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> Never ever, across half a dozen firms and 20 years, have I had training that was like "so hey don't use these terms that are used by insider traders because t

> Never ever, across half a dozen firms and 20 years, have I had training that was like "so hey don't use these terms that are used by insider traders because that would give the wrong impression when you are um.. doing your job and stuff..". Well, I have. At a large well known tech company I used to work for, we were told not to use terms like "killing our competitors", "smoking them", etc. or any words that implied we had any dominance or monopoly in our industry. We even had a "War Room" undergo a name change. The reason is exactly the same as Google's, where they were worried about reporters using it to twist narratives or in discovery by lawyers who came across emails.

prepend 3y ago
Were you given training not to kill your competitors? Were you? I think my concern is that the important thing is not to do illegal things. If training focuses on just not sounding like you do illegal things instead of just not doing illegal things, that’s the problem.
- derefr 3y ago
  I think the issue here is a corporate kind of mens rea. It’s seemingly fine under capitalism to incidentally kill your competitors in the process of making your customers happy. It’s not fine to set out with the explicit goal of killing your competitors. And so, any mention of your being aware that you’re killing your competitors, hints that you might be intentionally killing them while just feigning ignorance.
  - blindriver 3y ago
    Exactly this. Even though we were engaging in regular competition, us simply mentioning that we wanted to "kill them" or "wipe them out" could be falsely construed as us trying to use illegal means to do so, which we weren't. And that's the point. Lawyers can twist things written in emails to be whatever they want. People who say "if you're not doing anything illegal, then you have nothing to hide" has never been at the hands of a witch hunt. I have a friend who lived in the US on F1 and H1B for over 10 years and was banned from entering the US over jokes with her ex-bf about marrying for a green card.
    - eep_social 3y ago
      Yes. And discovery in these trials is performed via keyword matching so you have to assume that every email is going to end up on a giant projector screen in front of a jury who might not understand that Bob’s enthusiasm for destroying the competition is Bob’s quirky bombastic communication style rather than a business strategy.
      - lstamour 3y ago
        > And discovery in these trials is performed via keyword matching Don’t worry, soon it’ll get done by AI instead and it’ll match on “acceptable” language too.
    - kuhaku22 3y ago
      > I have a friend who lived in the US on F1 and H1B for over 10 years and was banned from entering the US over jokes with her ex-bf about marrying for a green card. That's insane, especially after her being in the US for 10+ years and having established a life there. Sorry to go off-topic, but I have a friend whose SO is on a work visa and they have joked about the marrying for a green card thing before (a very common joke it seems). How did the government find out about the joke? (in-person, through texts, etc.) I ask because I wouldn't want the same to happen to them and to caution them.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > It’s not fine to set out with the explicit goal of killing your competitors. What? That's also fine.
    - derefr 3y ago
      I meant “in the implicit context of having successfully destroyed all your competitors [potentially by doing things other than just selling a better product, harder], and then being put on trial for anti-trust allegations.”
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > If training focuses on just not sounding like you do illegal things instead of just not doing illegal things, that’s the problem. No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that the difference between violating the law and not violating the law is whether you used what the court/jury felt to be inappropriate language. "Not sounding like you do illegal things" is how you avoid violating the law. Your actions are less relevant than your commentary on those actions directed to your friends. That's why the training focuses on using the right magic words and tabooing the wrong ones. The training is there to help you follow the law, no matter how stupid the law might be.
  - naikrovek 3y ago
    > "Not sounding like you do illegal things" is how you avoid violating the law. only if the regulators investigating you are complete morons, which may be the case once in a while, but I doubt it is for any large case like this one. regulators see straight through doublespeak and careful wording. buzzwords and corporate lingo are completely transparent to anyone who spends a single moment thinking about the message that the words are conveying, and regulators have far more experience cutting through that stuff than just about anyone else.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      You are not really engaging with these training materials in context. The entire point of the training is to not draw conclusions in areas in which you are not an expert, in discoverable media. For example, you are a software developer. Writing to your colleague that this change-list reduces an algorithm from quadratic to linear time complexity is within your wheelhouse. Posting on a mailing list that you think some other team's product will crush the competition is not really within your domain, because you are not an economist. Drawing conclusions of law is the worst of all things to do because even though you're just some idiot, those conclusions become discoverable and opposing council will put them on the record out of context even though you are just a Junior Associate Moron, not a person in a position to draw that conclusion.
      - 3y ago
yencabulator 3y ago
You're just making the parent's point. He's saying banks/funds don't do this. The words were "From a bank/fund perspective". You're saying large tech companies (not just Google) do. Hence the impression is, big tech is not being careful to follow rules, they are just trying to avoid getting caught.

