6 ms·

When I was a kid, I read about Jack Welch and thought he was great. Later I learned of all the shenanigans he pulled, not just unethical, but illegal stuff. And

by akudha 2y ago

When I was a kid, I read about Jack Welch and thought he was great. Later I learned of all the shenanigans he pulled, not just unethical, but illegal stuff. And the way he trampled people. Bill Gates is a respected philanthropist today, he too did all kinds of shady, ruthless stuff to get to the top. Everywhere I look, same story - Amazon, Facebook, Google... The only big company I think is okay is Costco - either they really are good or I haven't yet about their practices. There is this podcast called Behind the bastards - in one way, it is eye opening. But it is also depressing, it does a pretty good job of shattering all our beliefs and respect for the rich and the successful. Is it even possible today to become super successful without doing shady/unethical/illegal stuff? Everything from garden variety wage theft all the way upto buying politicians and corporate espionage?

theposey 2y ago
sounds cynical but I'm shifted to believing not. If you don't do it there will always be someone else who will. Not to say you should, that's a personal choice of course, but in a competitive environment there will always be someone or lots of someones who will do anything.
- dbspin 2y ago
  This is why its vital to make unethical corporate malfeasance costly. Meaningful fines and criminal convictions for individual executives responsible for law breaking, wage theft, and intentional violations of regulation, provide meaningful deterrent. In their absence tax evasion and white collar crime become normative, which changes the game for anyone working in executive level roles.
ghaff 2y ago
For any successful company, you can probably find ex-employees who think that some "fat trimming" was excessive and unnecessarily cruel or that they pushed some line or another in excessive ways. The Jack Welch case (and I'd add Mark Hurd at HP) was an example of financial engineering looking great for a time--until it wasn't.
- rkhassen9 2y ago
  ghaff. you said the first part well well. Welch "looked great" its the second part "until it wasn't." that stands out to me...because his approach, to kill the goose to get the golden eggs, so to speak, was doomed from the beginning. Its just hard to tell early on if you don't know what to look for. People in his orgs knew what was happening, but hard to go against the "hero". I don't know a solution to these kinds of scenarios except for having a more wise and educated populace. Perhaps trusting the people at the bottom. Big issues. Hard to solve. And in today's world, harder than ever.
buzzardbait 2y ago
Perhaps not, but I think you can be "very successful" while remaining ethical. Most people want to be successful because success brings happiness. But there is a level of success at which happiness starts to plateau and yields diminishing returns of happiness.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  Thank you for saying that. I get low-level irritated at the constant background murmur that success means that you had to screw someone over at some point.
  - akudha 2y ago
    Can you run a 1M, 10M dollar business ethically without screwing over anyone - employees, customers, suppliers, environment etc? Sure. What about 100M, 1B, 10B, 100B businesses? How many Billion dollar businesses can we name that are run ethically? Not that many, correct me if I am wrong. I suppose at some level, profit and monopoly becomes the one and only motivation. Plus if you didn’t do shady stuff, your competitors surely would, putting you at a disadvantage. Why else would Google drop “don’t do evil” from their principles?
  - eevilspock 2y ago
    It really boils down to your system of morality. If your are willing to look at capitalism and free markets objectively[1], as just algorithms rather than moral systems (i.e. private property is part of an algorithm, not an "inalienable human right"), and you realize that it isn't moral that one's share of the pie be determined by the free market, that it isn't moral that the value of a person be determined by the free market, that it isn't moral to leverage your advantage or even hard work to grab a much bigger share of the pie even as others who because of birth circumstance get the thinnest slice or no slice at all, that it isn't moral to enjoy the fruits of cheap labor do to the desperation of the aforementioned, that it isn't moral to take advantage of your other advantages birth circumstances (e.g. being born within the borders of a wealthy country that keeps out those born in poor ones) to grab more, then you will find that material success (success as defined by capitalism) that is complicit in all the aforementioned does screw someone over. Such a person will have a different definition of success: A life of contribution to the community done out of love and morality, not a coerced transaction leveraging one's advantages against those with less. --- [1]: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" ~ Upton Sinclair
codechicago277 2y ago
Aaron Greenspan created the early version of what Facebook became, and has loudly criticized the zero-sum tactics used by Zuckerberg, Gates, and other billionaires: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_732625 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_7... Some interesting books in this category: * Masters of Doom. It’s about John Carmack and the team that built Id Software * Einstein. By Walter Isaacson, author of the Jobs biography. Einstein’s 4 papers are one of the most unexpected, ground breaking discoveries in history * Houdini!!! Tells the story of the escape artist and magician, and exposer of psychics. * The Double Helix * Stress Test. By Tim Geithner who pulled the world out of the financial crisis * Man’s Search for Meaning. Surviving and finding meaning in a concentration camp
- thinkharderdev 2y ago
  I read the Einstein biography. Highly recommended. But to the parents point, I came way think Einstein was a huge asshole, especially given his pop culture representation as a kindly old grandfather type.
  - thruway516 2y ago
    Probably every human being looks like a huge asshole if you put their entire life under a microscope. Even Mother Teresa did some giant asshole things if I remember. You're just not aware what a huge asshole you are because someone hasn't written a very good biography of your life from a perspective different from yours (or you havent lived long enough)
  - throaway54 2y ago
