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Yes, it is sad. And yes, it must be done out of necessity. Any company, especially a large company, must do business with a large number of people. Inevitabl

Yes, it is sad. And yes, it must be done out of necessity. Any company, especially a large company, must do business with a large number of people. Inevitably, some of those people will be, uh, neurotic. Some of those people belong to watch-dog groups which may or may not have motivations aside from playing out internal "rescuer" psychodramas. Some of those people are journalists who are itching to carve out a "hard-hitting" reputation from the hides of their betters. Some of those people are lawyers who are trying to salve their consciences by showing that no, they didn't go into Law just for the money. Some of those people are bureaucrats who wish to demonstrate their "impact" so as to impress their peers at the next high-society cocktail party. And so forth. Corporations act like contemptible curs partly because the free market does not work exactly as advertised, partly because business schools are seedbeds of iniquity, and partly because they get punished for acting otherwise.

raganwald 15y ago
I agree with everything you are saying, but wish to clarify the question of "necessity." The choice between publishing your true values and watering them down into meaningless pap is a false dichotomy. The third option is to realize that you are now saying nothing and say nothing. Thus, I agree that IF you wish to publish something, you ought to consider the potential consequences, however I still reserve the right to criticize corporations for choosing to say something when no statement was required.
jordanb 15y ago
In this example, the fundamental problem with the original set of statements is that they are not true. The problem is that the copywriter works at an organization that has contemptible business practices. Given that state of affairs she could either: 1) Tell the truth and produce a highly cynical document that would cost her job plus blowback. 2) Tell lies (the original version), causing blowback and probably costing her and several others their jobs. 3) Write a bunch of pleasant-sounding meaningless nothings (the final version) which fulfills her assignment of writing a value statement free of both lies and brutal honesty. Interestingly, on a meta level, this is actually a very honest document, as it ends up reading "We have no values."
aristus 15y ago
If there is one thing I've learned about the public, it's that crazy scales superlinearly. I used to work for a people search engine called Spock. We curated hundreds of millions of profiles for people living and dead. We got howling crap for: Adding the tag "pedophile" to a writer who crusades against the smearing of gays as pedophiles (Ouch. Term extraction fail.). Adding the picture of Walter Gross, Nazi, to the profile of Walter Gross, journalist. (!!) Using the tag "Jew" on profiles for people who are (can you guess?) Jewish. Tagging a woman in (very Catholic) Spain as a priest because her last name was "Pastor". (NLP fail.) Tagging Jesus as deceased. Tagging Jesus as not deceased. ...and lots more. Some of these were genuine grievances. Some were driven by people with an axe to grind. In most cases, an honest answer would not have helped matters at all. The honest answer was "Oops. We're trying the best we can with a very hard problem. We're not trying to piss you off. Your particular case is a rounding error. In some cases we think you are taking it way too seriously. Screaming bloody murder doesn't make it any easier."

raganwald 15y ago

I agree with everything you are saying, but wish to clarify the question of "necessity." The choice between publishing your true values and watering them down into meaningless pap is a false dichotomy. The third option is to realize that you are now saying nothing and say nothing. Thus, I agree that IF you wish to publish something, you ought to consider the potential consequences, however I still reserve the right to criticize corporations for choosing to say something when no statement was required.

jordanb 15y ago

In this example, the fundamental problem with the original set of statements is that they are not true. The problem is that the copywriter works at an organization that has contemptible business practices. Given that state of affairs she could either: 1) Tell the truth and produce a highly cynical document that would cost her job plus blowback. 2) Tell lies (the original version), causing blowback and probably costing her and several others their jobs. 3) Write a bunch of pleasant-sounding meaningless nothings (the final version) which fulfills her assignment of writing a value statement free of both lies and brutal honesty. Interestingly, on a meta level, this is actually a very honest document, as it ends up reading "We have no values."

aristus 15y ago

If there is one thing I've learned about the public, it's that crazy scales superlinearly. I used to work for a people search engine called Spock. We curated hundreds of millions of profiles for people living and dead. We got howling crap for: Adding the tag "pedophile" to a writer who crusades against the smearing of gays as pedophiles (Ouch. Term extraction fail.). Adding the picture of Walter Gross, Nazi, to the profile of Walter Gross, journalist. (!!) Using the tag "Jew" on profiles for people who are (can you guess?) Jewish. Tagging a woman in (very Catholic) Spain as a priest because her last name was "Pastor". (NLP fail.) Tagging Jesus as deceased. Tagging Jesus as not deceased. ...and lots more. Some of these were genuine grievances. Some were driven by people with an axe to grind. In most cases, an honest answer would not have helped matters at all. The honest answer was "Oops. We're trying the best we can with a very hard problem. We're not trying to piss you off. Your particular case is a rounding error. In some cases we think you are taking it way too seriously. Screaming bloody murder doesn't make it any easier."