I'm all for disclosure and do so myself when commenting on things related to my company.
But...I'm curious what level of disclosure you feel is required beyond saying you work at the company? Personally I don't want to read a bunch of legalese on HN posts. There are enough critical minds here that chicanery gets ferreted out pretty quickly. In this case, there are also multiple posts from others saying that Stripe's practice is if not ubiquitous at least common in Ireland, hence unsurprising to those who work there.
You might have seen me on HN threads before. I've been at Stripe for ~four years and I'm happy to disclose that I work here.
If you're curious as to what I work on, I work on product updates via Stripe's owned channels, user issues, and other community-related efforts. I'm always contactable here (hnusername@stripe.com) or on Twitter (linked in my bio).
I'm also very happy to correct the record when misleading articles (or articles without necessary context) are published by the media.
Speaking plainly and truthfully about issues like this is critical to earn trust so "spinning" news would be contrary to everything I work so hard on.
This sub thread isn't about disclosing _whether_ you work there, rather, your job there. You answered the parent's "a" but ignored the "b".
Your LinkedIn, in stark contrast to your profile and your comment, says Communications Manager and "I lead community communications in EMEA. You can call it marketing".
My comment above reflects exactly what I work on at Stripe.
My role has a general title of Communications Manager (we have a ~flat structure and our roles aren't particularly descriptive). This role sits within the Comms team at Stripe.
The majority of my time is spent telling the stories of businesses that build on Stripe (and helping users). In other companies, this is often called marketing or just "comms".
Why? The comment says they work at Stripe and live in Ireland, and they're just relaying factual information.
This is why I'm so wary of "tech press" news like this. Having a vesting schedule for employer contributions is pretty standard for a lot of countries, not just Ireland. So this has been going on for literally decades, all across the world, but it's only when a tech company does it that it is framed as "clawing back pension contributions".
I'm not saying this doesn't suck for employees or shouldn't be legally changed, but why are people OK with this practice for literally decades until a tech unicorn does it?
Disclosures aren't about whether or not the statement is meant to be actually factual, the whole story, and moral it's about giving people the information they need to weigh when they consider if that's the case. It's reasonable to say a PR employee's response has a high likelihood of being more biased than a generic Stripe employee's response, or at least biased in a different direction. Again that doesn't mean the response is actually "wrong" or just a partial picture or what have you but it does mean many people appreciate considering the possibility of bias when trying to come to a full conclusion.
Because they took the time to disclose the parts of their situation that supported the point they wanted to make (work at stripe, live in Ireland), but disregarded the parts they knew would discredit them a bit (PR for the company). Also, coming to their defense from a throw-away is a curious choice.
Fair enough, I should have looked before I added the snark - upvoted cause fun response. But the rest of my comment stands, I do think they selectively disclosed and working in PR would know they were doing so.
I think expectation is that tech companies will be nicer. Pretty sure this comes from the belief that tech workers are unusually talented or rare, and so the worker-company relationship is more like a doctor or classical engineer, less like a factory worker or technician (Not that doctors and other professionals are treated with great respect anymore — it is just a matter of perceptions, people haven’t updated their viewpoints for the current brutally mercenary environment). So, these stories tend to float to the top.
It should be a story with real consequences for the company if anybody’s pension is yanked.
But...I'm curious what level of disclosure you feel is required beyond saying you work at the company? Personally I don't want to read a bunch of legalese on HN posts. There are enough critical minds here that chicanery gets ferreted out pretty quickly. In this case, there are also multiple posts from others saying that Stripe's practice is if not ubiquitous at least common in Ireland, hence unsurprising to those who work there.
edit: typo