    Most people are very selfish when it suits them, and most people would completely deny that selfishness as being not part of their "morality."
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  I'm fairly convinced most successful "social" sites have bodies buried somewhere. The problem of launching a two-sided market is tough. It was against my ethics but we sent a round of unsolicited emails to about 10,000 people in Brazil to launch a voice chat service circa 2001. It must have been a really good list (and a different time and place) because we had close to a 40% response rate. (Later we got a list that was so bad some of the emails didn't have '@' signs in them!) There's that famous story of how reddit was initially populated with fake users too. --- I've never been able to enjoy that Viktor Frankl book, Man's Search for Meaning ,since I read an essay that pointed out how pernicious it was that postmodern people like to fantasize that everyday life is like a concentration camp -- paradoxically that fantasy undermines Frankl's own thesis I recently read an account of a 14 year old girl (a demo that is vulnerable to Franklism, I had one in an acting class I was in) who said she thought about the Holocaust (survived by some ancestors she'd never met) every day and experienced it as a trauma. If that's what it means to "remember the Holocaust" we might be better to forget. We hear the refrain that "it must never happen again" but it happens over and over again routinely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide and if that memory makes us think it is a memory and not an ongoing crime, it is part of the problem and not part of the solution. You can take your own experiences of your group being persecuted and apply that to justice universally (Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner gave their lives together with African-American James Chaney in 1964 to fight racism in the U.S. South) or you can use it as an excuse to commit similar crimes (kill and displace civilians) against other people. It's your choice.
neves 2y ago
USA culture has this idolatry for the Rich that looks like what the aristocracy always did: my "beloved" king, the kind princess... Like the philanthropy of the robber barons that made them respectable, but when they are still alive. I prefer the French approach to take care of aristocrats.
- nickff 2y ago
  The French Revolution led to quite poor results for those fortunate enough to survive it. You might prefer the approach, but I doubt you’d enjoy the aftermath.
  - ashoeafoot 2y ago
    ? Have you ever even opened a history book? Is this sarcasm?
    - nickff 2y ago
      I am not being sarcastic. The revolution and subsequent wars caused extremely high casualty rates among French men, while the country isolated itself from international trade, and suffered negative economic consequences.
      - ashoeafoot 2y ago
        Have you held the nations that stayed aristocratic and the havoc they caused next to france? Getting rid of parasitic waterhead bodies of government is always a pro birthong pains included. PS : Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.
        portaouflop 2y ago
        Big part the French Revolution is not by chance called “la Terreur”. You can acknowledge that the values the revolution promoted are good, aristocratic rule needed reform, while still being clear that revolutions are not a peaceful thing, especially not for poor or marginalised groups. 50.000 people executed is quite some birthing pains…
etc-hosts 2y ago
> There is this podcast called Behind the bastards I know so much more now about the figures behind the rise of the fascism before the end of WW2 because of this podcast.
Wohlf 2y ago
From what I hear Costco is also changing after their new CEO took over and the stock skyrocketed.
- Jimpulse 2y ago
  You talking about Ron Vachris? The guy who started his career as a Costco forklift driver?
HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
I think a problem is that we have to look at shady, ruthless, unethical and illegal actions as different categories, but to many people they are all the same. Of course, you don't want to leave a trail of bodies in your wake but Life's not a bowl of cherries and taking a Pollyanna approach to business won't get you very far.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Yes, and even just the normal business attitude of "our goal is to make a profit, not solve all the world's social problems" is viewed as "unethical" by many people (most of whom have never run a business).
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    If your business’s goal is only “make money” and not solve any real human problems then it should not exist.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      It doesn't have to be the only goal, but if you're not making money you will not be able to achieve anything else. So it's the thing that enables any other goals you might have (and, I might add, it's the main thing that makes it worth the risk, vs. just putting your money in savings bonds or something).
      - portaouflop 2y ago
        Read my post again, of course companies have to make money. My problem is with those whose __only__ goal is to make money.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
      What "real human problem" is a coffee shop solving?
      - 2y ago
jppope 2y ago
Theres a ton of ethical wealthy people, you just have no clue who they are because they are playing a different game and don't want the spotlight. Whats the shady ruthless stuff from Google? They've obviously started running their business differently after the easy growth went away, but I've never heard anyone be like: they made me pee in a bottle because going to the bathroom was too much time off the line.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  Here is a nice list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google Mind you that only includes the most high profile (and known) stuff. Plenty of skeletons still in the closet
portaouflop 2y ago
>Is it even possible today to become super successful without doing shady/unethical/illegal stuff? No I don’t think it is - and I would argue it never was - for me it is morally reprehensible to be a millionaire. But then again humans are complex creatures and who is without fault may throw the first stone

by akudha 2y ago

theposey 2y ago

sounds cynical but I'm shifted to believing not. If you don't do it there will always be someone else who will. Not to say you should, that's a personal choice of course, but in a competitive environment there will always be someone or lots of someones who will do anything.

