13 ms·
Former Microsoftie here. After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.
by VyseofArcadia 5y ago
Former Microsoftie here.
After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.
- stocknoob 5y agoRules are for the little people.
- cjbgkagh 5y agoIt’s part of negotiating down punishments, in lieu of a big fine we’ll agree to force our staff to watch ethics videos.
- asd88 5y agoMy thoughts exactly. Every year, the Standards of Business Conduct training talks about not bribing foreign officials and devs are like “who the hell is ever in that position anyway?”.
- tedajax 5y agoMe desperately trying to get a decent repro case for a bizarre networking bug in Halo: "Oh man, gotta remember, better not bribe any foreign officials while I sort this out."
- dennis_jeeves1 5y agoExactly...
- saalweachter 5y agoOn the other hand, if network errors could be debugged by bribing foreign officials, I'm assuming there would be a lot of rather rich foreign officials.
- russellbeattie 5y agoIf it helps, I had to sit through all that stuff at Amazon as well. I was in the bit that makes consumer electronics and never dealt with contracts in any way, yet still had to spend time learning not to make or take bribes from wholesalers or international businesses or governments. Every. Single. Year. Initially the training software was badly written so you could just open up DevTools and type "v = document.querySelector('video'); v.currentTime = v.duration - 1000;" or similar and just bop through the sections. Later they seemed to track time on the server, so really the most I could do is turn off the window focus check and leave the tab open in a second monitor. So annoying.
- giantg2 5y agoNow this is true hacker spirit
- lostlogin 5y agoI worked somewhere that had a fire safety online test each year. One staff member would be nominated to do all the tests and would sit down with everyone’s logins and spent the whole day sitting the test again and again. The other staff provided food and drink.
- AitchEmArsey 5y agoIn a cruel twist of irony, that guy then went insane from boredom and became an arsonist.
- giantg2 5y agoOr a manager
- AitchEmArsey 5y agoYou say tomato...
- 5y ago
- wolverine876 5y ago> "who the hell is ever in that position anyway?" Microsoft does business worldwide, of course. Wouldn't that imply that many are in that position?
- mikestew 5y agoand devs are like... How many MSFT devs do you think travel to foreign countries to close deals? I do not think one has to have worked there to come up with, "mmm, probably not very many", and thus devs are like, "WTF do I have to watch this?"
- hn_version_0023 5y agoAs nearly always, its the people that touch the money who are most likely to be corrupt. By which I obviously mean salespeople.
- hef19898 5y agoThose annual trainings are there to show compliance. This prevents pro active investigations by authorities into business conduct. Without those corporations are free to engage in all kinda of shady business behaviour. And when something turns sideways, the offending employees passed the training, so the company is shielded, to an extend.
- akhmatova 5y agoThose annual trainings are there to show compliance. And also obeisance -- on the part of the person required to sit through these trainings (and pretend that they had some connection to reality).
- leetcrew 5y agomeh. I'd be happy to sit in a chair and watch nonsensical videos for $100/hr any time you like.
- kabdib 5y agoNot when you have a deadline and your stuff is behind, you don't :-) Happily, it was better than that. Most of these courses were online, and you could just let the videos of actors working through scenarios run in the background and then answer some simple questions. The questions never varied and the correct answer was usually pretty obvious (e.g., don't pick any answer that includes hiding a body).
- mupuff1234 5y agoAlso it's not like you can fail the test, it just keeps you on the question till you select the right answer.
