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

Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

david.newgas.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 457 posts

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#181

Post by annzabelle »

pyuser583 wrote: post #180
annzabelle wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a large US bank that has a 10% biannual attrition target at all levels across the company. Twice a year they PIP 10-15% of staff, most of whom take a substantial buyout. Institutional knowledge is constantly being lost and experienced staff are being replaced with fresh cohorts of new grads, who then get replaced themselves right as they start becoming useful. I knew multiple people there who made more i…

Does the approach apply to senior management?

There's some level where it stops, but that's after you've got 100+ reports.

I don't know that I interacted with anybody senior enough to avoid this process in the time I worked there.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#182

Post by 47282847 »

ffsm8 wrote: post #163
orochimaaru wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have y'all hit the "can genai do his job?" phase yet... Early on I used to try to explain that things don't work as advertised. There are a lot of advantages but you need a human reviewing and directing. These days I don't even bother. Call it being desensitized to the bullshit, but I'm waiting for some fancy AI agent to take out stuff in a way that no one can do anything. Past that I don't see a way for C suite to w…

> Past that I don't see a way for C suite to wake up. Didn't you mean to temporarily realign? I mean give it 2 years and another manager to show up, ready to get their bonus for the next attempt at it. That's our reality and how we've structured our markets

I honestly don’t get why anyone would give up their mental health like that and work for such places. In my reality there are plenty of honest and decent places to work at. I’m seen dark places yes but only as visitor - why would I want to be in hell for more than a day or two.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#183

Post by necovek »

etothepii wrote: post #146
rr808 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. I dont think they're baffled, they just trying to show they're attempting to keep costs under control.

Lots of shouting on one particular occasion left me with the impression that they genuinely had not anticipated this consequence of simultaneously pulling the "no contractors to be renewed" lever and the "any MD can sign contracts up to $1m with approved suppliers" lever. The people involved weren’t stupid. They were trying to achieve one outcome and got a different one because the rest of the organisation adapted to…

How do you call when someone repeatedly does the same thing expecting a different outcome each time?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#184

Post by cwillu »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #141
jfengel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; people insist on being paid more to have an insecure job. The uncertainty never goes away. You can pay someone else to suffer it, but it will always cost more than dealing with it yourself. And that can be ok. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're getting a bargain.

I've seen this happen because of accounting/corporate finance policy. Payroll is an ongoing commitment. Consultancy is a temporary service. Moving people from payroll to consultancy means they can reduce overhead in financial projections. Even though consultancy costs more, and employs the same people, it makes sense to do if it means you can convince shareholders and analysts that Opex will shrink in the future, and…

> if it means you can convince shareholders and analysts that Opex will shrink in the future

Isn't that just fraud?

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#185

Post by NavinF »

Mistletoe wrote: post #151
scrubs wrote: post #32

I was briefly employed by a robotics company in the US ... robotics is too nice: glorified if/then/else is better. The owner was the son of an old school magnate out of PA. Among other things his line has always stuck with me: "A whale that surfaces is soon harpooned." The company never made money. I think the whole thing was run as a loss on purpose for tax purposes. I became tired of the head manager/engineer combo…

I can't wait for these AI companies to IPO and be harpooned.

Why wait for IPO? Prediction markets already let non-US persons bet on startup stock prices while the startup is still private. Eg a few weeks ago you could have used a non-US VPN, shorted spacex, and lost all your money :)

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#186

Post by necovek »

tzs wrote: post #80
post-it wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that you know, do you feel culpable?

He just knows that someone on HN who is not using their real name has described witnessing government fraud at some unspecified point in the past and reporting it to the head of the project. He doesn't have any information about where it occurred other than probably the United States. He's not really in a position to act usefully on this information, so had no reason to feel any culpability for not acting. It is only…

He can report the incident to digital crimes unit who can subpoena HN/YC for identity of the poster, and then they can take it from there.

There is always something you can do — whether you are going to bother is an altogether a different matter.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#187

Post by murphyslaw »

dfedbeef wrote: post #81
comrade1234 wrote: post #4

I was on a government project where I found out I was being fraudulently billed on my hours. It was towards the end of the year and my manager was trying to use up the budget of the client. Although this is normal in the private sector I told him from the beginning that you can't do this on a government project. The project was $1M+ which was enough for prison time. He had gone into our billing software and edited my…

Someone hasn't heard of qui tam

Thank you for this tidbit of information!

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#188

Post by ChuckMcM »

naishoya wrote: post #162
ChuckMcM wrote: post #155

As someone who 'grew up' my career in Silicon Valley my first exposure to this sort of shenanigans was during the dot com bubble, where general partners at newish VC firms were fleecing limited partners (GP's got a salary to 'manage' the fund, LP's were the source of money for the funds.) They would tell the LPs well only one in ten is a real banger, looks like the fund you invested in wasn't a winner. It reminded me…

I like the analogy, but lets stretch it to the situation where workers can see that there is fraud and still do nothing. The passengers on the bus are not blameless if they know or have reason to know that the bus driver was drinking before or while they went down a road with pedestrian crossings. They are not blameless if they take no action, but to sit in the seats and wait to see if anyone gets hit or they all get…

Its a reasonable extension. At some point if you discover that you are aiding or abetting the harm of others you have to ask yourself what kind of person you are. That said, I get that "but I need a job!" is a powerful thing and it takes someone with a strong sense of personal integrity to leave. A good friend of mine quit their game developer gig because the product manager and management were more interested in addictive behaviors and reselling eyeballs than they were in game development. But they also knew that was probably the last paying gig they were going to have in the 'games' business because it had gone from people making great games, to things on a phone/browser pulling you down.

So yeah, it is going to test you and you might come up short. I don't judge people who stay when they know, but I do grieve for the damage they do to their souls when they see themselves as someone they no longer recognize.

Re: Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

#190

Post by pegasus »

47282847 wrote: post #182
ffsm8 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Past that I don't see a way for C suite to wake up. Didn't you mean to temporarily realign? I mean give it 2 years and another manager to show up, ready to get their bonus for the next attempt at it. That's our reality and how we've structured our markets

I honestly don’t get why anyone would give up their mental health like that and work for such places. In my reality there are plenty of honest and decent places to work at. I’m seen dark places yes but only as visitor - why would I want to be in hell for more than a day or two.

> I honestly don’t get why anyone would give up their mental health like that and work for such places.

Mostly for money, of course. And all the attendant improvements that can bring to one's life. Some people need it more than others, e.g. a H1B worker who is attempting to pull a whole family out of poverty.

I bet many go in thinking they will do it temporarily, until they pay their college debt, to give one example. But money is very addictive.

Post reply on HN