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

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

#151

Post by phjesusthatguy3 »

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".

>Every nation is built on a hill of skulls

Did you quote that from somewhere? Because that is an amazing turn of phrase.

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

#152

Post by lhc- »

kbenson wrote: post #139
chao- wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Maybe you can explain this logical extension, because I don't see it. At a minimum, it's not self-evident.

You're saying we should ignore past bad behavior because Google, Facebook, etc. are good guys now. Logically, that would lead us to excuse current bad behavior by smaller companies because everyone does it, and they'll do good once they are big enough.

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

#153

Post by nfriedly »

busterarm wrote: post #58
pyrophane wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, good point. We live in an age when a whole set of duplicitous practices are now just referred to as "growth hacking"

Ugh, the number of dark patterns trying to cost me money just to purchase a damned ticket on Ticketbastards today. Seriously by not clicking the right boxes I could have agreed to pay an extra $42 in add-ons/services for a $15 ticket that had its own $6 in fees added.

Agreed 100%. I usually call the venue and ask if I can purchase tickets directly from them instead of going through Ticketmaster. They don't always say yes, but it's usually cheaper and more pleasant when they do.

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

#154

Post by notacoward »

soheil wrote: post #65
notacoward wrote: post #15

Reminds me a bit of an experience I had at an event around 2000 or so. Most of the folks there were heavily academic, but at lunch I found myself sitting with one of the organizers who was clearly cut from different cloth, so I asked what he did the rest of the year. After a couple of rounds of vague responses about how he helped companies use email to get in touch with potential customers, it finally dawned on me th…

You lost your appetite because you thought someone was a spammer? There are a lot of companies that perform much worse ethical behavior that spamming (e.g. LinkedIn's existence is thanks to unwanted invite request sent to all your contacts, SocialCam abused Facebook OpenGraph so heavily they had to shut it down.) Just because they get away with it in secrecy doesn't mean it's not happening. So you can pretend you liv…

Did you miss the part where I mentioned malware authors and identity thieves? They're far worse even than LinkedIn or SocialCam, but hierarchies of evil aren't the point. It doesn't matter whether spamming or spying or stealing is worse. I don't want to spend time with any of them, but the point is that they're not easily recognizable. I was refuting the "how could you not know" assumption that bad actors look or smell bad (or something) so that they're easy to spot. I'm not pretending anything, and I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't make up things for others to say just so you can disagree or condescend.

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

#155

Post by mrweasel »

tomp wrote: post #21
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #20

> “Like, man, this is a really nice office,” he recalls thinking. “Open floor plan...” So "Tyler" wasn't a programmer, then. Got it.

Not everybody dislikes an open floor plan.

You're right of cause, but strangely enough I never meet anyone who liked open floor plans that didn't have a pair of head phones glued to their head half the day.

It's personal preference of cause, but I believe that the disadvantages starts to cancel out any benefits at around 6-8 people per office.

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

#157

Post by x0x0 »

pseudobry wrote: post #75
batbomb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Utah County, by chance?

> Multi Level Marketing coughpyramidschemecough company similar to Herbalife Definitely could be Utah county, but > one of the better tech opportunities in an area with very few Probably not Utah county. The greater than 4000 tech companies[1] in and around Utah County cannot hire software engineers fast enough. [1]: http://siliconslopes.com/about/utah-economy/

where do you look for jobs in utah? Craigslist seems pretty dead. Thanks!

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

#158

Post by mrweasel »

>Gill tells me he doesn’t consider himself in the adware business. He prefers, instead, to describe 50onRed as a company that keeps content free for users.

I love that bit. How does injecting ads into random sites help keep content free for users?

Who's buying those ads by the way? Sure it sound like a terrible company, but I can help thinking that their customers are worse.

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

#159

Post by notacoward »

vonmoltke wrote: post #144
ryanlol wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it isn't. Your statement is wrong and based on a flawed interpretation of Dodge v. Ford that makes the rounds on the Internet and refuses to die.

Thank you. Actions that are deemed to have been taken solely for their tax effects are clearly and explicitly deemed tax evasion by the IRS, and are prosecuted as such. I believe other countries have similar standards. There's a lot of room to give people the benefit of the doubt, e.g. by counting the good will from charitable activities as a credible alternate reason, but there's no license and certainly no requirement to cheat.

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

#160

Post by st3v3r »

hueving wrote: post #118
cookiecaper wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you? I mean, at that point, you're basically deciding that a people are not allowed to self govern themselves.
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