4 ms·

Wisdom imparted in an accounting class in my undergrad, in the context of "what's the line I can't cross": "If the email with your strategy gets printed in the

Wisdom imparted in an accounting class in my undergrad, in the context of "what's the line I can't cross": "If the email with your strategy gets printed in the front page of a newspaper, how would you feel about it?" It's a good rule of thumb for professional ethics in general.

hutzlibu 3y ago
"It's a good rule of thumb for professional ethics in general." So is it to have your strategy guided by general accepted ethics, or to not speak about your real strategy in open words?
- xordon 3y ago
  The front page test is a policy I've seen, ie: if this was on the front page of the newspaper (or hacker news) would it be positive or negative?
- satori99 3y ago
  You can talk about your nefarious strategy openly if it is with a single person at a time.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Both. If you need to say something that can’t be printed, discuss it in person.
- godelski 3y ago
  > So is it to have your strategy guided by general accepted ethics This is the generally accepted interpretation of the words. In other words, if you are unsure if something you're doing is ethical or not consider how others would react if they heard about you doing it. It's basically saying to consider group ethics and not just your own.
conductr 3y ago
Is this unethical though? Maybe it’s just not clear to me. I feel like we collectively view it negatively, but that’s also built on the premise that we search users consume a free utility that Google provides to us and is now some ethical requirement for them to maintain. They have no ethical obligation to do that. It’s also pretty common for public companies to try to shift volume to higher revenue or margin products when they’re pacing short of consensus. That said, you can always override a bonus plan and pay even when they fall short of their sales plan. It seemed like that was the entire catalyst of this conversation, wanting the ads team to hit their bonus. If y’all think this is unethical, you should hear the conversations I was privy to about how hospitals execs were considering halting patient admissions during the pandemic because nursing labor got expensive and breaking even was deemed unacceptable. The government upped reimbursements and same hospital execs made massive windfall bonuses
- TT2048 3y ago
  User value and company revenue, in general, form a [pareto frontier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front). The company can pick an "angle" (trade off some user value for more profits and vice-versa) but both extremes are bad in the long term. They need to strike a balance. A company that continuously invests their efforts on maximum revenue subtraction eventually pushes their users out. Similarly, a company that invests too much into research and present user satisfaction, particularly when users don't pay for the product, is set to have some financial and economical problems in the future. I think this is borderline ethical. For sure it's over 9000 in the Maquiavellian scale (I mean the gymnastics behind "please don't say that this is us pushing for worse results, that's a very negative message" are genius and I can see that working really well under certain circumstances in a corporate setup), but that doesn't mean that it's unethical _necessarily_.

hutzlibu 3y ago

"It's a good rule of thumb for professional ethics in general." So is it to have your strategy guided by general accepted ethics, or to not speak about your real strategy in open words?

xordon 3y ago
The front page test is a policy I've seen, ie: if this was on the front page of the newspaper (or hacker news) would it be positive or negative?
satori99 3y ago
You can talk about your nefarious strategy openly if it is with a single person at a time.
Aeolun 3y ago
Both. If you need to say something that can’t be printed, discuss it in person.
godelski 3y ago
> So is it to have your strategy guided by general accepted ethics This is the generally accepted interpretation of the words. In other words, if you are unsure if something you're doing is ethical or not consider how others would react if they heard about you doing it. It's basically saying to consider group ethics and not just your own.

conductr 3y ago

Is this unethical though? Maybe it’s just not clear to me. I feel like we collectively view it negatively, but that’s also built on the premise that we search users consume a free utility that Google provides to us and is now some ethical requirement for them to maintain. They have no ethical obligation to do that. It’s also pretty common for public companies to try to shift volume to higher revenue or margin products when they’re pacing short of consensus. That said, you can always override a bonus plan and pay even when they fall short of their sales plan. It seemed like that was the entire catalyst of this conversation, wanting the ads team to hit their bonus. If y’all think this is unethical, you should hear the conversations I was privy to about how hospitals execs were considering halting patient admissions during the pandemic because nursing labor got expensive and breaking even was deemed unacceptable. The government upped reimbursements and same hospital execs made massive windfall bonuses

TT2048 3y ago
User value and company revenue, in general, form a [pareto frontier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front). The company can pick an "angle" (trade off some user value for more profits and vice-versa) but both extremes are bad in the long term. They need to strike a balance. A company that continuously invests their efforts on maximum revenue subtraction eventually pushes their users out. Similarly, a company that invests too much into research and present user satisfaction, particularly when users don't pay for the product, is set to have some financial and economical problems in the future. I think this is borderline ethical. For sure it's over 9000 in the Maquiavellian scale (I mean the gymnastics behind "please don't say that this is us pushing for worse results, that's a very negative message" are genius and I can see that working really well under certain circumstances in a corporate setup), but that doesn't mean that it's unethical _necessarily_.