dbspin 2y ago
This is why its vital to make unethical corporate malfeasance costly. Meaningful fines and criminal convictions for individual executives responsible for law breaking, wage theft, and intentional violations of regulation, provide meaningful deterrent. In their absence tax evasion and white collar crime become normative, which changes the game for anyone working in executive level roles.

ghaff 2y ago

For any successful company, you can probably find ex-employees who think that some "fat trimming" was excessive and unnecessarily cruel or that they pushed some line or another in excessive ways. The Jack Welch case (and I'd add Mark Hurd at HP) was an example of financial engineering looking great for a time--until it wasn't.

rkhassen9 2y ago
ghaff. you said the first part well well. Welch "looked great" its the second part "until it wasn't." that stands out to me...because his approach, to kill the goose to get the golden eggs, so to speak, was doomed from the beginning. Its just hard to tell early on if you don't know what to look for. People in his orgs knew what was happening, but hard to go against the "hero". I don't know a solution to these kinds of scenarios except for having a more wise and educated populace. Perhaps trusting the people at the bottom. Big issues. Hard to solve. And in today's world, harder than ever.

buzzardbait 2y ago

Perhaps not, but I think you can be "very successful" while remaining ethical. Most people want to be successful because success brings happiness. But there is a level of success at which happiness starts to plateau and yields diminishing returns of happiness.

HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
Thank you for saying that. I get low-level irritated at the constant background murmur that success means that you had to screw someone over at some point.
- akudha 2y ago
  Can you run a 1M, 10M dollar business ethically without screwing over anyone - employees, customers, suppliers, environment etc? Sure. What about 100M, 1B, 10B, 100B businesses? How many Billion dollar businesses can we name that are run ethically? Not that many, correct me if I am wrong. I suppose at some level, profit and monopoly becomes the one and only motivation. Plus if you didn’t do shady stuff, your competitors surely would, putting you at a disadvantage. Why else would Google drop “don’t do evil” from their principles?
- eevilspock 2y ago
  It really boils down to your system of morality. If your are willing to look at capitalism and free markets objectively[1], as just algorithms rather than moral systems (i.e. private property is part of an algorithm, not an "inalienable human right"), and you realize that it isn't moral that one's share of the pie be determined by the free market, that it isn't moral that the value of a person be determined by the free market, that it isn't moral to leverage your advantage or even hard work to grab a much bigger share of the pie even as others who because of birth circumstance get the thinnest slice or no slice at all, that it isn't moral to enjoy the fruits of cheap labor do to the desperation of the aforementioned, that it isn't moral to take advantage of your other advantages birth circumstances (e.g. being born within the borders of a wealthy country that keeps out those born in poor ones) to grab more, then you will find that material success (success as defined by capitalism) that is complicit in all the aforementioned does screw someone over. Such a person will have a different definition of success: A life of contribution to the community done out of love and morality, not a coerced transaction leveraging one's advantages against those with less. --- [1]: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" ~ Upton Sinclair

codechicago277 2y ago

Aaron Greenspan created the early version of what Facebook became, and has loudly criticized the zero-sum tactics used by Zuckerberg, Gates, and other billionaires: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_732625 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-legend-of-mark-zucker_b_7... Some interesting books in this category: * Masters of Doom. It’s about John Carmack and the team that built Id Software * Einstein. By Walter Isaacson, author of the Jobs biography. Einstein’s 4 papers are one of the most unexpected, ground breaking discoveries in history * Houdini!!! Tells the story of the escape artist and magician, and exposer of psychics. * The Double Helix * Stress Test. By Tim Geithner who pulled the world out of the financial crisis * Man’s Search for Meaning. Surviving and finding meaning in a concentration camp

