[onlyrealcuzzo]

You can't do it with a public company because you have a fiduciary obligation.

You can't raise money from Shareholder A with the promise to never return the money.

That's a donation. Not gonna be able to raise money like you can from VCs and IPOs.

[Apocryphon]

How many tech companies have never turned a profit? Uber didn’t until 2021. Investors sure didn’t care about fiduciary obligations built on profit when interest rates were low.

[skinnymuch]

Have people gotten in trouble for breaking the fiduciary obligation by being nicer to workers? Has any one been in a serious chance for getting in trouble for being nicer to workers? I have always assumed this stuff is basically made up. It might be written somewhere, but no one is enforcing it. It appears to be greed and keeping the status quo.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

> Have people gotten in trouble for breaking the fiduciary obligation by being nicer to workers? Has any one been in a serious chance for getting in trouble for being nicer to workers?

Being nice to workers, and never returning money to shareholders because you're overpaying your workers are two entirely different things.

FAANG has treated their workers quite well for a 10+ years, and shareholders have not cared, because profits and growth have been enormous.

They could've treated their workers much better and paid them 2-3x as much money, though. But they didn't. Because they would've gotten sued by shareholders.

[Apocryphon]

> They could've treated their workers much better and paid them 2-3x as much money, though. But they didn't. Because they would've gotten sued by shareholders.

Probably not. Google makes $1.6 million in revenue per employee, and $400k in profit per employee. Wages in tech for these money printing companies are more set by arbitrary norms than any real financial basis.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/217489/revenue-per-emplo...

https://csimarket.com/stocks/GOOG-Income-per-Employee.html

[skinnymuch]

The wages workers get aren’t because of lawsuit threats. I don’t follow that logic?

Compared to unions and socialist ideals, FAANG has treated workers okay because of the arbitrarily high income compared to when the working class gets even more exploited in other industries. Being better than bad situations doesn’t mean a good situation.

Some big tech companies were colluding to keep wages stagnant by not hiring workers at other companies. Wages were lower until the collision was uncovered and companies like Facebook came around and started paying more. Colluding against workers is not treating them well.

Pay and some stock options aren’t the only ways to treat workers better. Capitalism doesn’t have to control every part of why we are nice to other people.