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

#341

Post by Qem » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #323

Qem wrote: post #10

My work involves a public sector organization in Brazil. In the last years there was a big push towards microsoft products at my workplace, to a point where emails with announcements from corporate IT sometimes looks and sounds like spam pushing MS products. Now I'm left wondering if that's related to bribes here too, or if it's just bad judgement/taste from IT leadership.

No need to wonder. Of course it's bribery. Most likely not by Microsoft, but by their local VARs, with tacit corporate approval. All the blood, sweat and tears we gave during the early 2000's to make FLOSS the standard, how we advocated for it on grounds of openness and auditability, how it would - and did! - help foster a local industry... All this work and see it being undone by the current government and their cro…

Truly sad. Even if eventually FLOSS regain traction in the Brazilian government, I think it will be trickier to extricate government data and systems from proprietary blackboxes this time, when compared to the 2000's. I think Microsoft is making their products interlocking more tightly between themselves, so it's harder to fight lock-in by replacing one piece at time. Now it's becoming like a card castle that will crumble if you try to pull any single card.

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

#342

Post by EnKopVand » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 11:59 PM UTC

AlanYx wrote: post #276

EnKopVand wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent 7 years working with digitalisation in the Danish public sector and it depends on what you mean, and what you want to pay for it. Basically the short answer is that it is impossible. What is often forgotten about non-tech enterprise here on HN is that a typical public sector organisation has a ratio of 20-50 IT people (this is everyone, from the network and operations people to developers and project managers…

The other challenge in the public sector is that the "business" itself is so heterogeneous that the IT management tends to be siloed, while people in these siloed orgs need to work with people in other siloed orgs. You can't switch the whole government wholesale; you'll get some fraction of business units to adopt something else and hope other units will slowly switch too, but in the meantime, you've got people tryin…

I think the biggest issue will be finding an organisation that actually wants to replace Microsoft.

I know there are a few examples of it happening, but one of the reasons Microsoft is so successful is because they actually sell a really nice product with some really good support. This isn’t true for you or me as private customers, but when I was working in an average sized Danish City our IT department had a direct line to Seattle, and not only would they sometimes change Office365 or Azure in ways that we suggested, they would call you every hour with updates during major incidents. Part of what Microsoft sells to enterprise organisations is the ability for IT management to tell their organisation that Microsoft is giving them personal hourly updates while outlook is down.

As bad as bribes are, I don’t think they are going to move public opinion enough for politicians (or anyone else really) to push for alternatives. In fact, I doubt I’ll be reading about this outside of HN, as sad as that may be.

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

#343

Post by madrox » Sat, Mar 26, 2022, 12:01 AM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #338

madrox wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll need to draw that line a little clearer, because it's not starkly clear to me. I'm aware of the definition of bribery. I don't think anything mentioned here describes graft as much as it describes the reseller business unless there is some law that limits the amount of money a reseller makes on a deal, or that a purchaser is required to use all of said purchase. In the Saudi example, the contractor got a great…

> Without more detail on what exactly Microsoft was extracting out of these circumstances I find the whole thing vague. I think the big problem here is that you've misunderstood why bribery is a criminal matter. The fact you're talking about Microsoft being "one of the victims in that case" is another sign you do not get it. Corruption itself is the problem, we're not trying to ensure Microsoft gets their $$$. To roo…

If that is happening, then you're absolutely correct. However, there's no evidence that's happening...either in the Verge article or in the whistleblower's own words. All the whistleblower has presented is Microsoft's own PWC audits that resellers have been pocketing more money than policy says they should and that there are cases where company policy was violated. The leap from this evidence to bribery is, frankly, pandering to the reader's prior beliefs.

If you're saying the resellers themselves are corrupt to make a score in, say, the Saudi case, well, that's the reseller business and it's all a question of degree. There is no law that if a reseller negotiates a better rate from the vendor that they're required to pass those savings on. It's skeevy and a reason the reseller business should disappear, but it's not any different from a car salesman.

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

#344

Post by NullPrefix » Sat, Mar 26, 2022, 12:03 AM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #277

kabdib wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when you have a deadline and your stuff is behind, you don't :-) Happily, it was better than that. Most of these courses were online, and you could just let the videos of actors working through scenarios run in the background and then answer some simple questions. The questions never varied and the correct answer was usually pretty obvious (e.g., don't pick any answer that includes hiding a body).

> The questions never varied and the correct answer was usually pretty obvious Siemens ask different questions in reruns of end tests, vary the order the questions are in, and also ask questions you can’t answer from understanding the topic. Eg ‘what colour was the background of the graph demonstrating the effect?”

>what colour was the background of the graph demonstrating the effect?

Sounds like a bad test. You are not supposed to fill your head with details like what color shoes your teacher was wearing.

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

#345

Post by madrox » Sat, Mar 26, 2022, 12:14 AM UTC

areoform wrote: post #340

madrox wrote: post #296

I was prepared to get my pitchfork out, but after reading I'm struggling to connect the dots. This article is scant on details of what illegal or favorable behavior Microsoft is expecting in exchange for money. The only concrete mention is a previous SEC filing that has nothing to do with this whistleblower. The first example about $40k doesn't seem to explain what Microsoft was actually thinking it would get for tha…

It's not "resellers" making money, it's apparent that MS' employees and salespeople are using fake contracts and "discounts" to funnel money to decision makers. What MS got out of it at the end of the day — a contract or perhaps some personal earmark for a salesperson — doesn't matter. Their bribes distorted the market, entrenched corruption, and made the lives of people living in these countries worse. It should be…

I get that's the insinuation, but there's a leap the reader is expected to make between "this middleman made a lot of money" and "bribes were clearly happening" without further investigation. If a car salesman convinces me to pay more for a car than someone else pays that doesn't mean someone was bribed; the rest is a matter of degree.