thinkharderdev 2y ago
I read the Einstein biography. Highly recommended. But to the parents point, I came way think Einstein was a huge asshole, especially given his pop culture representation as a kindly old grandfather type.
- thruway516 2y ago
  Probably every human being looks like a huge asshole if you put their entire life under a microscope. Even Mother Teresa did some giant asshole things if I remember. You're just not aware what a huge asshole you are because someone hasn't written a very good biography of your life from a perspective different from yours (or you havent lived long enough)
- throaway54 2y ago
  Most people are very selfish when it suits them, and most people would completely deny that selfishness as being not part of their "morality."
PaulHoule 2y ago
I'm fairly convinced most successful "social" sites have bodies buried somewhere. The problem of launching a two-sided market is tough. It was against my ethics but we sent a round of unsolicited emails to about 10,000 people in Brazil to launch a voice chat service circa 2001. It must have been a really good list (and a different time and place) because we had close to a 40% response rate. (Later we got a list that was so bad some of the emails didn't have '@' signs in them!) There's that famous story of how reddit was initially populated with fake users too. --- I've never been able to enjoy that Viktor Frankl book, Man's Search for Meaning ,since I read an essay that pointed out how pernicious it was that postmodern people like to fantasize that everyday life is like a concentration camp -- paradoxically that fantasy undermines Frankl's own thesis I recently read an account of a 14 year old girl (a demo that is vulnerable to Franklism, I had one in an acting class I was in) who said she thought about the Holocaust (survived by some ancestors she'd never met) every day and experienced it as a trauma. If that's what it means to "remember the Holocaust" we might be better to forget. We hear the refrain that "it must never happen again" but it happens over and over again routinely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide and if that memory makes us think it is a memory and not an ongoing crime, it is part of the problem and not part of the solution. You can take your own experiences of your group being persecuted and apply that to justice universally (Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner gave their lives together with African-American James Chaney in 1964 to fight racism in the U.S. South) or you can use it as an excuse to commit similar crimes (kill and displace civilians) against other people. It's your choice.

neves 2y ago

USA culture has this idolatry for the Rich that looks like what the aristocracy always did: my "beloved" king, the kind princess... Like the philanthropy of the robber barons that made them respectable, but when they are still alive. I prefer the French approach to take care of aristocrats.

nickff 2y ago
The French Revolution led to quite poor results for those fortunate enough to survive it. You might prefer the approach, but I doubt you’d enjoy the aftermath.
- ashoeafoot 2y ago
  ? Have you ever even opened a history book? Is this sarcasm?
  - nickff 2y ago
    I am not being sarcastic. The revolution and subsequent wars caused extremely high casualty rates among French men, while the country isolated itself from international trade, and suffered negative economic consequences.
    - ashoeafoot 2y ago
      Have you held the nations that stayed aristocratic and the havoc they caused next to france? Getting rid of parasitic waterhead bodies of government is always a pro birthong pains included. PS : Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.
      - portaouflop 2y ago
        Big part the French Revolution is not by chance called “la Terreur”. You can acknowledge that the values the revolution promoted are good, aristocratic rule needed reform, while still being clear that revolutions are not a peaceful thing, especially not for poor or marginalised groups. 50.000 people executed is quite some birthing pains…

etc-hosts 2y ago

> There is this podcast called Behind the bastards I know so much more now about the figures behind the rise of the fascism before the end of WW2 because of this podcast.

Wohlf 2y ago

From what I hear Costco is also changing after their new CEO took over and the stock skyrocketed.

Jimpulse 2y ago
You talking about Ron Vachris? The guy who started his career as a Costco forklift driver?

HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago

I think a problem is that we have to look at shady, ruthless, unethical and illegal actions as different categories, but to many people they are all the same. Of course, you don't want to leave a trail of bodies in your wake but Life's not a bowl of cherries and taking a Pollyanna approach to business won't get you very far.

SoftTalker 2y ago
Yes, and even just the normal business attitude of "our goal is to make a profit, not solve all the world's social problems" is viewed as "unethical" by many people (most of whom have never run a business).
- portaouflop 2y ago
  If your business’s goal is only “make money” and not solve any real human problems then it should not exist.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    It doesn't have to be the only goal, but if you're not making money you will not be able to achieve anything else. So it's the thing that enables any other goals you might have (and, I might add, it's the main thing that makes it worth the risk, vs. just putting your money in savings bonds or something).
    - portaouflop 2y ago
      Read my post again, of course companies have to make money. My problem is with those whose __only__ goal is to make money.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    What "real human problem" is a coffee shop solving?
    - 2y ago

jppope 2y ago

Theres a ton of ethical wealthy people, you just have no clue who they are because they are playing a different game and don't want the spotlight. Whats the shady ruthless stuff from Google? They've obviously started running their business differently after the easy growth went away, but I've never heard anyone be like: they made me pee in a bottle because going to the bathroom was too much time off the line.

portaouflop 2y ago
Here is a nice list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google Mind you that only includes the most high profile (and known) stuff. Plenty of skeletons still in the closet

portaouflop 2y ago

>Is it even possible today to become super successful without doing shady/unethical/illegal stuff? No I don’t think it is - and I would argue it never was - for me it is morally reprehensible to be a millionaire. But then again humans are complex creatures and who is without fault may throw the first stone