9 ms·

My opinion: This is not about the drivers. They were engaging in activity intended to be actively hostile to a competitor. That is why this is wrong. It is one

by Mz 10y ago

My opinion: This is not about the drivers. They were engaging in activity intended to be actively hostile to a competitor. That is why this is wrong. It is one thing to build a competitive business. It is another to try to actively undermine the competition, and not because your service is simply better. I get rather tired of a world in which "Well, technically, it didn't break any existing rules, so it should be okay, right?" gets used to justify all kinds of ugly stuff. We live in a world that our existing laws were not designed to account for because it hadn't been invented yet, nor even imagined. It is almost like saying "Well, if we invented magic and used magic to murder people, hey, we should be allowed to get away with murder because our current laws don't have clauses that address the use of magic, amirite??!!" Uh, no. You are not right. And I hope we will develop laws and rules that spell out that you are not right.

sillysaurus3 10y ago
Hey, good reply. Thanks! I think this convinced me. My issue was that I see myself as a pretty moral person, but if I were working for a startup and was tasked with "Implement a way to know how many Lyft drivers are out on the road," I could see myself doing something very similar to what Uber did, and also feeling mildly clever about it. Isn't that what we call out-of-the-box thinking? It seems like there's a fine line between being clever and being morally bankrupt. Clever hack: Using a language feature in a way it wasn't intended. Morally bankrupt: Using a competitor's API in a way it wasn't intended. So it was really hard to work through these concerns, or even begin to address them without talking publicly about it. But bringing it up publicly seems to entail people talking down to you (see the replies to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189381 in this thread). Just an interesting situation.
- TheCondor 10y ago
  There isnt that fine of a line. That's the moral hazard, are you building something or are you working to destroy something. Frame it as the VW firmware, they didn't cheat emissions because one or two guys did some late night hackers and put some extra code in to git, there was an orchestrated effort where a lot of people thought "out side the box" and rationalized their morals. Would it be more moral to report the API use to Lyft? Those folks are just trying to earn a living too, right? Would lent you feel just as clever reporting their vulnerability to them?
- zacharyvoase 10y ago
  It’s not a fine line: signing up for a Lyft account requires explicitly agreeing to a ToS, which is a legally-binding contract.
  - sillysaurus3 10y ago
    Are you sure you've fully read and understood every ToS for every product you've ever signed up for, and also never violated any clause? I know that this is a different situation, because you could make the argument that if you're a business, you'd better fully read and understand every clause of every ToS. But it was difficult to integrate that mentality when we, as consumers, don't treat ToS's as legally binding. And most of us didn't have an ethics course in university. So when we're being asked by an employer to do X, and X is something that we do as consumers, then at what point are we supposed to think "Nope, this is wrong"? The point is, treating these issues like they're incredibly obvious helps no one. It takes more effort to debate it in good faith than to simply assert "It's obvious," but it doesn't change anybody's mind.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      When you decide out of ignorance or willful misconduct to ignore contracts you enter into, you're going to get sued.
    - tfinniga 10y ago
      I think it's a good exercise to do that kind of self-examination, to honestly evaluate situations which are morally ambiguous to various degrees, figure out where you stand and why, and plan what you would do when such a situation presents itself. It's very likely that you might just go along with something in the moment, unless you've thought about it in advance and are able to recognize it. When I was in grad school I knew a student who was almost completely amoral - not that has was evil, but it seemed like right and wrong never even entered into his decision process. For example, he decided that it might be profitable to write splog-creation software. He even brought in different outputs and did user testing in the lab, asking fellow students if they preferred output A or B, which had more believable testimonials, and if they were suffering from acne, which would they be more likely to buy from, etc. It seemed scummy to me, but it took a long time for me to put my finger on exactly why. Wasn't it just another kind of advertising? It helped sell the acne medicine, which was a benefit to those that bought and sold it, right? Your answers might be different, which is why it's good to think these things through for yourself. For me, what I came to was that the Google search engine is good, and it provides a lot of value by making it possible to find what you're actually looking for. The splogs where siphoning off some of that value, and giving it to that student. They provided value to the student, but they made the internet worse for everyone else because it would be harder to find what actually worked well or was organically best. Basically a tragedy of the commons, and the result was a net negative - he destroyed a lot more value than he was able to capture, even though it was only a papercut from each person. It's much better to create more value than you capture, so the world is a better place for having you in it. I think that kind of approach might be applicable here. Is Uber competing in a way that is beneficial to their customers, and therefore net positive? If they compete by trying to hobble or destroy Lyft that kind of sucks, but if they win by having a better product or a better approach to business, that seems more fair and results in a better outcome, a better world. Run faster, don't kick the other racer's ankles.
