[modernpink]

It is somewhat tiring but Gergely Orosz continuously makes the naive mistake of citing the company values as a critique of their behaviour. Taking a lesson from the "realist" perspective in international relations, companies are acting rationally. They are protecting their own interests. Both in espousing values they may not actually hold, and in dispatching with unwanted workers swiftly. In a high interest rate regime and with downturn in the market it is entirely rational for tech companies to shed workers with this sort of clinical brutality. That's why we've seen so many do it. On the other side of the balance under low interest rates and a booming market, we also see tech workers playing off companies against each other to improve their compensation or even slacking off work. This is also rational.

This kind of moralizing has become the bread and butter of his Twitter brand and it really is tiresome.

[Macha]

This argument boils down to: Companies can't be criticised for using values for marketing with no intent to abide by them because it makes market sense to be ruthless

The problems with this idea:

1. It misses that morals can be criticised not just legality, and as economically advantageous as it is, it is still unethical to decieve

2. Even in a totally cold economic sense, the criticism you get if you go back on them is itself a risk that these companies should have considered when they produced these marketing values. This blowback should be an economic disincentive against acting that way in the future if it decreases trust in the company. This may materialise in economic effects as less free overtime and higher wage demands from prospective employees who adopt a similar ruthless attitude.

[pxc]

No. The argument is more like:

> Companies aren't the kinds of things that can meaningfully have values, and 'criticism' along the lines of the OP takes for granted that they can and do, in a way that makes outcomes like this Hashicorp layoff meaningfully surprising. This gets in the way of the correct critique— and thereby in setting the correct expectations.

The moralistic tone makes the event described seem somehow exceptional, when the crucial lesson is that it is not at all. It also directs people towards a useless simulation of politics (yelling at people, or in this case companies, to scold them) in place of the real thing (fighting institutions by disrupting their basic functioning, exercising power to change incentive structures, etc.). The stress on the economics is about directing people to the information of strategic significance, not narrowing the bounds of acceptable critique per se.

[CipherThrowaway]

This take is infinitely more naive. Everyone knows that companies act in economic self-interest. That's not the point of contention or where the discussion is situated at all. Orosz is knowingly evoking social and moral frameworks, rather than self-oriented economic ones, for evaluating these actions.

It might aid your understanding to consider that while companies behave out of economic self-interest, socially conscious human beings have their own vested interest in highlighting behavior that falls short of social standards. Companies like HashiCorp generate brand capital by co-opting the language of human values and social cooperation. It is not unexpected that people would try to hold them accountable to their own positioning on values.

[xwowsersx]

I agree with your retort. It's totally fair to call out a company when they contradict their own core principles. I just wanted to add (and this doesn't contradict your point), none of us should be surprised when a company's core values are performative. I think it's naive to see any of this as surprising.

[pjc50]

> naive mistake of citing the company values as a critique of their behaviour

> companies are acting rationally. They are protecting their own interests. Both in espousing values they may not actually hold

A value is only a value if you'll follow it against your own "rational interests". Claiming you hold a value and then ditching it as soon as it's convenient is a form of fraud. Not one necessarily with monetary damages, but fraud nonetheless.

Western society has got quite a lot out of being generally high-trust and it is not good whenever anyone corrodes it by making cynical promises which they do not intend to keep, and it is right to shame them for this.

[hliyan]

> society has got quite a lot out of being generally high-trust

I agree. The vast majority of times you pass someone on the street and don't expect that person to turn around and stab you in the back and take your wallet, is not because of the existence of laws, but because of the existence of trust. Laws (particularly criminal code) must exist for the minority. This is one of the reasons why I hate "trust-less" systems -- societies cannot function that way. It's as if a program was not trusted to access even the memory that was allocated to it, and the OS had to check permissions and run validations on every single CPU instruction issued by the program. Trust saves resources.

[sokoloff]

Most useful values frameworks have inherent tension in them.

I don't work at Amazon, but their LPs are well-published, so I'll use them as an example. "Bias for Action" is in tension with "Dive Deep" and "Insist on the Highest Standards". If Amazon takes an action that is quick but didn't dive as deep as literally possible or achieve the highest possible standard, have they violated two of their LPs, or did they just use judgment and prioritize bias for action over those other two?

[Jochim]

They fairly explicitly call out that "Bias for Action" applies to low stakes, or easily reversible decisions, whereas "Dive Deep" applies to irreversible, high stakes decisions[0].

"Insisting on the Highest Standards" doesn't conflict with "Bias for Action" either. You can take a quick action, realise it's not up to a high standard and insist that it's improved; as opposed to saying "good enough, we're done".

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/executive-insights/content/leading-an...

[ShroudedNight]

> Most useful values frameworks have inherent tension in them.

That's ostensibly why Cantrill was going on [fairly entertaining] tirades about the difference between principles and values. By providing a cultural foundation of muddled and inarticulate precepts, and by ambiguating values and principles, leadership was being derelict in its duty to own the responsibility for discernment in scenarios where principles were in conflict with each other.

[bcantrill]

Yes, and at Oxide we have taken this a step further, being explicit about the fact that values are in tension[0] -- and then even asking candidates to describe a time when our values came into tension for them and how they dealt with it.[1] Not to imply that any of this is pat or easy, but I think it's been helpful to explicit about that tension -- and it has also (broadly) prevented us from weaponizing values (another common failure mode).

[0] https://oxide.computer/principles

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xtofg-fMQfZoq8Y3oSAKjEgD...

[steveBK123]

I think the argument is - So then don't promote BS values during boom times that are just meaningly words you have no intention of following when times get mildly non-boomy.

