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Reminds me about how yall had "no idea" that you had banned benchmarking. Remarkable how much leaders can not know about their company's operations! https://ne

Reminds me about how yall had "no idea" that you had banned benchmarking. Remarkable how much leaders can not know about their company's operations! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29468771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29468771

bawolff 4y ago
Big companies having the left hand not know what the right is doing is hardly a new phenomenon.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> Remarkable how much leaders can not know about their company's operations! Oh please. These are large corporations, I would honestly be flabbergasted if leadership knew every mundane detail. Particularly in the benchmarking issue you noted, it's pretty easy to understand how that could have been added as legal boilerplate, but just went too far.
- mook 4y ago
  Leadership might not know every detail, but that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility to know (and find out, and correct it once they do so similar things don't happen again). This one only came to their attention because Tavis Ormandy is famous and it got on HN front page; how many other insurance didn't?
  - jonnybgood 4y ago
    You’re talking about unknown unknowns. You can’t deal with the problem unless you know the problem actually exists.
    - altdataseller 4y ago
      .. which doesnt really absolve them of responsibility.
    - sour-taste 4y ago
      So an ostrich with its head in the sand is the ideal CEO for any large corporation? Come on.
      - kelnos 4y ago
        That's quite the straw man. It's possible to be thoughtful and introspective, and try to learn about the things you don't know, but still fail to learn literally everything. We're only human.
      - Spooky23 4y ago
        You do realize that you’re posting in a thread downstream of the CTO of the company? …On a public message board and seems interested in figuring out what is or isn’t happening.
  - adw 4y ago
    It also speaks to culture. Decisions individuals make in large organisations are, on average, downstream of institutional culture, so if a large organisation is responsible for a lot of bad decisions then the leaders are responsible for the culture which made those decisions seem reasonable.
  - yunohn 4y ago
    > but that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility to know This is really naive. Every layer of indirection misses out on details, esp in an organization (public, private, gov, even at team levels). Surely you understand this basic concept?
    - mook 4y ago
      I didn't mention anything about not understanding why things happen; just that they're still responsible for it. Part of the reason they have higher compensation is because they have the responsibly and have the risk that they'll need to deal with things not entirely their fault?
- stefan_ 4y ago
  Leadership doesn't know where their lobbying dollars go? What on earth are they paying lobbyists for? What, other than representing company leadership, do lobbyists do? This is not credible.
- still_grokking 4y ago
  Everything in the TOS isn't some "mundane detail" but core to how a company is positioned in the legal field, as those things are legally binding and will determine for what you can or can't be sued. Therefore it's completely implausible that even one word written there hasn't been discussed with C-level staff. Saying the opposite is just throwing PR smoke grenades in the hope some naive people will believe that kind show. The fish always stinks from the head. (That's why "plausible deniability" is of so great importance to those people, btw).
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    > Therefore it's completely implausible that even one word written there hasn't been discussed with C-level staff. I think this is just proof that you are not familiar with how C-level responsibilities work at large corporations.
judge2020 4y ago
There's definitely more to this, given jgc made such a public statement here, especially with how their legal team is supposedly unaware of any lobbying (who else "at cloudflare" would have the ability to speak with the FTC?). I'm sure we'll have a public blog post within a few days to address this.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Qem 4y ago
> Remarkable how much leaders can not know about their company's operations! There's an entire wikipedia article dedicated to that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability

bawolff 4y ago

Big companies having the left hand not know what the right is doing is hardly a new phenomenon.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> Remarkable how much leaders can not know about their company's operations! Oh please. These are large corporations, I would honestly be flabbergasted if leadership knew every mundane detail. Particularly in the benchmarking issue you noted, it's pretty easy to understand how that could have been added as legal boilerplate, but just went too far.

mook 4y ago
Leadership might not know every detail, but that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility to know (and find out, and correct it once they do so similar things don't happen again). This one only came to their attention because Tavis Ormandy is famous and it got on HN front page; how many other insurance didn't?
- jonnybgood 4y ago
  You’re talking about unknown unknowns. You can’t deal with the problem unless you know the problem actually exists.
  - altdataseller 4y ago
    .. which doesnt really absolve them of responsibility.
  - sour-taste 4y ago
    So an ostrich with its head in the sand is the ideal CEO for any large corporation? Come on.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      That's quite the straw man. It's possible to be thoughtful and introspective, and try to learn about the things you don't know, but still fail to learn literally everything. We're only human.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      You do realize that you’re posting in a thread downstream of the CTO of the company? …On a public message board and seems interested in figuring out what is or isn’t happening.
- adw 4y ago
  It also speaks to culture. Decisions individuals make in large organisations are, on average, downstream of institutional culture, so if a large organisation is responsible for a lot of bad decisions then the leaders are responsible for the culture which made those decisions seem reasonable.
- yunohn 4y ago
  > but that doesn't absolve them of the responsibility to know This is really naive. Every layer of indirection misses out on details, esp in an organization (public, private, gov, even at team levels). Surely you understand this basic concept?
  - mook 4y ago
    I didn't mention anything about not understanding why things happen; just that they're still responsible for it. Part of the reason they have higher compensation is because they have the responsibly and have the risk that they'll need to deal with things not entirely their fault?
stefan_ 4y ago
Leadership doesn't know where their lobbying dollars go? What on earth are they paying lobbyists for? What, other than representing company leadership, do lobbyists do? This is not credible.
still_grokking 4y ago
Everything in the TOS isn't some "mundane detail" but core to how a company is positioned in the legal field, as those things are legally binding and will determine for what you can or can't be sued. Therefore it's completely implausible that even one word written there hasn't been discussed with C-level staff. Saying the opposite is just throwing PR smoke grenades in the hope some naive people will believe that kind show. The fish always stinks from the head. (That's why "plausible deniability" is of so great importance to those people, btw).
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > Therefore it's completely implausible that even one word written there hasn't been discussed with C-level staff. I think this is just proof that you are not familiar with how C-level responsibilities work at large corporations.

judge2020 4y ago

There's definitely more to this, given jgc made such a public statement here, especially with how their legal team is supposedly unaware of any lobbying (who else "at cloudflare" would have the ability to speak with the FTC?). I'm sure we'll have a public blog post within a few days to address this.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Qem 4y ago

> Remarkable how much leaders can not know about their company's operations! There's an entire wikipedia article dedicated to that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability