4 ms·

Theoretically it is; practically corporations are implicitly immoral - they’re not human, they have no feelings, it’s only left to whatever (HR in this case) pr

Theoretically it is; practically corporations are implicitly immoral - they’re not human, they have no feelings, it’s only left to whatever (HR in this case) procedures are in place to ensure a positive outcome. Such procedures tend to fail when you move fast and break things.

feet 4y ago
No matter which way you try and slice it, there's always a human at the end of the decision. A human made the policies, a human made the layoff decision, a human decides to enforce policy.
- hnbad 4y ago
  More generally, sticking with the status quo is a moral decision. Just because you feel less guilty because you just followed orders instead of "making a choice", that doesn't make you morally neutral. We like to talk big words about how "evil only exists because good people do nothing" or whatever but when facing the banality of minor evils every day we not only do nothing but shrug our shoulders when others do the same.
- sigkill 4y ago
  At a certain point, we need to start piercing the corporate veil and hold people accountable.
  - sneak 4y ago
    The term of art “pierce the corporate veil” literally exists because we already do this.
    - feet 4y ago
      Do we, though?
- spencerchubb 4y ago
  Saying a human is at the end of this decision is like saying a gun is at the end of a decision to shoot. The company is going to do layoffs regardless. If you swap in another CEO for Mark, that's just giving the company a different weapon to do the deed.
  - kiliancs 4y ago
    I'm having trouble accepting this comment is not sarcastic. The fact that most CEOs or boards would behave the same way doesn't make it moral, and the whole point of this specific threat is whether morality can be applied to corporations.
    - spencerchubb 4y ago
      I'm not being sarcastic at all. I'm not saying that Meta's actions are moral. The comment above mine said "there's always a human at the end of the decision" implying that if Meta just had more ethical individuals, then Meta would make more ethical decisions. I am arguing that it doesn't matter whether the individuals have good or bad moral values, because the company values profit above all else.
- z9znz 4y ago
  While this is true, it is utterly infeasible for a company with tens of thousands of employees to consider the individual employee in their decisions. They can perhaps consider actions which will result in large impacts to large numbers of employees (such as regulating the inflow a bit more to protect against sudden needs to dump 11,000 people). Hire fewer, more slowly, and they can then slowly and with more consideration lay off fewer people.
  - alxlaz 4y ago
    > While this is true, it is utterly infeasible for a company with tens of thousands of employees to consider the individual employee in their decisions. This isn't collectively decided by a company with tens of thousands of employees, it's decided by one or two people in HR and approved by groups rarely larger than five people. It's not only perfectly feasible to "consider the individual employee" in this decision, but a handful of people are literally paid to do exactly that, and miserably failed to do their job. Lots of people here understandably focus on the part where those guys failed at just being decent human beings. But what I find truly disheartening is the part where those guys really sucked at doing their job: the people in that hiring chain made a decision that cost several departments thousands of dollars in covering relocation paperwork and legal fees, even though that turned out to be entirely unnecessary, and then literally caused an employer branding and PR dumpster fire. This is the equivalent of committing a bunch of performance fixes that turn out to be unnecessary, then attempting to revert them only to cause a massive crash in production -- tl;dr it's just incompetence. And it's really hilarious to see the same people who advocate for ruthlessly firing people for incompetence defend this gross incompetence under the guise of pseudo-philosophical talk about corporate morality.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- michaelt 4y ago
  Corporations often engage in a sort of 'responsibility laundering' Andrew in HR just does what the policy says, it's unfortunate but rules are rules, and the policy doesn't say this is any exception. Barbra the CEO who set the policy would have made an exception if it had been brought to her attention, but it wasn't. The policy was set serving the interests of the shareholders. Charles the shareholder is just an average member of the public and isn't party to any internal firing plans. And in any case, he owns 0.0000002% of facebook - far from a controlling interest. And like magic, the responsibility has disappeared - vanished into the gap between Andrew and Barbra.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    And thats why in UK almost 100 people burned alive in a skyscraper that was built in breach of all fire safety rules. It turns out noone is responsible- not the architect, builders, builder owner and management, or the fire safety inspector. The only charges brought in relation to this incident, where against people making offensive jokes about it on social media. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10734735/Property-tycoon-49-shared-grossly-offensive-effigy-Grenfell-Tower-pleads-GUILTY.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10734735/Property-t...
FerociousTimes 4y ago
I think you might have meant amoral not immoral or you stand by your phrasing?
andrekandre 4y ago
> corporations are implicitly immoral i think the word you are looking for is amoral?

