No company becomes a billionaire company without bribing someone out there.
Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
351–360 of 409 posts
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#352Former Microsoftie here. After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.
It's easier to break the rules of you create the rules
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Again -- it's a test of obedience (and a CYA ritual for the company's owners). It's not supposed to impart useful information, otherwise make sense.
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think govs are different from your average company. Having a Linux based business is hard, for a few reasons: - Destkop Linux sucks - You need experienced sysadmins. There is no Linux equivalent to AD / Azure AD in terms of simplicity, as far as I know. Also true for other stuff like app management. - User resistance, as few people use Linux as their daily OSes
Desktop Linux does not suck. It has not sucked since about 1993 If you compare Linux 1993 to Mac SO 2022 it still stacks up, almost. Comparing Linux 1993 to MS Dos of the time is unfair. It took MS till about 2000 to be able to compete with Linux on quality MS Windows was successful for other reasons than the operating system.
I'm a professional sysadmin and I really can't say many good things about most Linux distros except they're open source.
Security, configuration, usability, documentation, driver support... it's all terrible.
BSDs are generally a bit better as they will at least have some level of consistency and decent docs.
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those annual trainings are there to show compliance. And also obeisance -- on the part of the person required to sit through these trainings (and pretend that they had some connection to reality).
meh. I'd be happy to sit in a chair and watch nonsensical videos for $100/hr any time you like.
It's not about the videos. The main point it enforces is that you're supposed to hold hour tongue as your company engages in a kinds of intrinsically abusive and unethical practices (as long as you, personally, are not breaking the law). Still sound like $100/hr of fun?
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#356Earlier 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…
The problem with your argument, which has been pointed out to you already, is that these allegations are based on nothing more than circumstances that look abnormal. Overselling or underusing seats is not proof that bribery took place. The shear $ amount of unused software looks particularly bad until you realize those are all the licenses that were purchased for all of the schools, and all school government related work for a country with millions of people. What's more, those licenses could have been purchased as part of an initiative that ran out of funding before it could be completed. Poor government planning is so ordinary as to be boring.
This so called whistle blower is pointing to virtually public information and saying, "but I think it's obvious!" The problem is that it only looks obvious to someone who hasn't thought about what else could be going on. Maybe it's impossible for so many suspicious events, but it's at least equally possible that if bribes are going on, Microsoft has no knowledge of it.
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scalia has some good points, however some notes A gridlocked political system is not guaranteed to create "good legislation" as Scalia puts it, take US as a prime example of that, almost every legislation is packed with pork and other things unrelated to the legalisation itself. To Scalia defence he might have meant "not awful legislation", like avoid harming a minority, because of the bicameral legislature. But good…
Let's remember that Scalia was a judge, not a political theorist or a legislative expert. Scalia's expertise would be the operation of the judiciary, courtrooms, etc.
Ok, wolverine876.
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#358Fridays are the days most interesting news lands because it’s easiest to sweep it under the rug with the weekend. I wish news organizations where more courageous and held on to this stuff to Monday/Tuesday.
Wouldn't people be more likely to see something in the news on a day when they're not busy with work?
General usage patterns across the internet usually show a decline in use on weekends.
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 en…
This is going to be my last word on the topic, because as you say my original comment is being painted into going to bat for MS, which hasn't been my intention. I've read the Verge article, the whistleblower's original words, and looked at the PWC slides. I understand the numbers involved. You ask me why I think MS looked the other way. I don't know. This article is already speculating enough, and my comment was to call that out. I've already put more effort into clarifying myself than my investment into the issue should really dictate.
As you say, this is down to corruption or stupidity, and as Hanlon's razor goes, "never blame on malice what can be explained by stupidity." I look forward to the SEC investigating the whistleblower's accusations. Whether there's bribery or not, it's worth looking into. I don't think there's enough to convict anyone on based on what's offered here. I hope to be reading more detail on what exactly has been happening here at some point. However, I do see a world where this was stupidity. It happens quite often.
Re: Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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,…
I'm in this camp here. The article does a poor job framing the actual involvement Microsoft had and the whistleblower's writeup doesn't do a good job either. They did provide instances in the original whistleblowing that bad things did happen.. but they also showed that a lot of them actually got some sort of punishment/reaction instead of just pretending situation normal. A buyer, a reseller, and a seller working together to find a price that works by lowering the cost of goods is not a bribe since you know nobody is getting paid. They seemed to be heavily extrapolating that the buyer, reseller, and the Microsoft rep are splitting the proceeds of the cost mismatch regularly outside of normal revenues for the reseller and Microsoft. There needed to be a lot more sensible storytelling from the whistleblower pointing a finger and blowing the whistle at specific people who were doing the accused tactic.
There's a lot more extrapolation of facts into a narrative from the original whistleblower post. Trying to say that licenses that were bought that never were used was bribery is just confusing. Even I have licenses for things kicking around that I never installed but intended to someday. Whole projects can get planned, licenses purchased, and then for one reason or another scrapped but the licenses (or other material from vendors) are still 'bought.' For the bribery to mean anything (or like that other commenter who tried to whip out FCPA randomly) someone has to get enriched by the experience other than the reseller selling something and paying Microsoft its share. The whistleblower post didn't do that well.
There is just not a lot of good information that was provided by the whistleblower to actually connect all of this money that he estimates at $200 million to any sort of reality. Do I think he has enough beef for a employment law retaliation case (if he was in jurisdiction US law)? Probably. Did some people commit bribes and Microsoft was fined/Microsoft fired people? Probably. Do some resellers who are external to Microsoft end up violating the FCPA or 'normal US business ethics' in some regions? Definitely. But they aren't in the US, so the right venue for whistleblowing the activity is in whatever-country-in-question under their laws. Just based on the article and whistleblower post it sounds like there is just an assumption that micro problems in his local leadership were macro problems. I am not convinced.