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

191–200 of 457 posts

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

#191

Post by consp »

cwillu wrote: post #184
marcus_holmes wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A vague promise which you pretend to beleave and can make believable to other is just business advice unfortunately.

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

#192

Post by MASNeo »

I have been in fairly senior roles at large corporates. The amount of money that is squandered without serious evaluation for something managers „want“ is mind boggling. I have often wondered whether corporate budgets are actually investor fraud in disguise.

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

#193

Post by reissbaker »

jfengel wrote: post #110
shoo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when i worked for an australian bank, one co-worker in a nearby team had been working on the the banks systems as a sysadmin for over a decade. the bank would go through cycles of "we need to reduce our headcount and outsource everything" and then 4 years later "we need to reduce spend on contractors and retain more knowledge and expertise in house". he'd survived multiple waves of it, switching back and forth betwee…

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 wonder if this explains why I hear about this more from Europeans than from the SF tech scene. California is at-will employment, so you can fire an employee as easily as a contractor. Ironically this makes companies more willing to hire and retain employees, since they're not worried about getting stuck with a bad one — and most employees aren't bad, and are better for the company than contractors.

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

#194

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

derektank wrote: post #99
dfedbeef wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone hasn't heard of qui tam

Qui tam (and the federal false claims act) are brilliant, such an elegant solution to a classic problem in government (corruption).

The False Claims Act is one of my favorite things in the world, hands down. Who would have guessed that paying whistleblowers a fraction of the proceeds for high stakes financial crime would be so effective? Well, aside from every economist and financier who ever lived, I mean.

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

#195

Post by ozim »

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

This is what I do believe will happen.

I still have new „business„ guys joining org who try to make „cloud migration”.

We are cloud as a SaaS, we are running on VPS with virtual networks. But they come in and think „to be professional” we should be in „real cloud” like Azure or AWS.

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

#196

Post by W3zzy »

shoo wrote: post #75
etothepii wrote: post #25

As a junior software engineer, I worked at a large UK bank. Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. One pattern I saw repeatedly was a contractor being let go, only to return via a large outsourcing provider. The provider must have added a substantial markup despite supplying the same engineer back to the same team,…

when i worked for an australian bank, one co-worker in a nearby team had been working on the the banks systems as a sysadmin for over a decade. the bank would go through cycles of "we need to reduce our headcount and outsource everything" and then 4 years later "we need to reduce spend on contractors and retain more knowledge and expertise in house". he'd survived multiple waves of it, switching back and forth betwee…

I want through the same processen three times already.

I work in civil service but in a very specific job that needs certain degrees by law.

I've heard they were going to outsource my job (because civil servant are expensive) and registered a company that delivers the requested services. I entered a public procurement and upped my price a little because I knew there aren't many people with the right certifications. I won the public procurement and went from a civil servant to a self employed expert with a company car and all the perks.

Near the end of my contract they thought about hiring their own expert again because... money.

I applied for the job and went through an external hiring process and got selected. Because legislation changed my job went from middle management to a senior management position with extra benefits. Had to drop the car though...

A few months ago my colleagues were doing prekilinary budget talks and considered on finding an external company to do my job and getting me another position. I had to point out the cycle they fell into and somehow they forgot about it.

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

#197

Post by dalvasorsali »

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 agree with you, but I feel like leaving is much harder in reality for most people.

Life gets in the way, you don't have the energy to apply, you're afraid of rejection, you are afraid you might end up in a worse environment, you justify it to yourself in any number of ways.

Inertia, herd mentality and self-deception are much more powerful IRL than most people online seem to think (or at least write).

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

#199

Post by xivzgrev »

This arrangement is bizarre.

The VC business model is predicated on extreme growth. The last thing you would want to do is siphon dividends out vs reinvesting into growth.

They must have preyed on newbie founders, dangling large valuations. Oh the fees? Well you will make it big and it will be a drop in the bucket!

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

#200

Post by jimnotgym »

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…

Also because of corporate policy. I know of a company where the VPs are heavily targeted on headcount reductions. Contractors are not headcount.
Post reply on HN