feet 4y ago

No matter which way you try and slice it, there's always a human at the end of the decision. A human made the policies, a human made the layoff decision, a human decides to enforce policy.

hnbad 4y ago
More generally, sticking with the status quo is a moral decision. Just because you feel less guilty because you just followed orders instead of "making a choice", that doesn't make you morally neutral. We like to talk big words about how "evil only exists because good people do nothing" or whatever but when facing the banality of minor evils every day we not only do nothing but shrug our shoulders when others do the same.
sigkill 4y ago
At a certain point, we need to start piercing the corporate veil and hold people accountable.
- sneak 4y ago
  The term of art “pierce the corporate veil” literally exists because we already do this.
  - feet 4y ago
    Do we, though?
spencerchubb 4y ago
Saying a human is at the end of this decision is like saying a gun is at the end of a decision to shoot. The company is going to do layoffs regardless. If you swap in another CEO for Mark, that's just giving the company a different weapon to do the deed.
- kiliancs 4y ago
  I'm having trouble accepting this comment is not sarcastic. The fact that most CEOs or boards would behave the same way doesn't make it moral, and the whole point of this specific threat is whether morality can be applied to corporations.
  - spencerchubb 4y ago
    I'm not being sarcastic at all. I'm not saying that Meta's actions are moral. The comment above mine said "there's always a human at the end of the decision" implying that if Meta just had more ethical individuals, then Meta would make more ethical decisions. I am arguing that it doesn't matter whether the individuals have good or bad moral values, because the company values profit above all else.
z9znz 4y ago
While this is true, it is utterly infeasible for a company with tens of thousands of employees to consider the individual employee in their decisions. They can perhaps consider actions which will result in large impacts to large numbers of employees (such as regulating the inflow a bit more to protect against sudden needs to dump 11,000 people). Hire fewer, more slowly, and they can then slowly and with more consideration lay off fewer people.
- alxlaz 4y ago
  > While this is true, it is utterly infeasible for a company with tens of thousands of employees to consider the individual employee in their decisions. This isn't collectively decided by a company with tens of thousands of employees, it's decided by one or two people in HR and approved by groups rarely larger than five people. It's not only perfectly feasible to "consider the individual employee" in this decision, but a handful of people are literally paid to do exactly that, and miserably failed to do their job. Lots of people here understandably focus on the part where those guys failed at just being decent human beings. But what I find truly disheartening is the part where those guys really sucked at doing their job: the people in that hiring chain made a decision that cost several departments thousands of dollars in covering relocation paperwork and legal fees, even though that turned out to be entirely unnecessary, and then literally caused an employer branding and PR dumpster fire. This is the equivalent of committing a bunch of performance fixes that turn out to be unnecessary, then attempting to revert them only to cause a massive crash in production -- tl;dr it's just incompetence. And it's really hilarious to see the same people who advocate for ruthlessly firing people for incompetence defend this gross incompetence under the guise of pseudo-philosophical talk about corporate morality.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
michaelt 4y ago
Corporations often engage in a sort of 'responsibility laundering' Andrew in HR just does what the policy says, it's unfortunate but rules are rules, and the policy doesn't say this is any exception. Barbra the CEO who set the policy would have made an exception if it had been brought to her attention, but it wasn't. The policy was set serving the interests of the shareholders. Charles the shareholder is just an average member of the public and isn't party to any internal firing plans. And in any case, he owns 0.0000002% of facebook - far from a controlling interest. And like magic, the responsibility has disappeared - vanished into the gap between Andrew and Barbra.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  And thats why in UK almost 100 people burned alive in a skyscraper that was built in breach of all fire safety rules. It turns out noone is responsible- not the architect, builders, builder owner and management, or the fire safety inspector. The only charges brought in relation to this incident, where against people making offensive jokes about it on social media. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10734735/Property-tycoon-49-shared-grossly-offensive-effigy-Grenfell-Tower-pleads-GUILTY.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10734735/Property-t...

FerociousTimes 4y ago

I think you might have meant amoral not immoral or you stand by your phrasing?

andrekandre 4y ago

> corporations are implicitly immoral i think the word you are looking for is amoral?