- Mz 10y ago
  As much as possible, I have no desire to talk down to anyone. I have had a couple of law classes. I found them hard. I put a lot more effort into my first law class than the statistics class I took the same quarter and did vastly better in statistics. I also worked in a very legally driven industry for over five years. That was an experience sort of counter to my general nature. It was a growth experience. I try hard to not talk down to anyone, if at all possible. I don't always get it right, but I don't think that fosters good discussion. If you can't ask the "dumb" questions, then we have a very big problem. At that point, only the people already in the know can talk at all and that's a very big problem. So thank you for asking a sincere question in good faith. :-)
- mquander 10y ago
  I think the relevant part that distinguishes whether it's ethical is whether you are deceptively taking advantage of another party. If Uber wouldn't be willing to tell Lyft what they are doing with their API, and Lyft would stop them if they knew, then that's a good signal that it's not very ethical to do it. (Of course, if you're a consequentialist, then you might still like the action if it were serving some greater good. But this seems more like a zero-sum game between Uber and Lyft, at best.) I suspect that if you were working for the same startup and you were tasked with "Implement a way to know how many Lyft drivers are out on the road, and make sure Lyft can't tell we're doing it" then you might hesitate.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    Lyft is making this information available to anyone who signs up and accesses it, there's no subterfuge going on. They didn't plant a mole in Lyft to send them secret internal documents. They didn't steal their code and copy its innovations. The mere fact that Lyft "would [try to] stop them" makes it immoral? How does that work? Is it immoral if I watch tapes of the competing team's last football game to figure out what plays they like to use? Surely they would try to stop me from doing this if they could, because they want me to know as little about their playbook as possible, because they'd prefer to win. They might even tell the clerk not to sell the tape to anyone who is wearing my team's colors to try to keep it out of enemy hands. But there's nothing wrong with reviewing the tapes, even if they've tried to stop me from doing so. What makes your competitors pleasure a barometer of morality? Almost always, winners are going to be happy and losers are going to be sad. Is it immoral for anyone to win or lose?
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      They broke the agreement they signed to gain access to that information and intended to break that agreement from the outset. That's outright fraud to gain access. This isn't some kind of gray area like you're trying to pretend.
    - exergy 10y ago
      I think the party that sued are the drivers themselves who allege that collection such information is tantamount to wiretapping. I could be wrong in my interpretation though. On the other hand, I completely disagree with your last paragraph. That kind of world is my definition of hell. Winners are "happier"? On what metric? Is Lyft a "loser" company? Are it's employees losers? Who's "unhappy" in this scenario? A "win at all cost" culture that leaves the losers in the dust sounds like a nasty, vile dystopia.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I have to wonder how much business/competition experience some of these guys replying to you have. Tech people live in a bubble. Because our skills are in high demand and there's a pretty strong natural aptitude barrier limiting the number of new competitors, our experiences competing in the tech bubble can be very misleading. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. If you are lazy about competing, or trying to "go easy" on someone, you are going to get eaten. This is a hard-coded biological response to scarcity, and it's not going to go away, so we best get used to it and stop being everyone else's doormat. Successful companies are usually fairly ruthless; they're just good at keeping it quiet. Not only does what I know about Uber's program not surprise me (and I haven't read in-depth on it yet, so this is my disclaimer if there's something more repugnant than signing in to Lyft buried under the covers), but it's downright conventional. Refusal to compete is suicide. Naively believing that the world will reward you if you play nice-nice and opt out of decisive, competitive action is the best way to find yourself/your company on a platter at someone else's table. This ethos from some of the other commenters that you shouldn't do something because it might make your competitors unhappy is absurd. Show a little sporting spirit. If a competitor is making intelligence available, you absolutely should take advantage of it. I've found the guiding star to be "Is this really immoral, or have we just been socialized to believe it's impolite or in bad taste?" One should realize that a lot of this socialization is provided by people who simply don't want you to become a strong competitor, and have indoctrinated this imaginary, soft, cushiony world into everyone's brains so that it's easier for them to come in and take what they want, and their constant empty blathering draws attention