Why I Did Not Go To Jail • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Did Not Go To Jail

#191

Post by metaphorm » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 9:20 PM UTC

skj wrote: post #183

metaphorm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my comment was a response to the question "why do some companies have the GC report to the CFO?". it was not about the company in the originally linked article, which obviously does not use this structure (and for good reason). regarding that CFO from the linked article though, the federal prosecutor seemed to believe she was a criminal, and proved it enough that a jury agreed also and she eventually served jail time…

I think this is a misuse of the word 'sociopath'. There are lots of things that are not strictly legal that we do all the time. Some of them result in in jail sentences (eg. possession of marijuana can hardly be called sociopathic).

I was not using sociopath as a synonym with "broke a law, any law". I was sociopath to mean "engaged in behavior that caused some level of harm to society". A low-level sociopath does something that causes a low level of harm to society. Accounting Fraud is a form of low level sociopathy, in my opinion.

Re: Why I Did Not Go To Jail

#192

Post by grandalf » Sat, Feb 08, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

ganeumann wrote: post #67

smsm42 wrote: post #51

What I take from this story is that the financial law is so complex and unapproachable one can not reliably navigate it without landing in jail, even being a seasoned professional. The author's council could have given him "yes" answer as easily as "no" answer - many other lawyers obviously did since 200 companies got "yes" answers from their councils. And he'd never known anything was wrong. Basically, one can becom…

There's a big difference between going to your general counsel and asking "Is this legal?" and going to your accountants and saying "Find me a way to make this legal enough." I think the options-backdating was an example of the latter.

For an early stage startup, options value doesn't really change much month to month, since it is typically only determined at funding events. In such a scenario, the price of option grants is purely strategic.

But for a publicly traded company, backdating may change the financials presented to investors unless the math is done and the changed numbers are explicitly presented.

Re: Why I Did Not Go To Jail

#193

Post by gumby » Sun, Feb 09, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

odonnellryan wrote: post #173

gumby wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, even in medium-sized companies I/T will often be part of the CFO's department. Fortunately I/T seems to be on it way out, though regrettably slowly.

Just curious, why's that fortunate?

I wrote, "Fortunately I/T seems to be on it way out, though regrettably slowly." Noblethrasher and odonnellryan asked what I meant.

I am referring to "I/T" as a corporate computing function within the company, a function which often hiders rather than accelerates the business.

I/T typically picks technologies which are easier for I/T. Hence there's a corporate standardization on one mail system, one OS; very strict upgrade cycles etc. This kind of made sense in an earlier era when computing wasn't really integrated into the business processes -- people would be "on email" and if the icons changed an expensive "training program" had to be rolled out because the majority of working people had a passive aggressive learned helplessness towards computers.

What happened is that people became more savvy and worked around I/T. First it was the PC: the appeal of the Apple II was that you could buy one, add a copy of Visicalc, plunk it down on your desk, and get work done without dealing with those assholes in I/T. I/T (this is before CIOs etc) fought back (just look at magazines like Datamation from the 1980s to see; I am not exaggerating) and took control of the PC infrastructure. Around 2000 departments would start to put in wifi access points and local file servers under secretaries' desks to just get work done. I/T again was seen as a barrier.

Nowadays I/T is freaking out about "BYOD" because people wouldn't put up with the crappy company-issued blackberries etc. But it is making business more efficient and humane.

You could see the nails entering the coffin for a long time, but these things take time. When I was at MIT in the 1980s I would get a laugh when I would run across a piece of literature from MIT's I/T department about the computing crucial capabilities they provided to MIT -- because they had nothing to do with the systems we depended on in the research labs which were mature and two generations beyond what I/T offered. And even now, heavily computer-intensive businesses often have disjoint departments and technologies for their customer-facing work and their internal systems (a few huge products like Oracle are rare exceptions).

Re: Why I Did Not Go To Jail

#194

Post by cgio » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 1:37 PM UTC

triplesec wrote: post #157

cgio wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once went into a project where the runtime for a complex financial calculation (as complex as it can be) was 8 to 10 hers. In 2 weeks it was 37 seconds and working perfectly. When the CFO took me for dinner, I told him that 90% of the work was the old implementation, which set the right concepts, and I merely did an optimisation. Many times, the first take is not optimal, but I always try to appreciate the input I…

I hope you charged accordingly!

My employers sure did.

Re: Why I Did Not Go To Jail

#195

Post by odonnellryan » Fri, Feb 14, 2014, 12:23 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #193

odonnellryan wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, why's that fortunate?

I wrote, "Fortunately I/T seems to be on it way out, though regrettably slowly." Noblethrasher and odonnellryan asked what I meant. I am referring to "I/T" as a corporate computing function within the company, a function which often hiders rather than accelerates the business. I/T typically picks technologies which are easier for I/T. Hence there's a corporate standardization on one mail system, one OS; very strict u…

Oh, I definitely agree. I've worked IT for a while. It definitely serves as a barrier to work (oh, you want access to THAT file?! No way! You need someone to request it for you...)

However, that's not because that's what we wanted to do. That's because someone had the bright idea to bring a paper to the CEO, and he said "We can't just have everyone accessing every damned file!!!"

Believe me, it's just as rough being the enforcer as it is being the one being enforced!

However, I think we'll need people to fix computers, update the servers, and wake up at 2AM to put a fan in the server room ;)