[Balgair]

There is also an issue with the 'evaporative' effect. If no one who works there is seen as 'ethical', then you'd expect the people that do work there to be unethical/dubious. So, trying to get a promotion is then more cut-throat, the lunch crew has a few more 'jerks', the HR is a bit more biting, etc. Your hackels get raised and you are more suspicious of the motivations (however begnin) of others. Better to just not get involved.

[taurath]

Sheryl hired the swiftboat campaigners to stop Congress. Finding out about that made me assume that over time most of their employees would trend in the opposite direction of optimistic.

[Despegar]

I wonder if the exec team realizes that the ad-tech industry had their Great Financial Crisis. Nobody is in love with them anymore. They'll get as much reception from politicians as Wall Street did when Congress passed Dodd-Frank. Banks don't earn much more than their cost of capital anymore.

[tomrod]

> Banks don't earn much more than their cost of capital anymore.

This doesn't sound right. Can you add some citation or detail?

[Despegar]

Goldman Sachs's return on equity used to average 20-30% before the crisis. Now a decade after the crisis they're glad to be doing more than 10%.

https://i.imgur.com/gtE05WX.png

[elliekelly]

I’m on mobile so I can’t read the numbers on the excel screenshot you provided but the historic high return on average equity for banks[1] (not including brokerage) was 16.29% in 1999. At last measure it was 11.85%. Dodd-Frank was merely a speed bump. The vast majority of banks have long since recovered from the crisis.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USROE

[Despegar]

That's not a good chart for banks. Their cost of capital is 8-10%, doing 11 or 12% is pretty shitty compared to the pre-crisis era.

And the smaller community banks have less onerous regulations than the big ones. Banks have to be much more capitalized and have less leverage because of Dodd-Frank. That's why the return on equity is mediocre.

[natal59]

Whats the app you used to get so much history

[Despegar]

FactSet

[dmoy]

It isn't right. The majority of banks are profitable, the industry is somewhere around $200B/year of profit (I think that's just retail banking, not including brokerages and stuff).

This is historically high.

[mathattack]

Wow! Source?

[taurath]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-...

The person who runs Definers Public Affairs, Matt Rhoades was the opposition research director for Bush/Cheney 04.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definers_Public_Affairs

https://definersdc.com/team/matt-rhoades/

> In 2004, he played a critical role in President George W. Bush’s winning re-election campaign, serving as the Research Director for Bush-Cheney ’04, where he helped develop the campaign’s opposition research, message development and rapid response operations.

The oppo research director of the campaign can have no official links to the 527 group, of course. But the group exists for one reason only - to discredit political opponents.

[shearskill]

Sheryl Sandberg and Zuck are a team. They are aligned in some bizarre goal that seems to function as a juggernaut that I got into tech specifically to avoid.

[village-idiot]

There’s also the reputation impact as well. When all of the bad things at Uber eventually became public, Uber engineers started reporting difficulty in getting new jobs. Apparently hiring managers assumed, perhaps correctly, that anyone who stuck it out at a toxic place that long was possibly the source of toxicity themselves.

[JohnFen]

If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

[yertlesyurt]

Can confirm. Worked there. Deeply disenchanted with the ethics of many people especially in the product, marketing, and (as you would guess) senior leadership groups.

[Balgair]

Thanks for the input! I know you're on a throwaway account, but any stories or context for a Friday morning?