- mstipetic 5y agoFfs
- 5y ago
- belter 5y agoIn almost every country with a dictator and human right abuses, you will find a constitution guarantying civil rights and liberties of the individual... [1] - "The Constitution of the Russian Federation" Article 17 1. In the Russian Federation recognition and guarantees shall be provided for the rights and freedoms of man and citizen according to the universally recognized principles and norms of international law and according to the present Constitution. 2. Fundamental human rights and freedoms are inalienable and shall be enjoyed by everyone since the day of birth. 3. The exercise of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall not violate the rights and freedoms of other people. Article 18 The rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall be directly operative. They determine the essence, meaning and implementation of laws, the activities of the legislative and executive authorities, local self-government and shall be ensured by the administration of justice. Article 19 1. All people shall be equal before the law and court. 2. The State shall guarantee the equality of rights and freedoms of man and citizen, regardless of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, property and official status, place of residence, religion, convictions, membership of public associations, and also of other circumstances. All forms of limitations of human rights on social, racial, national, linguistic or religious grounds shall be banned. 3. Man and woman shall enjoy equal rights and freedoms and have equal possibilities to exercise them. and so on... [1] http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-03.htm http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-03.htm
- joey_bob 5y agoThe title is a bit inflammatory, but in this clip from Scalia's testimony relates the overall concept well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0
- belter 5y agoThanks for that:-) Correct time: https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0?t=134 https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0?t=134
- tored 5y agoScalia has some good points, however some notes A gridlocked political system is not guaranteed to create "good legislation" as Scalia puts it, take US as a prime example of that, almost every legislation is packed with pork and other things unrelated to the legalisation itself. To Scalia defence he might have meant "not awful legislation", like avoid harming a minority, because of the bicameral legislature. But good legislation? No. It is true that in Europe it is common to mix the legislative and the executive with the same election and thus chamber. However in Sweden the executive power is divided in half, with the elected prime minister with his cabinet (regeringen) on the one hand and the independent government agencies (myndigheter) on the other. This is a separation of powers that US doesn't have. And it is in the executive that has the highest risk of political corrupt behaviour, because it deals with all the practical details of running a country, therefore separating the executive into two separate branches, the elected and the civil servants, creates better protection against political corruption. Scalia main argument is that US can't become the Soviet union because of the bicameral gridlock built into the system, however what we have seen in the US when the legislature is politically paralyzed is that the executive, and to some extent the judiciary, has encroached on the legislative powers. How many of the wars that US has been involved in since the second world war has been formally approved constitutionally by the senate? Zero. Did President Obama execute a US citizen without a trial? Yes. This is a gap in Scalias argument, the executive power is too unrestricted, hence it is the US executive power that will be removing citizen rights from the citizenry, not the legislature.
- nopenopenopeno 5y agoThose trainings are just ass coverings for when the company goes to court.
- spicymaki 5y agoAFAIK the trainings are part of a settlement with the government after the company goes to court.
- criddell 5y agoI read a story yesterday[1] how the policy inside Google is to cc their legal department on any emails that you think could make the company look bad in any future legal proceedings. As I understand it, this shields the email from discovery. Did you have similar guidelines inside Microsoft? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30760923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30760923
- zht 5y agoone thing that they teach you in this sort of training (never a Googler but been at at other big names) is that it is not a blank check to shield all emails from discovery by just cc-ing legal.
- themadturk 5y agoAt my employer, where where everyone has to undergo multiple types of ethics training every year, I think they would view this as "willful ignorance," which they say is not a defense for anything. Plus, they tell us to contact legal only when we think something has been done to violate the ethics guidelines, not to prevent it from happening in the first place.
- chihuahua 5y agoNo, never.
- VyseofArcadia 5y agoAs I recall, the informal guidance I got as a lowly Software Engineer II was, "if legal gets involved, you've already screwed up."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- com2kid 5y agoWhen I was at MS I once saw someone from legal jump into the middle of an email thread, that he wasn't on, and shut it down. That was... interesting to say the least.
- reincarnate0x14 5y agoMany years ago, another division of my employer got caught bribing Nigeria. As a result, a bunch of people who were never in a position to do so had to sit through hours of ethics training. Some of it came with oddly specific examples. Halfway through one such lecture, in which we were being admonished to never accept a car from a customer, some engineer in the back did some quick mental arithmetic on his own salary versus costs of cars and asked "Which customers were giving out cars?" We laughed. Instructor not so much.
- Ekaros 5y ago"Hypothetically speaking which customer offered a car?" "And again entirely hypothetically speaking how could one move forward to accept such offer?"
- burntoutfire 5y agoBeing that Instructor is 100% bullshit job. I.e. you're doing something entirely pointless, day in-day out, just so your company can later say to some lawyers that it was done. I feel bad for people who work those jobs.