away from their dirty deeds. There's no need to allow ourselves to be victimized like that. Specifically, it's ridiculous to claim that using an API in a way that isn't intended is "morally bankrupt". That's like saying it's morally bankrupt for Walmart employees to go to Target looking for places where they can get an advantage. Far from morally bankrupt, that's a fundamental component of capitalism; how are you supposed to compete if you can't see what your competitor is doing? Patronizing competing services in a non-disruptive way is normal. Some may be familiar with "secret shoppers", people that companies pay to go to their stores on a random day and report back on the experience. These secret shoppers are also deployed to competing stores. How and/or why is this any different? Private and undocumented APIs have been exploited by developers for decades. My understanding is that Uber was not even doing that, but rather just accessing the normal API in a non-disruptive way to learn some useful information about their competition.
- wsxcde 10y ago
  Is it really a fine line? Lyft explicitly say you can't use their API to compete with them. How can violating their terms of service be in any kind of grey area? I'm not posing rhetorical questions. I'm asking you an honest question. Why would you think it's okay to use a service in a manner that the service explicitly prohibits?
- pyrale 10y ago
  > My issue was that I see myself as a pretty moral person, but if I were working for a startup and was tasked with "Implement a way to know how many Lyft drivers are out on the road," I could see myself doing something very similar to what Uber did, and also feeling mildly clever about it. Being pretty moral and having strong work ethics are two different things. I believe (or at least hope) that our profession mostly sees itself as moral. However, in terms of ethics, we suck. We rarely take time to think about the consequences of our action, and what impacts it may have. We rarely build elaborate thought about what we should and should not do. Therefore, when the time comes to do something, we are left unprepared, we cannot envision the moral dilemnas of things and the consequences of what we do, and we go for it without even thinking about it. This is why so many IT people end up doing things they may regret : they are not necessarily immoral, but they never thought seriously about what they should and should not do in their job.
- memmcgee 10y ago
  If we determine how right something is with how clever it is, we can justify some pretty messed up things.
- NumberCruncher 10y ago
  >> It seems like there's a fine line between being clever and being morally bankrupt. It is still a fine line if you are the one whose rights are violated? For example "using my laptop in a way it wasn't intended" in order to hack your laptop and to steal your passwords is a "Clever Hack" or "Morally Bankrupt"?
- chandler 10y ago
  >> It seems like there's a fine line between being clever and being morally bankrupt. Actions can only be evaluated as moral/immoral/amoral when you've taken the time to define a system of morals. It's the difference between a requirements document and an implementation--just as you can't determine the suitability of software without knowing its requirements, you can't determine the suitability of an action without knowing your morals. Suppose you've decided you want to live in a society that respects the "Don't lie, steal, or cheat" maxims (for whatever reason--I've chosen this here because they're explicatively short!): Then determining what's moral/immoral/amoral becomes an application of: 1) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to intentionally misrepresent the truth? 2) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to take something that hasn't been given? 3) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to misrepresent the truth for gain? On the other hand, consider a company's system of "Maximize profit while minimizing legal liability": 1) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to maximize our company's profit? 2) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to expose our company to legal liability? Notice that these two systems don't address the same concerns. So the fine line exists because what's moral for the company MAY conflict with what's moral for the individual, and many of us don't like to think about /any/ ethical system (after all we're being paid to work in the latter!).
- godmodus 10y ago
  Each man, and woman, should have a line in the sand that they wouldnt cross. Some call this honor, I like to call this behavior integrity.
foxylad 10y ago
Laws are just our social norms ("how we do things around here") codified into actionable rules. Social norms develop and act much faster than laws, and I would suggest they are more powerful. In Uber's case, publicity about their underhanded tactics have caused huge numbers of people to delete the app. We don't have Uber where I live, but a visitor who suggested getting an Uber to the airport elicited an instant "No way I'm using those scum" reaction from me. That hurts Uber far more (and far more quickly) than any legal process. I think the big lesson here is that you have to consider social norms at least as carefully as you do legal requirements. That's painful for software people because we love precision and predictability, so laws are cool and all those nebulous and confusing opinions that you have to talk to people to understand are icky.
willstrafach 10y ago
> It is another to try to actively undermine the competition, and not because your service is simply better. I am curious where the line would be drawn here. Does it also undermine competitors when companies "poach" workers from competitors by offering a higher salary?