I get that bribery happens, and I get that the SEC stepped on Microsoft employees for bribery in Hungary. I also get the impact that bribery and corruption has on lives. None of that is material to what's being said about this situation. In fact, it's relying on the reader's passion to make these leaps.

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

#346

Post by areoform » Sat, Mar 26, 2022, 12:24 AM UTC

madrox wrote: post #345

areoform wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "resellers" making money, it's apparent that MS' employees and salespeople are using fake contracts and "discounts" to funnel money to decision makers. What MS got out of it at the end of the day — a contract or perhaps some personal earmark for a salesperson — doesn't matter. Their bribes distorted the market, entrenched corruption, and made the lives of people living in these countries worse. It should be…

I get that's the insinuation, but there's a leap the reader is expected to make between "this middleman made a lot of money" and "bribes were clearly happening" without further investigation. If a car salesman convinces me to pay more for a car than someone else pays that doesn't mean someone was bribed; the rest is a matter of degree. I get that bribery happens, and I get that the SEC stepped on Microsoft employees…

It's unclear if you've read the post, or the linked audit documents. But here's the PwC audit, https://58a44b37-ba55-451b-989d-b8bc5339d45f.usrfiles.com/ug...

I am going to quote it,

> For five (5) of 12 sample enrollments, complete End Customer pricing information was not provided and therefore we were unable to determine whether the related discounts were passed through. We requested Exceed IT Services to obtain end customer purchase order, contract, invoicing and payment proof from the additional resellers, however after multiple requests and follow ups during the audit, these documents were not made available.

And it shows $13,693,903 in discounts as "missing" for one customer. Why do you think that the "documents were not made available"?

And why do you think that MS looked the other way?

I am unsure why you're going to bat for MS here. But it's not just "passion" and "leaps", there's millions of missing dollars at play and MS isn't the least bit concerned. Why do you think that is? Does MS not care that money is magically disappearing between it and Government customers?

Are they that irresponsible?

There are two explanations here, corruption or stupidity. They're either too stupid to read the reports that the auditors wrote about the missing money, or they're corrupt and that missing money is buying them something.

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

#347

Post by bluGill » Sat, Mar 26, 2022, 12:28 AM UTC

markdown wrote: post #337

bluGill wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is speech. There is no way around it. Even in the most unfree society in the world you can go in your shower and whisper anything you want. Nobody will know you said anything though so it won't do anything. To make a difference in a society as large as the US you need a lot of money to pay for things. You can print and mail flyers (money for paper, printing, and postage), you can take out ads on prime time TV..…

If limiting money is limiting speech, why is Microsoft in trouble here, and why can't I bribe a cop to let me off the hook for speeding? You know damn well that limiting speech is normal and accepted everywhere (eg. hate speech or crying "Fire!" in a theatre). But somehow, the rich have convinced Americans that their speech can't be limited. That their bribery ought to be legal.

I place strict scrutiny on limits to speech. I don't limit hate speech even though I disagree with it. Even fire is only limited to ways that cause a stampede

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

#348

Post by AitchEmArsey » Sat, Mar 26, 2022, 12:48 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #305

burntoutfire wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sharehold…

> People know that what they hear in the training videos and how they must really act are two different things It also shifts culpability to the individuals; aka CYA for the org. Corporate counsel will say "We have training for this every year; they knew they were not supposed to do that,and we weren't aware they were doing that, so it's not our fault"

> It also shifts culpability to the individuals

Very important to highlight this; since joining a different big tech company I have quickly realized how much the internal processes (everything from expenses to security posture) are structured to put the maximum responsibility on the person furthest down the totem pole.

In small European companies I've worked for this would be considered a big red flag and a sign of broken company culture, but for US companies it is seemingly the norm.

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

#349

Post by AitchEmArsey » Sat, Mar 26, 2022, 12:51 AM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #280

giantg2 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now this is true hacker spirit

I worked somewhere that had a fire safety online test each year. One staff member would be nominated to do all the tests and would sit down with everyone’s logins and spent the whole day sitting the test again and again. The other staff provided food and drink.

In a cruel twist of irony, that guy then went insane from boredom and became an arsonist.

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

#350

Post by hitekker » Sat, Mar 26, 2022, 12:53 AM UTC

madrox wrote: post #345

areoform wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "resellers" making money, it's apparent that MS' employees and salespeople are using fake contracts and "discounts" to funnel money to decision makers. What MS got out of it at the end of the day — a contract or perhaps some personal earmark for a salesperson — doesn't matter. Their bribes distorted the market, entrenched corruption, and made the lives of people living in these countries worse. It should be…

I get that's the insinuation, but there's a leap the reader is expected to make between "this middleman made a lot of money" and "bribes were clearly happening" without further investigation. If a car salesman convinces me to pay more for a car than someone else pays that doesn't mean someone was bribed; the rest is a matter of degree. I get that bribery happens, and I get that the SEC stepped on Microsoft employees…

I think the other commenters have raised valid points that you seem to be willfully disregarding. It’s actually similar to when you've denied Amazon has a “hire to fire” policy, or a toxic PIP culture.

I guess engineering managers like us are trained to turn a blind eye to bad ethics. We spend most of our work time slavishly rationalizing the power structure so we build an instinct for bending the knee outside of work.