Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#281

Post by burntoutfire » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #255

hef19898 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those annual trainings are there to show compliance. This prevents pro active investigations by authorities into business conduct. Without those corporations are free to engage in all kinda of shady business behaviour. And when something turns sideways, the offending employees passed the training, so the company is shielded, to an extend.

People downplay such training, but imagine the environment without it. Imagine if nobody officially talked about corrupt practices: it would create a very dark place for such things to occur, nobody would know what the rules are or what to do, and especially the silence would speak very loudly. Edit: By training everyone , not just the people directly involved with such situations, anyone considering corrupt acts wil…

People know that what they hear in the training videos and how they must really act are two different things. If you find out that your boss's boss is corrupting goverment officials in Poland to get a $100m contract (a real case BTW, involving one of MS's big competitors), do you really think the company wants you to raise alarm and blow that contract? What good does it do to your boss's boss career, or the shareholders?

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#282

Post by wolverine876 » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

xbmcuser wrote: post #41

Western countries look the other way when their companies exploit poor countries. Then let the same corrupt money to be be taken out from those poor countries and hidden in their banks and property markets. Microsoft is not alone in this many other companies do the same. I personally feel the biggest hate from the west for the chinese so called road and belt initiative is not that China is exploiting these countries…

> Then let the same corrupt money to be be taken out from those poor countries and hidden in their banks and property markets.

Coincidentally, here is an article that very issue in US property markets:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30805296

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#283

Post by edgyquant » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:16 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #107

edgyquant wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say at that level of acceptance it isn’t a bribe.

It is a bribe but it is accepted and perhaps not illegal

Usually when you think bribe you think paying someone to get an advantage or edge, when everyone is paying something it’s just called the price.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#284

Post by edgyquant » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #167

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably is illegal but the countries have weak rule of law (if rule of law is even a thing in those countries at all). Note that there are differences between fees and bribery, if something can be legally presented as a fee, it is no longer considered a bribe (important if you are an American or American company).

This is why I brought up the example of pre-tipping. It is clearly not a fee but it is generally accepted. If you hand the Valet a $20 and say please park it close, is it a tip, fee, or bribe? How about at a bar, can you tell the bar tender "I have an extra $5 if you make it a heavy pour"? How about attending the Salesforce conference but it's mostly because you want to visit SF and see Metallica/Chainsmokers? We hav…

That’s because none of those things are bribes. The definition of bribe is

* persuade (someone) to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement.*

Tipping your waitress isn’t illegally or dishonestly persuading someone to act in your favor.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#285

Post by say_it_as_it_is » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:19 PM UTC

Why do Americans think that the rest of the world operates according to the illusion that America pretends to follow? Payoffs aren't always bribes. They're more like a tax.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#286

Post by burntoutfire » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #83

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #3

Former Microsoftie here. After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.

Many years ago, another division of my employer got caught bribing Nigeria. As a result, a bunch of people who were never in a position to do so had to sit through hours of ethics training. Some of it came with oddly specific examples. Halfway through one such lecture, in which we were being admonished to never accept a car from a customer, some engineer in the back did some quick mental arithmetic on his own salary…

Being that Instructor is 100% bullshit job. I.e. you're doing something entirely pointless, day in-day out, just so your company can later say to some lawyers that it was done. I feel bad for people who work those jobs.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#287

Post by wolverine876 » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

president wrote: post #99

xbmcuser wrote: post #41

Western countries look the other way when their companies exploit poor countries. Then let the same corrupt money to be be taken out from those poor countries and hidden in their banks and property markets. Microsoft is not alone in this many other companies do the same. I personally feel the biggest hate from the west for the chinese so called road and belt initiative is not that China is exploiting these countries…

Well there is a geopolitical perspective to this as well right? Wouldn't want our biggest adversary to have strategic influence over these nations. Not to mention the potential intelligence capabilities from installing our equipment rather than theirs. Whether one country is more righteous than the other doesn't matter at this point - you should be rooting for the country that your survival depends on.

People like to imagine that international relations are completely amoral; it's a sort of thrilling, Game-of-Thrones type fantasy. But that's not the case at all.

Look at the EU, NATO and other US alliances (e.g., with Japan). They are connected held together by values. They are very imperfect and corrupt, but these alliances have lasted so long because there is no way, for example, Germany is attacking France again. It just doesn't make any sense, because of the values.

International relations are fundamentally (but certainly not wholly) anarchy, but anarchy doesn't exclude values - perhaps it makes them even more powerful, relatively. As some have said, to a great degree, right makes might.

In practice, blowback is one result of ignoring it: The US supported the Shah, a brutal dictator in Iran. When the Shah lost power in ~1979 - well, you can see that the US is still paying a price. The US supported some unsavory people to fight the Soviets in Afganistan; some of those people became Al Qaeda. The US armed and trained brutal right-wing militias in Central America to suppress enemies; some of them became today's Central American drug gangs. Meanwhile, while the US promotes democracy and freedom, it draws many, many into its orbit around the world.

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#288

Post by burntoutfire » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #262

saiya-jin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the banks we have the same. As IT guy, the amount of quarterly trainings and their focus is a bit crazy, most topics I will never ever touch since I don't work in ie Legal and I am so far from ever interacting or even seeing any client. Most of the trainings are about a fine we got due to being caught doing something bad, say 10 years ago, and part of legal settlement is apart from direct fine, a nice 30-60 min tr…

Perhaps by training everyone, potential bad actors know that everyone in the company will recognize what they are doing?

In banking, the bank is the bad actor and people who do shady stuff usually do it on its behalf (and get rewards with promotions, bonuses etc.).

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#289

Post by mikestew » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #254

asd88 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Every year, the Standards of Business Conduct training talks about not bribing foreign officials and devs are like “who the hell is ever in that position anyway?”.

> "who the hell is ever in that position anyway?" Microsoft does business worldwide, of course. Wouldn't that imply that many are in that position?

and devs are like...

How many MSFT devs do you think travel to foreign countries to close deals? I do not think one has to have worked there to come up with, "mmm, probably not very many", and thus devs are like, "WTF do I have to watch this?"

Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes

#290

Post by RyJones » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #3

Former Microsoftie here. After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.

When I went blue in 2005, I had to sit through sexual harassment videos by some guy.

Who had been fired.

For running HR like a harem.