by Mz 10y ago

sillysaurus3 10y ago

Hey, good reply. Thanks! I think this convinced me. My issue was that I see myself as a pretty moral person, but if I were working for a startup and was tasked with "Implement a way to know how many Lyft drivers are out on the road," I could see myself doing something very similar to what Uber did, and also feeling mildly clever about it. Isn't that what we call out-of-the-box thinking? It seems like there's a fine line between being clever and being morally bankrupt. Clever hack: Using a language feature in a way it wasn't intended. Morally bankrupt: Using a competitor's API in a way it wasn't intended. So it was really hard to work through these concerns, or even begin to address them without talking publicly about it. But bringing it up publicly seems to entail people talking down to you (see the replies to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189381 in this thread). Just an interesting situation.

TheCondor 10y ago
There isnt that fine of a line. That's the moral hazard, are you building something or are you working to destroy something. Frame it as the VW firmware, they didn't cheat emissions because one or two guys did some late night hackers and put some extra code in to git, there was an orchestrated effort where a lot of people thought "out side the box" and rationalized their morals. Would it be more moral to report the API use to Lyft? Those folks are just trying to earn a living too, right? Would lent you feel just as clever reporting their vulnerability to them?
zacharyvoase 10y ago
It’s not a fine line: signing up for a Lyft account requires explicitly agreeing to a ToS, which is a legally-binding contract.
- sillysaurus3 10y ago
  Are you sure you've fully read and understood every ToS for every product you've ever signed up for, and also never violated any clause? I know that this is a different situation, because you could make the argument that if you're a business, you'd better fully read and understand every clause of every ToS. But it was difficult to integrate that mentality when we, as consumers, don't treat ToS's as legally binding. And most of us didn't have an ethics course in university. So when we're being asked by an employer to do X, and X is something that we do as consumers, then at what point are we supposed to think "Nope, this is wrong"? The point is, treating these issues like they're incredibly obvious helps no one. It takes more effort to debate it in good faith than to simply assert "It's obvious," but it doesn't change anybody's mind.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    When you decide out of ignorance or willful misconduct to ignore contracts you enter into, you're going to get sued.
  - tfinniga 10y ago
    I think it's a good exercise to do that kind of self-examination, to honestly evaluate situations which are morally ambiguous to various degrees, figure out where you stand and why, and plan what you would do when such a situation presents itself. It's very likely that you might just go along with something in the moment, unless you've thought about it in advance and are able to recognize it. When I was in grad school I knew a student who was almost completely amoral - not that has was evil, but it seemed like right and wrong never even entered into his decision process. For example, he decided that it might be profitable to write splog-creation software. He even brought in different outputs and did user testing in the lab, asking fellow students if they preferred output A or B, which had more believable testimonials, and if they were suffering from acne, which would they be more likely to buy from, etc. It seemed scummy to me, but it took a long time for me to put my finger on exactly why. Wasn't it just another kind of advertising? It helped sell the acne medicine, which was a benefit to those that bought and sold it, right? Your answers might be different, which is why it's good to think these things through for yourself. For me, what I came to was that the Google search engine is good, and it provides a lot of value by making it possible to find what you're actually looking for. The splogs where siphoning off some of that value, and giving it to that student. They provided value to the student, but they made the internet worse for everyone else because it would be harder to find what actually worked well or was organically best. Basically a tragedy of the commons, and the result was a net negative - he destroyed a lot more value than he was able to capture, even though it was only a papercut from each person. It's much better to create more value than you capture, so the world is a better place for having you in it. I think that kind of approach might be applicable here. Is Uber competing in a way that is beneficial to their customers, and therefore net positive? If they compete by trying to hobble or destroy Lyft that kind of sucks, but if they win by having a better product or a better approach to business, that seems more fair and results in a better outcome, a better world. Run faster, don't kick the other racer's ankles.
Mz 10y ago