- saiya-jin 5y agoIn the banks we have the same. As IT guy, the amount of quarterly trainings and their focus is a bit crazy, most topics I will never ever touch since I don't work in ie Legal and I am so far from ever interacting or even seeing any client. Most of the trainings are about a fine we got due to being caught doing something bad, say 10 years ago, and part of legal settlement is apart from direct fine, a nice 30-60 min training where they tell you that stealing and lying and cheating is bad. Those trainings keep re-appearing quite consistently so they are really not that effective.
- wolverine876 5y agoPerhaps by training everyone, potential bad actors know that everyone in the company will recognize what they are doing?
- burntoutfire 5y agoIn banking, the bank is the bad actor and people who do shady stuff usually do it on its behalf (and get rewards with promotions, bonuses etc.).
- mianos 5y agoI did one "Modern Slavery". The first time I saw the email request that I do the training I genuinely thought it was spam.
- asdfasxcdf 5y agoCan't wait for the next season of SBC!
- asveikau 5y agoWhen i was at Microsoft, i recall an engineer saying that corporate puts that in there so that when somebody is caught giving bribes they can point to them and say they're a lone wolf, bad actor, etc., because clearly the policy is not to give bribes, and they took the training course in this, we documented that... Implication: they can fire that employee and continue to give bribes. Ps. Full disclosure, I never witnessed anybody giving bribes, nor worked with anyone who would be in a position to do so.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jmspring 5y agoFinally an episode of SoBC where Nelson ends up blindfolded, kidnapped and taken to a black ops site? /s Former here, too, I found it part of "big company" overhead. Had similar things many years ago at a different European based employer.
- worik 5y agoSoBC?
- kjellsbells 5y agostandards of business conduct. annual training. With remarkably high production standards and costs, I might add. I'm a big fan of Nelson, the lovable everyman developer. If its true that microsoft were doling out 40k bribes, that would be less than five minutes of what an sbc episode must cost to produce. The irony.
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoSpecial Olympics British Columbia was the best my Google-fu could find. I am assuming some TV series but ...
- worik 5y agoI thought it must be a TV series with a character "Nelson". I was feeling very old Turns out it is some MS corporate thing. Feeling lucky now!
- CRConrad 5y agoI assumed The Simpsons. Isn't that bully kid with the "ha-HAA" laugh named Nelson? Edit: Yup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Muntz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Muntz
- jmspring 5y agoStandards of Business Conduct. It is a yearly required training that pics up one year after the next.
- gentleman11 5y agoIt’s frustrating that law only applies to the lower classes, and not to the upper corporate classes
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wolverine876 5y agoWho are the "lower classes" that do business internationally and are prosecuted by the US Departmet of Justice?
- a4isms 5y agoThis is unproductive quibbling. If I, a middle-class independent contractor, attempt to bribe a government employee to award me a contract, I am going to jail. If someone with even lesser means attempts to bribe a social worker to award them welfare of some kind, they are going to jail. That is the discrepancy that matters.
- wolverine876 5y ago> This is unproductive quibbling. No need to take a shot at the other comment; maybe they just don't understand you. I didn't know who you meant; 'lower classes' is a vague term, especially in context of foreign corrupt practices.
- a4isms 5y ago"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." —Composer and Software Architect Frank Wilhoit https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
- pure_simplicity 5y ago
- givemeethekeys 5y agoDid bizden / sales have to go through the same videos?
- RyJones 5y agoWhen I went blue in 2005, I had to sit through sexual harassment videos by some guy. Who had been fired. For running HR like a harem.
- gmiller123456 5y agoPointy Haired Boss: Everyone must attend mandatory ethics class at noon. Dilbert: Is it ethical to steal our lunch hour to make us attend a work class? Pointy Haired Boss: I wouldn't know, I'm not required to take the training.
- LanceH 5y agoAt another big corp the training videos had a scenario where I would be on site with accommodations provided by the client. It asked whether I could accept a cook offered by the client. I'm infuriated that I'm being offered t-shirts and maybe a lunch and someone else out there is getting a cook for a month. Damn right I'm taking the cook.
- jokoon 5y agoIt's easier to break the rules of you create the rules