[kibwen]

We should be holding the president of a multi-billion dollar corporation to a higher standard than a random HN commenter. If Dan Clancy wants to lie to our faces with this egregiously milquetoast corpo-speak, he does not deserve serious or good faith analysis of his words. He's bullshitting us, plain and simple, and I see no reason to smile, lick my lips, and ask politely for seconds.

[geodel]

Huh. If multi-billion dollar corporation executive is not going to do a corpo-speak, I don't really know who is supposed to be doing that.

[marcosdumay]

Hum... This one is easy to answer. Nobody is supposed to be doing that.

The entire thing is a non-statement (I dunno about the GP's accusation of lying; you can't lie if you don't say anything), so it should be one small paragraph. Or, two, if you want to say you are sorry for both employees and customers.

Nobody gains anything by the chatGPT-like decompresion of the message.

[vineyardmike]

Next thing you'll tell me that politicians no longer want to be politically correct!

[wombatpm]

I propose a weekly lottery. Each week we select 1 billionaire and one person making less than 50k. The peasant gets a gun, 1 bullet, and a free shot from 30ft. Lottery continues until the social contract is restored.

There was a time when corporations had principles ahead of maximizing stock holder value. Maybe we should re-examine that.

[hossbeast]

Which principles would you like the companies that you are invested in to maximize ahead of stockholder value?

[vineyardmike]

While I think the original comment on a CEO, a peasant, and a gun to be crass, I want to note that society wasn't always valuing "shareholder value" so much.

First, I want all companies, regardless of who invests in them, to hold some level of social responsibility to the society around them. Sometimes layoffs are necessary, and companies can't maintain excess costs forever, but there's some value to society to maintain employment.

Second, investments that return a profit to their investors is great, and as an investor, it's something I would want. That said, it's unreasonable to expect exponential growth forever, AND it compromises their ability to focus on other principles. How much return on investment is enough before a company can focus on being a force of good? 10%, 100% 1000%, 1M%?

Third, as an investor, I question if paying execs so much more than rank-and-file employees is good. So thats another example principle. I assume a well paid exec is incentivized to increase short term value, while as an investor I value long-term growth. Having a healthy employee base full of bright talented workers (incentivized by top-tier salary) seems a better solution.

[WeylandYutani]

This is fucking twitch.tv not something society should actually value. I'd be angry if doctors or teachers get fired.

[peyton]

The last guy fucked up and overhired. Now this guy is fixing it. What do you want him to say?

[sigstoat]

> What do you want him to say?

there's nothing that makes the HN comment section happy about these corporate communications. if some CEO literally fell on his sword in personal apology to these folks, they'd gripe about the blood stain.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

At least one scenario doesn’t seem to support your analysis.

When the Groupon CEO resigned, he basically did something like that and it was actually pretty well received by this community: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24453681