As much as possible, I have no desire to talk down to anyone. I have had a couple of law classes. I found them hard. I put a lot more effort into my first law class than the statistics class I took the same quarter and did vastly better in statistics. I also worked in a very legally driven industry for over five years. That was an experience sort of counter to my general nature. It was a growth experience. I try hard to not talk down to anyone, if at all possible. I don't always get it right, but I don't think that fosters good discussion. If you can't ask the "dumb" questions, then we have a very big problem. At that point, only the people already in the know can talk at all and that's a very big problem. So thank you for asking a sincere question in good faith. :-)
mquander 10y ago
I think the relevant part that distinguishes whether it's ethical is whether you are deceptively taking advantage of another party. If Uber wouldn't be willing to tell Lyft what they are doing with their API, and Lyft would stop them if they knew, then that's a good signal that it's not very ethical to do it. (Of course, if you're a consequentialist, then you might still like the action if it were serving some greater good. But this seems more like a zero-sum game between Uber and Lyft, at best.) I suspect that if you were working for the same startup and you were tasked with "Implement a way to know how many Lyft drivers are out on the road, and make sure Lyft can't tell we're doing it" then you might hesitate.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  Lyft is making this information available to anyone who signs up and accesses it, there's no subterfuge going on. They didn't plant a mole in Lyft to send them secret internal documents. They didn't steal their code and copy its innovations. The mere fact that Lyft "would [try to] stop them" makes it immoral? How does that work? Is it immoral if I watch tapes of the competing team's last football game to figure out what plays they like to use? Surely they would try to stop me from doing this if they could, because they want me to know as little about their playbook as possible, because they'd prefer to win. They might even tell the clerk not to sell the tape to anyone who is wearing my team's colors to try to keep it out of enemy hands. But there's nothing wrong with reviewing the tapes, even if they've tried to stop me from doing so. What makes your competitors pleasure a barometer of morality? Almost always, winners are going to be happy and losers are going to be sad. Is it immoral for anyone to win or lose?
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    They broke the agreement they signed to gain access to that information and intended to break that agreement from the outset. That's outright fraud to gain access. This isn't some kind of gray area like you're trying to pretend.
  - exergy 10y ago
    I think the party that sued are the drivers themselves who allege that collection such information is tantamount to wiretapping. I could be wrong in my interpretation though. On the other hand, I completely disagree with your last paragraph. That kind of world is my definition of hell. Winners are "happier"? On what metric? Is Lyft a "loser" company? Are it's employees losers? Who's "unhappy" in this scenario? A "win at all cost" culture that leaves the losers in the dust sounds like a nasty, vile dystopia.
cookiecaper 10y ago
I have to wonder how much business/competition experience some of these guys replying to you have. Tech people live in a bubble. Because our skills are in high demand and there's a pretty strong natural aptitude barrier limiting the number of new competitors, our experiences competing in the tech bubble can be very misleading. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. If you are lazy about competing, or trying to "go easy" on someone, you are going to get eaten. This is a hard-coded biological response to scarcity, and it's not going to go away, so we best get used to it and stop being everyone else's doormat. Successful companies are usually fairly ruthless; they're just good at keeping it quiet. Not only does what I know about Uber's program not surprise me (and I haven't read in-depth on it yet, so this is my disclaimer if there's something more repugnant than signing in to Lyft buried under the covers), but it's downright conventional. Refusal to compete is suicide. Naively believing that the world will reward you if you play nice-nice and opt out of decisive, competitive action is the best way to find yourself/your company on a platter at someone else's table. This ethos from some of the other commenters that you shouldn't do something because it might make your competitors unhappy is absurd. Show a little sporting spirit. If a competitor is making intelligence available, you absolutely should take advantage of it. I've found the guiding star to be "Is this really immoral, or have we just been socialized to believe it's impolite or in bad taste?" One should realize that a lot of this socialization is provided by people who simply don't want you to become a strong competitor, and have indoctrinated this imaginary, soft, cushiony world into everyone's brains so that it's easier for them to come in and take what they want, and their constant empty blathering draws attention away from their dirty deeds. There's no need to allow ourselves to be victimized like that. Specifically, it's ridiculous to claim that using an API in a way that isn't intended is "morally bankrupt". That's like saying it's morally bankrupt for Walmart employees to go to Target looking for places where they can get an advantage. Far from morally bankrupt, that's a fundamental component of capitalism; how are you supposed to compete if you can't see what your competitor is doing? Patronizing competing services in a non-disruptive way is normal. Some may be familiar with "secret shoppers", people that companies pay to go to their stores on a random day and report back on the experience. These secret shoppers are also deployed to competing stores. How and/or why is this any different? Private and undocumented APIs have been exploited by developers for decades. My understanding is that Uber was not even doing that, but rather just accessing the normal API in a non-disruptive way to learn some useful information about their competition.
