[billllll]

Just because the shareholders didn't vote on it, or an exec didn't explicitly say "hey steal this" does not absolve the company. Leadership doesn't get to throw up their hands and say "not my fault" when something bad happens.

It is ultimately the responsibility of the company and its people to create a system where things like this are discouraged or prohibited. Not doing so is tacit approval, especially in this case where they have a significant history of doing the same thing.

[alphazard]

It's fine that you think corporations are supposed to work that way, and I don't necessarily disagree. But they don't in practice. They don't feel the consequences of bad actions because of legal economies of scale. They also don't backpropagate consequences from the company's bottom line to the individuals responsible. If you were to rectify this so that it works exactly as you envision, you would have made incredible advances in the Principal-Agent problem as it pertains to corporate compensation.

Most corporate actions that 3rd parties consider "bad" are the result of someone inside the corporation having an asymmetric payoff from directing the corporation to do the bad thing. They get the upside from a success, but not the downside from failure.

If you want to stop a certain bad behavior, your best bet is to change individual incentives.

[da_chicken]

I think the point being made is that the executives are either responsible for the company, or they're not actually running the company at all.

Like this isn't some tragedy of the commons situation. This isn't some situation where the company is a cooperative confederation of equal partners. Either shit rolls uphill, or you don't have leadership at all. You don't get to pass the buck on criticism because you made a decision out of self interest, either.

"It's not technically illegal," is the most blasé, low-effort rule for behavior. It's why only twelve-year-olds and lawyers use it as a defense for poor behaviors and poor ethics.

Being a POS earns you a reputation for being a POS, and that includes people publicly pointing you out as a POS in public forums.

[nickelpro]

> or they're not actually running the company at all

Executives are not micro-managing day-to-day implementation decisions of every team, no. They set broad strategic goals, the management layers below them decide how to best operationalize those goals, and the layers below those middle managers make specific implementation decisions to execute those operations.

If you want to think of this as "not actually running the company at all", you're free to. The point is that's how the world works.

[da_chicken]

You don't have to be personally making the decisions in order to be responsible for them.

That's also the way the world works.

[nickelpro]

Microsoft has north of 100k SWEs working for them, the idea that corporate management could be personally responsible for the decisions of every single one is absurd.

[user_7832]

It’s not “CEO must know everything a junior does”, but more of “If a junior messes up doing something for the company, the CEO is finally answerable” - be it to the board, the govt or the public etc.

Rephrasing it - there’s a reason it’s Zuckerberg and Pichai and Tim Cook who go to congress, and not the folks implementing it on the ground level.

[LtWorf]

What initiative will executive at microsoft take now that this post became popular?

No initiative? Then it's 100% their fault.

[nickelpro]

This post isn't popular, it has already fallen off the HN frontpage never to be seen again in any context. It did not and will never break into any sort of traditional media.

Not a single Microsoft C-suite exec, or anyone within spitting distance of the C-suite, will ever hear about this. Do not mistake your personal media bubble for the general media ecosystem.

[LtWorf]

Yeah managers aren't supposed to learn what's going on in their company from the press :D

Of all the bad arguments, this is the worse.

[marenkay]

In reality executives are responsible when the company is doing well. When mistakes happen it is either handled by insurance or by firing an employee who was only partially involved.

[interludead]

The tricky part is how we, as a community, actually build those levers of individual accountability without veering into mob justice