prepend 3y ago

Were you given training not to kill your competitors? Were you? I think my concern is that the important thing is not to do illegal things. If training focuses on just not sounding like you do illegal things instead of just not doing illegal things, that’s the problem.

derefr 3y ago
I think the issue here is a corporate kind of mens rea. It’s seemingly fine under capitalism to incidentally kill your competitors in the process of making your customers happy. It’s not fine to set out with the explicit goal of killing your competitors. And so, any mention of your being aware that you’re killing your competitors, hints that you might be intentionally killing them while just feigning ignorance.
- blindriver 3y ago
  Exactly this. Even though we were engaging in regular competition, us simply mentioning that we wanted to "kill them" or "wipe them out" could be falsely construed as us trying to use illegal means to do so, which we weren't. And that's the point. Lawyers can twist things written in emails to be whatever they want. People who say "if you're not doing anything illegal, then you have nothing to hide" has never been at the hands of a witch hunt. I have a friend who lived in the US on F1 and H1B for over 10 years and was banned from entering the US over jokes with her ex-bf about marrying for a green card.
  - eep_social 3y ago
    Yes. And discovery in these trials is performed via keyword matching so you have to assume that every email is going to end up on a giant projector screen in front of a jury who might not understand that Bob’s enthusiasm for destroying the competition is Bob’s quirky bombastic communication style rather than a business strategy.
    - lstamour 3y ago
      > And discovery in these trials is performed via keyword matching Don’t worry, soon it’ll get done by AI instead and it’ll match on “acceptable” language too.
  - kuhaku22 3y ago
    > I have a friend who lived in the US on F1 and H1B for over 10 years and was banned from entering the US over jokes with her ex-bf about marrying for a green card. That's insane, especially after her being in the US for 10+ years and having established a life there. Sorry to go off-topic, but I have a friend whose SO is on a work visa and they have joked about the marrying for a green card thing before (a very common joke it seems). How did the government find out about the joke? (in-person, through texts, etc.) I ask because I wouldn't want the same to happen to them and to caution them.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > It’s not fine to set out with the explicit goal of killing your competitors. What? That's also fine.
  - derefr 3y ago
    I meant “in the implicit context of having successfully destroyed all your competitors [potentially by doing things other than just selling a better product, harder], and then being put on trial for anti-trust allegations.”
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> If training focuses on just not sounding like you do illegal things instead of just not doing illegal things, that’s the problem. No, that isn't the problem. The problem is that the difference between violating the law and not violating the law is whether you used what the court/jury felt to be inappropriate language. "Not sounding like you do illegal things" is how you avoid violating the law. Your actions are less relevant than your commentary on those actions directed to your friends. That's why the training focuses on using the right magic words and tabooing the wrong ones. The training is there to help you follow the law, no matter how stupid the law might be.
- naikrovek 3y ago
  > "Not sounding like you do illegal things" is how you avoid violating the law. only if the regulators investigating you are complete morons, which may be the case once in a while, but I doubt it is for any large case like this one. regulators see straight through doublespeak and careful wording. buzzwords and corporate lingo are completely transparent to anyone who spends a single moment thinking about the message that the words are conveying, and regulators have far more experience cutting through that stuff than just about anyone else.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    You are not really engaging with these training materials in context. The entire point of the training is to not draw conclusions in areas in which you are not an expert, in discoverable media. For example, you are a software developer. Writing to your colleague that this change-list reduces an algorithm from quadratic to linear time complexity is within your wheelhouse. Posting on a mailing list that you think some other team's product will crush the competition is not really within your domain, because you are not an economist. Drawing conclusions of law is the worst of all things to do because even though you're just some idiot, those conclusions become discoverable and opposing council will put them on the record out of context even though you are just a Junior Associate Moron, not a person in a position to draw that conclusion.
    - 3y ago

yencabulator 3y ago

You're just making the parent's point. He's saying banks/funds don't do this. The words were "From a bank/fund perspective". You're saying large tech companies (not just Google) do. Hence the impression is, big tech is not being careful to follow rules, they are just trying to avoid getting caught.