wsxcde 10y ago
Is it really a fine line? Lyft explicitly say you can't use their API to compete with them. How can violating their terms of service be in any kind of grey area? I'm not posing rhetorical questions. I'm asking you an honest question. Why would you think it's okay to use a service in a manner that the service explicitly prohibits?
pyrale 10y ago
> My issue was that I see myself as a pretty moral person, but if I were working for a startup and was tasked with "Implement a way to know how many Lyft drivers are out on the road," I could see myself doing something very similar to what Uber did, and also feeling mildly clever about it. Being pretty moral and having strong work ethics are two different things. I believe (or at least hope) that our profession mostly sees itself as moral. However, in terms of ethics, we suck. We rarely take time to think about the consequences of our action, and what impacts it may have. We rarely build elaborate thought about what we should and should not do. Therefore, when the time comes to do something, we are left unprepared, we cannot envision the moral dilemnas of things and the consequences of what we do, and we go for it without even thinking about it. This is why so many IT people end up doing things they may regret : they are not necessarily immoral, but they never thought seriously about what they should and should not do in their job.
memmcgee 10y ago
If we determine how right something is with how clever it is, we can justify some pretty messed up things.
NumberCruncher 10y ago
>> It seems like there's a fine line between being clever and being morally bankrupt. It is still a fine line if you are the one whose rights are violated? For example "using my laptop in a way it wasn't intended" in order to hack your laptop and to steal your passwords is a "Clever Hack" or "Morally Bankrupt"?
chandler 10y ago
>> It seems like there's a fine line between being clever and being morally bankrupt. Actions can only be evaluated as moral/immoral/amoral when you've taken the time to define a system of morals. It's the difference between a requirements document and an implementation--just as you can't determine the suitability of software without knowing its requirements, you can't determine the suitability of an action without knowing your morals. Suppose you've decided you want to live in a society that respects the "Don't lie, steal, or cheat" maxims (for whatever reason--I've chosen this here because they're explicatively short!): Then determining what's moral/immoral/amoral becomes an application of: 1) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to intentionally misrepresent the truth? 2) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to take something that hasn't been given? 3) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to misrepresent the truth for gain? On the other hand, consider a company's system of "Maximize profit while minimizing legal liability": 1) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to maximize our company's profit? 2) Does this encourage me (or someone else) to expose our company to legal liability? Notice that these two systems don't address the same concerns. So the fine line exists because what's moral for the company MAY conflict with what's moral for the individual, and many of us don't like to think about /any/ ethical system (after all we're being paid to work in the latter!).
godmodus 10y ago
Each man, and woman, should have a line in the sand that they wouldnt cross. Some call this honor, I like to call this behavior integrity.

foxylad 10y ago

Laws are just our social norms ("how we do things around here") codified into actionable rules. Social norms develop and act much faster than laws, and I would suggest they are more powerful. In Uber's case, publicity about their underhanded tactics have caused huge numbers of people to delete the app. We don't have Uber where I live, but a visitor who suggested getting an Uber to the airport elicited an instant "No way I'm using those scum" reaction from me. That hurts Uber far more (and far more quickly) than any legal process. I think the big lesson here is that you have to consider social norms at least as carefully as you do legal requirements. That's painful for software people because we love precision and predictability, so laws are cool and all those nebulous and confusing opinions that you have to talk to people to understand are icky.

willstrafach 10y ago

> It is another to try to actively undermine the competition, and not because your service is simply better. I am curious where the line would be drawn here. Does it also undermine competitors when companies "poach" workers from competitors by offering a higher salary?