[kelnos]

I don't wholly disagree with you, but I think it's more nuanced than that.

A dollar returned to investors and re-invested in a new technology that ends up saving everyone two dollars seems like a pretty effective use of that dollar, much more than putting that dollar in an employee's pocket who intentionally didn't do the most efficient thing.

Now, I'm not sure of the odds of that outcome. Maybe most of the time that dollar ends up getting wasted on funding Theranos or buying Twitter.

Regardless, I wouldn't fault an employee for doing something that's maximizes their own interest over the company's. Just means the company is bad at setting incentives properly. Not saying it's easy to do that, but none of us should value a company's welfare over our own. Sometimes the company's welfare aligns with ours, but not always.