking back at these files. Seriously think about why you would need to do the specific things you are taking from the firm again. You are not some BSD with 20+ years of experience that needs to reference that one pitch deck for an industrial software compay specializing in open banking. Trust me, you will never find any value in referencing those old materials. You created those materials from the research on the Internet anyways. You can always get that info again on the Internet. This is like the SA Ibers wanting to trade stocks over their internships. Don't ruin your entire career for that one time you can look back at that one book for that one page create.
So I don’t think it’s the best idea in the world for reasons already mentioned, but the 6/2 option would likely be very challenging to prove unless truly outrageous.
This perspective changes if you’re a bank. Pretty much everything is monitored/on record.
Could a USB stick work? How could they track that? Just save down some work on a USB several months before it’s time to leave, and I highly down any IT pleb is gonna put 2 and 2 together. Also, how did this forum become so soft? “Stealing intellectual property…” as if these firms haven’t stolen years off our lives and hairlines.
Large firms typically monitor USB sticks accessing computers. Given most firms have firm approved cloud storage solutions which is externally accessible, there's no need to put something on USB so it would be a red flag. My firm has software which flags unusual amounts of printing, i.e. if I print 10-15 IC decks or something like that, IT (and then my MD) get alerted as generally the only reason someone does this is when they're leaving and want to take files with them. It's not worth the risk, don't do it. Someone got caught in our firm doing it (via whatsapp) and his career is pretty much ruined, wont get a job in a reputable fund again is my guess.
Idk why this thread just got bumped, but agreed that there's no real practical benefit taking deal info, 99%+ of the time it's not helpful.
But you guys must be fucking delusional if you don't think this is rampant across finance.
Difference is people don't usually make a how to post to do it lol. It is like posting an how to inside trade discussion.
"Rap snitches, telling all their business
Sit in the court and be their own star witness
"Do you see the perpetrator?" Yeah, I'm right here"
you tell em white boy!
????
Genuinely hope you get caught. The fact you’re asking if it’s ok to take company / client data that you’ve worked on should give you the answer alone itself. You / everyone in finance is genuinely trained on this stuff. But, may the odds be ever in your favor
You ever sit through a mandatory compliance training and wonder, why do we need this? What kind of idiot would make this necessary? It's you, OP. You're the idiot.
All of you are beginners. Upload all the docs to your firms share file, then give a throw away email address access and download it later. Make the email address sound like it could be a company / client (not gmail or anything). Give the folder a diligence name I.e. Accounts Receivable Aging. You’re set, no one will ever question that.
Everyone here's freaking out when a partner at my firm literally downloaded half of his old firm's shared drive to his personal computer on the way out so he could reference his old formats / materials lol
Pretty sure you'll have enough models and materials to go through at a MF, that all of this is unnecessary, and frankly a waste of time.
You'd be much wiser spending whatever downtime, learning some valuable skills, or bettering yourself in other ways.
Why are so many people in this thread on the side of the employer? I say go for it. What I did was open WhatsApp on my old employer’s computer and WhatsApp’d my gf all the files (IC memos, models, CIMs etc) and she saved them down on her laptop. I was not caught.
If you can’t do that one thing I’ve noticed is that if you’re remote-accessing your desktop then stuff you’ve copied using the snipper tool is also copied into the snipper tool on your personal computer (if both snipper tools are open). So you can just alt+tab and paste everything into a ppt file that you want to save. Wouldn’t bother with models, those are so specific and get outdated very quickly but market research, analysis and financials can be valuable.
Ut dicta recusandae mollitia voluptatem. Porro enim eius dolorem. Adipisci praesentium corrupti quos ad distinctio. Qui accusamus sint ut excepturi earum voluptatem. Corrupti molestiae et est quaerat. Odit nobis quaerat eum autem sunt dolores. Esse aut aspernatur ea dolore et cumque vero.
Aut esse deserunt quaerat sint aliquam debitis sunt iure. Qui sed debitis eum non aut. Nulla excepturi sapiente labore voluptas voluptatum natus iusto. Voluptatum animi voluptates deserunt voluptatum sed hic voluptatem dolores.
Odit voluptatem cumque eius accusantium ut autem sit. Non est optio alias quo. Velit unde dolore non praesentium. Eum earum praesentium eius molestiae temporibus tenetur. Qui natus rerum temporibus eum accusamus. Qui aut non deserunt sed iure. Natus debitis placeat blanditiis explicabo dolorum quae dolores.
Quis aut iste laboriosam tempore nulla eveniet. Sit asperiores occaecati rem voluptas. Reprehenderit sed modi est necessitatibus. Alias labore qui quo labore eius.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Ad esse magni sapiente. Quisquam iure quae minima mollitia est tenetur. Id numquam aspernatur voluptatem placeat necessitatibus voluptate explicabo. Consequatur maxime pariatur nesciunt tempore aut quos nulla.
Quia mollitia qui qui ut. Minima voluptatem excepturi et et officiis exercitationem. Exercitationem aut assumenda illum. Qui reprehenderit est delectus at dignissimos laboriosam. Tempore totam quo voluptatem minus. Laborum eligendi quasi fugit et consequatur eos sit.
Ea rerum in impedit eos. Eius quia quo iusto consequatur in fugiat perferendis. Ut perferendis quae sunt. Voluptatum aut odit quisquam voluptatem et. Commodi accusamus qui quia dolorem error facilis ipsum.
Repellat et et deleniti beatae assumenda omnis. Saepe voluptas nesciunt molestias corporis blanditiis deleniti.