[TheCondor]

How are the values BS? Is there some way to encode the values as to prevent the layoff magically? Is it more kind and transparent to tell everyone at once? Or not? I think that is really subjective and situational. For some, maybe many, there is no ‘kind’ way to layoff or be laid off. I don’t know that the values become BS though, there is a lot more going on there than layoffs and they can apply those values to those things.

[steveBK123]

Of course they are BS, but it's not Hashi's fault in particular.. its the whole thought process industry wide of hiring these consultants to write glossy garbage.

Companies exist to make a profit for their owners. We work for them exchanging our output/time for money. We aren't family or friends. Companies aren't our church, social club, or local pub.

I've worked at companies that had simple 3 word values list of - Integrity, Discipline, Excellence.

In other words - work hard, get good results, don't lie/cheat/steal. That seems pretty good set of rules to live by.

I take offense at companies that have these lists of core values as if you are in the Miss Universe pageant or applying to an honors society. It's just not what they really want in practice out of you, nor is it how they will really treat you when the chips are down.

[0xCAP]

This. 200%.

[dboreham]

Well: don't be humans then.

[mrguyorama]

No, it's "don't be shitty humans"

[braza]

In this case, you're shooting the messenger. You can think that citing company values can be moralistic, but at the end of the day it's all about showing the people to not drink the Kool-aid and how ruthless the market is.

It's easy to say that the ZIRP time was the main drive of this decade for the crazy market where we are, but let's not forget that most of those companies lured people and part of the market based on some misleading "employer branding" optics like transparency, being a great employer, autonomy, inflated salaries, distorted incentives and so on.

They are co-responsible for these shaky times as well also.

[marcinzm]

So companies can lie about the values they hold when it benefits when but we cannot call them out for lying because reasons?

Your freedom to do something does not stop my freedom of calling you an a-hole for doing so.

[rsynnott]

Presumably, this company will want to hire again at some point in the future. At that point, people will look back to now, and some will go “perhaps not” RE the poor handling of layoffs. If nothing else, this stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and one might be forgiven for assuming that if they can’t do layoffs properly, they are likely poorly run in other ways.

Personally if I was looking for a job I’d be sceptical of potential employers who handled layoffs notably poorly; it’s just not a great sign of their general competence. There’s nothing rational about advertising that you’re bad at this stuff.

[amon22]

Companies are run by people and their goal is to provide services to people. In general, the goal of the economy should be to serve the people, not the companies! If a company does fucked up immoral things, it will hurt their bottom line eventually, especially if they are called out. They would not try to look good if this was not the case. Some people will just refuse to use their services because they are aware the suffering some of these companies are causing. There is nothing naive about this, in fact I find the rationalization of the fucked up self-serving logic of these companies absurd and insulting.

[myshpa]

Just to nitpick ...

> their goal is to provide services to people

Their goal is to make as much money as possible. "To provide services" is just a way to get there.

> fucked up immoral things, it will hurt their bottom line eventually, especially if they are called out

There are literally thousands of examples where this is not true, and where the "hurt" comes long after the fact, if ever (DDT, PFAS, plastic, oil extraction, deforestation, animal agriculture, ...).

> try to look good if this was not the case

Hence the popular term "wartime CEO" ... painting the situation with nice words to extend the extraction period.

[jdbernard]

> Their goal is to make as much money as possible

This isn't a nitpick. It's the point under contention. Companies setting core values like Hashicorp has are ostensibly saying "we're not just all about profit, we care about how we obtain that profit." Positioning companies as having a singular goal of "making as much money as possible" is not a universal absolute. It's a choice we make. Let's choose differently.

For example, I'm not in business just to make money but because I think that what my company does is important, valuable to our customers, and good for the world. I also want to get paid and feed my family, but I have options and will walk if I feel like leadership at my company no longer cares about the values they established. I stay because I trust my leadership.

[myshpa]

Many companies start with something like "don't be evil", and it (almost always) ends predictably.

Money ruin everything, sooner or later.

> Let's choose differently.

Let's. Patiently waiting for it to happen somewhere.

> I stay because I trust my leadership.

You know what? You better don't listen to me. I'm too cynical for this.

[syndacks]

Yea he seems to have really double downed on the more gossipy side of tech. I don’t understand the play (outside of sensationalism), and I’m starting to lose faith in his brand.

[madeofpalk]

To me this is the point - making it obvious and explicit that they're all just bullshit.

[shmatt]

I don't say this pretty much about any person, but I can't stand Gergely Orosz. He was a line manager at Uber EU, and makes notes of his time there like he was SVP in Silicon Valley

He speaks of broad terms of "how things worked", like - there are thousands of EMs and Directors right here on HN with triple his experience who can only speak to their team/group/division, would never act like they know what happens on other engineering teams outside their org.

Other than his "expertise" his newsletter is pretty much the same as browsing Blind. Getting DMs from people with their personal opinions about their employer (im sure he doesnt even verify that) and reposts them

[hintymad]

> It is somewhat tiring but Gergely Orosz continuously makes the naive mistake of citing the company values as a critique of their behaviour.

Orosz being Naive or not, there is a contrast to what Reid Hoffman and Netflix have been advocating. Hoffman advocated that a company and its employees form an alliance. When their values deviate, they depart. Netflix advocated something similar using the professional sports team as an analogy. Companies are not families. Companies are not there to "take care of" people. At least to me, the Hoffman and Netflix are more practical and more honest.

[metalspot]

> companies are acting rationally

corporate "values*" always come with the small print of "*as long as it maximizes profit."

it is silly to think that any for-profit corporation is ever going to do something that is directly contrary to its financial interests.

you can (and i do) definitely argue that having strong values does contribute to long term profitability, but the purpose of the "values" is to maximize profit.

when a conflict arises between the values and profitability, profitability always wins.

[meindnoch]

Well, he's a grifter.