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If he failed to look at the books in 20 years, or even once notice the shoddy numbers, that would be very strong evidence of negligence. Delegating an essentia
by fatdog789 17y ago
If he failed to look at the books in 20 years, or even once notice the shoddy numbers, that would be very strong evidence of negligence. Delegating an essential job doesn't take away the responsibility for supervising performance to make sure the job was done right.
- sutro 17y agoYou probably don't have time to comment on Hacker News threads when there are so many moving parts of your industry-leading decades-old business that you need to go attend to. Unless you're not speaking from a position of comparable experience. But I doubt it. Opinions completely divorced from the actual facts of the case or from any relevant experience would never be proffered on Hacker News. You probably know exactly what you're talking about.
- dtf 17y agoToo right. The entire build up of that article was essentially to blame not the owner, nor even the accountant, but the wife!
- sho 17y agoYou assume too much. Who's to say he didn't instruct the accountant to cook the books? That seems the most likely scenario to my cynical mind. What kind of accountant would make that kind of basic error? It beggars belief that the guy could run a successful business for 20 years, but could not understand the difference between receivables and booked work. He was probably boosting cashflow to keep the banks happy, then one day they figured it out and shut him down. Otherwise he would have surely been able to get loans for that vital "equipment". Ah well, happens all the time. I feel sorry for the guy but he should have been more careful.