3 ms·

There are interesting thoughts in this article but talent is something that money can buy, ask the banks.

by cynusx 13y ago

hollerith 13y ago
The OP is about loyal talent, not talent alone, and banks do not acutely need loyalty in their employees to the degree that spy agencies do. For instance, they do not try to keep billion-dollar programs secret from the public.
- tonyg 13y ago
  Perhaps that's a matter of perspective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
  - hollerith 13y ago
    OK, but we're getting away from the subject of employee loyalty: the bank employees involved in the Libor scandal were probably motivated by personal enrichment, not by loyalty to their employer. It so happens that the employees' personal enrichment was aligned with the banks' corporate enrichment, which often happens (usually by design) in fields like finance or sales, but in a spy agency, it is not possible to align employee's personal interests with the interests of the organization broadly enough to get a similar effect. And I still maintain my larger point (implied in grandparent), that whether or not banks can find enough talent does not shed light on whether spy agencies can find enough loyal talent.
    - tonyg 13y ago
      I was speaking narrowly to your point claiming that banks don't need loyalty like spy agencies do because they're not trying to hide billion-dollar programs. I'm suggesting they are in fact trying to hide billion-dollar programs, and need a kind of loyalty to facilitate this. Paying someone obscenely well seems like a nice way of buying a kind of loyalty. Certainly the upshot is behaviour equivalent to loyalty from the bank's perspective.
      - hollerith 13y ago
        There are always going to be cases where the interests of the employee and the organization are aligned. I do not think it is illuminating to call that "a kind of loyalty". When I am loyal to something or someone, I will defend their interests even when doing so goes against my (other) personal interests. Also, you're ignoring my point that certain organizations have the option of intentionally causing (via e.g. paying commissions on sales) a broad alignment of personal and organizational interests, but spy agencies (and police departments and court systems) do not. And just because paying someone obscenely well succeeds in getting them to increase whatever source of organizational profits was increased in the Libor scandal does not mean that paying Snowden obscenely well would have succeeded in getting him to ignore the broad public-policy implications of Prism and such (or paying a cop obscenely well would succeed in stopping him from brutalizing people under his power or stopping him from doing other things against the long-term interests of his department). Finally, since Hacker News (measured in the scores of my previous comments of this nature) does not value long series of back-and-forths, this will probably be my last response in this thread.

There are interesting thoughts in this article but talent is something that money can buy, ask the banks.

by cynusx 13y ago

There are interesting thoughts in this article but talent is something that money can buy, ask the banks.

The OP is about loyal talent, not talent alone, and banks do not acutely need loyalty in their employees to the degree that spy agencies do. For instance, they do not try to keep billion-dollar programs secret from the public.

tonyg 13y ago
Perhaps that's a matter of perspective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
- hollerith 13y ago
  OK, but we're getting away from the subject of employee loyalty: the bank employees involved in the Libor scandal were probably motivated by personal enrichment, not by loyalty to their employer. It so happens that the employees' personal enrichment was aligned with the banks' corporate enrichment, which often happens (usually by design) in fields like finance or sales, but in a spy agency, it is not possible to align employee's personal interests with the interests of the organization broadly enough to get a similar effect. And I still maintain my larger point (implied in grandparent), that whether or not banks can find enough talent does not shed light on whether spy agencies can find enough loyal talent.
  - tonyg 13y ago
    I was speaking narrowly to your point claiming that banks don't need loyalty like spy agencies do because they're not trying to hide billion-dollar programs. I'm suggesting they are in fact trying to hide billion-dollar programs, and need a kind of loyalty to facilitate this. Paying someone obscenely well seems like a nice way of buying a kind of loyalty. Certainly the upshot is behaviour equivalent to loyalty from the bank's perspective.
    - hollerith 13y ago
      There are always going to be cases where the interests of the employee and the organization are aligned. I do not think it is illuminating to call that "a kind of loyalty". When I am loyal to something or someone, I will defend their interests even when doing so goes against my (other) personal interests. Also, you're ignoring my point that certain organizations have the option of intentionally causing (via e.g. paying commissions on sales) a broad alignment of personal and organizational interests, but spy agencies (and police departments and court systems) do not. And just because paying someone obscenely well succeeds in getting them to increase whatever source of organizational profits was increased in the Libor scandal does not mean that paying Snowden obscenely well would have succeeded in getting him to ignore the broad public-policy implications of Prism and such (or paying a cop obscenely well would succeed in stopping him from brutalizing people under his power or stopping him from doing other things against the long-term interests of his department). Finally, since Hacker News (measured in the scores of my previous comments of this nature) does not value long series of back-and-forths, this will probably be my last response in this thread.