Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hn_throwaway_99 1252 days ago
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?

3 comments

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.
> Also, coming to their defense from a throw-away is a curious choice.

Yes, it's all a mass conspiracy!! https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hn_throwaway_99

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.