Every report I've read about any employee in Madoff's company suggests that all the employees were people with really weak skill sets. They were grateful to have the jobs they had, and unwilling to quit or to go to the feds because they knew they couldn't get equal or better money anywhere else. The reported backgrounds of most Madoff employees look very sketchy for the amount of responsibility those people supposedly had in the company. And then, initially, everyone was telling investigators that they knew nothing about what was going on, which was plainly inconsistent with the titles some of those employees had in the company structure.

Well, they did a 25% raise too, but yeah. If you're gonna do unethical stuff like that to begin with, for heaven's sake bargain properly...get a couple of hundred thou and a ticket to Bali or something.

Madoff sounds too fluffy to behave like a mobster and arrange an 'accident'...WTH, ask for $6 million, or do the right thing and call the SEC. This is America, godammit, we don't have time for this penny-ante stuff. I can't believe they'd risk spending the rest of their lives in prison for such pathetic amounts.

Programmers (or software engineers, if you like) almost never ask / negotiate what they're really worth. I don't see how it would be any different in finance.