[kerkeslager]

> Exactly, the incentives will explain the behaviour, they always do.

Who cares? "I was following incentives" is no different from "I was following orders." It doesn't become suddenly okay to do harm just because there's an incentive to do harm.

Hacker News and startup culture in general are toxic because of people blaming market conditions instead of taking responsibility for their own actions.

If it's really about incentives, would you support docking executive pay proportional to layoffs, to incentivize against future over-hiring? Or do incentives only apply when they excuse harming workers?

[pmarreck]

I think that's an excellent incentive proposal, that even the boardmembers would probably agree with (as overhiring is not only costly in feelings, but in cash)

[kerkeslager]

Okay, but that's because you're well-intentioned and believe that changing incentives will actually fix the problem.

The predictable response from the top whenever cutting executive pay is proposed as an incentive, however, would actually be that they need to maintain competitive executive pay to retain talent.

The reality is that board members and executives are drawn from the same pool of oligarchs, and the "incentives solve everything" narrative is just a marketing ploy for the "close a symbolic loophole and move on to the next loophole" strategy. People who do harm just because there's an incentive to do harm can't be trusted not to do harm, because there's always another way to gain benefit by doing harm.