Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

backchannel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 262 posts

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#111

Post by ryanlol »

eanzenberg wrote: post #97
ryanlol wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. However tax evasion and avoidance are often confused, for a public company not avoiding taxes would most certainly be an ethical violation.

But.. what about my version of ethics! If only there were a way to take a tally of issues among groups of people with different opinions of ethics and morals..

There's a very clear fiduciary duty to pay as little money in taxes as you can, there exists no such duty to pay too much taxes.

This is very black and white.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#112

Post by Phlarp »

reitanqild wrote: post #91
Phlarp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some may consider avoiding taxes to be unethical, others might say not avoiding them would violate a fiduciary duty.

From my very minimal accounting course I remember my teacher, who was serving as part of the tax appeals board at the time, telling us that we were allowed to use any opening in the law to save tax but we were not allowed to lie.

The intent of my comment was to draw attention to the other side of this coin.

>You are allowed to use any opening in the law to save on taxes, but not lie.

The other side of that is:

If you (as a C(ETF)O of a company) do not use every opening in the law to save on taxes you may be violating a fiduciary duty to your shareholders.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#113

Post by natdempk »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #110
spyspy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed for a co-op position there and was turned down. I guess they saved me some time.

What's a co-op position?

Generally it's an extended internship as a supplemental part of a university curriculum.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#114

Post by hkmurakami »

aresant wrote: post #62

So what else is new. If you work at Facebook or Google you're benefiting directly from the similarly shady practices they used to grow on their way to being "pillars of tech" today. Do you remember when at LEAST 20% of Facebook's revenue came from Zynga? Like less than 5 years ago? Many speculated it was considerably higher, but Facebook never provided a full accounting (1). Or do you remember when Facebook literally…

> Do you remember when at LEAST 20% of Facebook's revenue came from Zynga? Like less than 5 years ago?

This was cited in the FB S1 filing, which was around March 2012, so you are correct.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#115

Post by hkmurakami »

seibelj wrote: post #46

Interviewed at a company called Rakuten Loyalty in Boston a few years ago. At that time it was the exact same thing, a malware / adware browser toolbar company, and they also sold white label toolbars. Took me the entire interview to figure out what they actually did. Their website [0] now has very little information about what they actually do, with a generic contact form. But an archive.org [1] of their old website…

I guess I'm not entirely shocked since Rakuten the parent company and Japanese ecommerce site has very questionable tactics like emails you can't opt out of and forcing new employees to sign up a large number of friends/relatives to the Rakuten credit card.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#116

Post by Apocryphon »

aresant wrote: post #62

So what else is new. If you work at Facebook or Google you're benefiting directly from the similarly shady practices they used to grow on their way to being "pillars of tech" today. Do you remember when at LEAST 20% of Facebook's revenue came from Zynga? Like less than 5 years ago? Many speculated it was considerably higher, but Facebook never provided a full accounting (1). Or do you remember when Facebook literally…

Facebook and Google at least have products that are mostly consumer-facing. One wonders what it would be like to work for Palantir.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#117

Post by NoGravitas »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #49

I worked at a web development studio. One of our clients was MannaTech, basically a marketing company that sold snake-oil to parents of sick children, claiming it could "cure" everything from cancer to down syndrome. They were under investigation by the Texas DA at one point. We tracked our work hourly, so I donated all the money I made from that particular work to St. Jude's hospital, which actually does cure cancer…

Looked this up, and it's not only selling snake-oil to parents of sick children, it's MLM selling snake oil to parents of sick children. I honestly didn't think such a level of depravity was possible.

Oh, and they had Ben Carson for a spokesman for a while. Amazing.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#118

Post by hueving »

cookiecaper wrote: post #99
aresant wrote: post #62

So what else is new. If you work at Facebook or Google you're benefiting directly from the similarly shady practices they used to grow on their way to being "pillars of tech" today. Do you remember when at LEAST 20% of Facebook's revenue came from Zynga? Like less than 5 years ago? Many speculated it was considerably higher, but Facebook never provided a full accounting (1). Or do you remember when Facebook literally…

Yeah, I think one of the dirty secrets that doesn't really come across until you've been in the entrepreneurial trenches for a while is that most people who make a lot of money end up doing so not by being paragons of morality, but by skirting rules and doing things other people may find questionable or unfair. YC itself acknowledges this to an extent by saying that good founders are moral, but that they are not "goo…

>you need to loosen from a theoretical moral ideal to a practical one that is informed by the competitive landscape of capitalism

Not necessarily. It's very easy to think that existing industry protection laws are immoral and operate a company that skirts those laws without breaking morals.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#119

Post by vthallam »

smt88 wrote: post #86
aresant wrote: post #62

So what else is new. If you work at Facebook or Google you're benefiting directly from the similarly shady practices they used to grow on their way to being "pillars of tech" today. Do you remember when at LEAST 20% of Facebook's revenue came from Zynga? Like less than 5 years ago? Many speculated it was considerably higher, but Facebook never provided a full accounting (1). Or do you remember when Facebook literally…

One major difference is that Facebook and Google also provide value to their users. They do good and bad things. The company in the article did only bad things.

Wow! So it balances out? I am not supporting 50onRed here, but the point that doing some good and some bad things is okay, is no good.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#120

Post by chao- »

fiatmoney wrote: post #103
aresant wrote: post #62

So what else is new. If you work at Facebook or Google you're benefiting directly from the similarly shady practices they used to grow on their way to being "pillars of tech" today. Do you remember when at LEAST 20% of Facebook's revenue came from Zynga? Like less than 5 years ago? Many speculated it was considerably higher, but Facebook never provided a full accounting (1). Or do you remember when Facebook literally…

Every nation is built on a hill of skulls. "Has done in the past" is not the same as "is currently doing".

The logical extension of that is a justification for current, smaller players building new "hills of skulls" in their quest to build their own new nation. But hey! You know, once they're big too, they can put it all the shady dealings in the past and be one of the good guys, and it'll all be fine!

It's a weak justification.

Post reply on HN