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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

No matter what the company size, you will find that the culture and the actions taken by the organization follow the leaders. This is rarely something you can fight... you need to make a personal decision of either accepting the areas in which you disagree, or leaving the job.

Personally, I find ethical problems are the kind that would make me leave. Business disagreements and technical differences are one thing... but I can't support something if it directly conflicts with my personal ethics.

So if I were in your shoes, I'd frame the question in exactly that way - is this just a disagreement in style for you, or an ethical conflict?

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As OP says, fighting fairly would probably end the company resulting in no job.

This tends to be my experience, nice people find it very hard to start and run successful companies. The sort of person who feels guilty for making a good profit is at a disadvantage to the person who feels delight at taking as much money as possible.

[edit] I keep getting down votes for stating my experience and opinion. I have no idea how the voting system on HN works. Should I avoid personal anecdotes?

I don't think it's a binary thing where you are either playing totally fairly or completely unethically.

Most of the businesses have to make tough decisions to survive, not all of them are fair (to users, employees, etc). However, the difference is in attitude about such decisions and frequency of them.

>> The sort of person who feels guilty for making a good profit is at a disadvantage to the person who feels delight at taking as much money as possible.

Making as much money as possible is just a goal that some people set and do everything possible to achieve that. It's no different than any other goal. You don't need to absolutely maximize the monetary output of your life in order to be happy.

>> ou don't need to absolutely maximize the monetary output of your life in order to be happy.

For me personally I totally agree. I have switched careers and taken a big cut in wages to give me more time with my family.

I have to assume that a middle of the ground company exists, but again, in my experience I have not worked for one. Some have been cottage industries happy clappy the world is kind and karma is real and others who think the customer is a chump and we can screw them out of as much money as possible.

Companies like that definitely exist. I work for one: we make a great product, work hard to make our customers successful, and charge enough to make our business successful as well.

I don't know of a universal rule for finding companies like that. But you can definitely recognize them when you see them in action.

I'm curious about why you think that earning money professionally, or as a business, is a problem.

Say that I with a couple of friends could, in 9 months or so, develop a system that would, for JC Penneys (say), save $10M or raise their sales by 1% (I think they are between $10B~$15B in annual revenue, so this would be around $100M+ revenue and at 5% margin (for example) worth about $5M to their bottom line...)

I think it would be reasonable to charge them $1M+ for this work.

One might argue (they would argue!) that 3 guys for 9 months should NOT be $1M+ -- that we were being greedy. But, I would argue that we are creating significant positive value after our fees.

Would you agree with their reasoning and disagree with mine? If so, that's fine - but I am curious as to why.

I don't think you're interpreting the parent post properly -- he or she is simply saying that, for some people, maximizing income is a primary goal; for others, income is just a tool for achieving other goals (family, hobbies, travel, etc). Nothing wrong with either one as such.

Also, you're not charging enough for your hypothetical services. What you really want to do is discount your pricing to, say, $500K but collect on revenue as part of a fee-at-risk deal, assuming you're that hypothetically confident of your hypothetical value-add.

Yes, this.

Some people will look for careers in industries that are known to pay more (e.g. finance), even though they don't like or even hate the industry.

For others, they just prefer a job that they actually enjoy and just enough income to support their life style and have a good level of financial safety.

None of them is unethical or wrong, just different personal preferences.

That makes sense. Parent was correct - I was not reading you correctly. Thanks.

Thank you. Apparently you are right - I was not reading parent correctly.

To your 2nd point, I constructed my hypothetical badly, but regardless, I've learned that I (personally) don't like to depend on the client for accurate monthly or quarterly reports, and then have to do some anti "Hollywood accounting" measures on it, or deal with the inevitable re-org's required re-calculation. I completely understand what you are saying, but if possible, I like to make sure that the client is getting somewhere in the ballpark of at least 10:1 (pro forma, reviewed and agreed to by client) and call it a day. If I had a slightly different personality, your way can be a very (!) good way.

Say what's honest, and imagine that Californian ideologues [1] are no different from the "religious." [2] Then the downvotes are perfectly expected and normal. It's boo-ing.

Anyone who wants to verify this (and isn't close friends with executives) should speak with salespeople, maybe lead devs... rank-and-file devs tend to be poor sources since they're often like mushrooms, left in the dark. Even salespeople in fairly scrupulous companies often discuss the systematic lies. (Lies which should conform to some rules in order not bite the company in the ass later.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

[2] Particularly since markets are the dual to religion; a rupture that created egoism and altruism.

The downvotes probably have more to do with the perceived ideology the downvoters read into (or from) your post.

And I have to say I was also tempted to do so.

Non the less I do believe a counter argument being more productive.

I for example know a lot of companies having a great founder and a great culture as well as values. And are (at least in the founder's eyes) quite successful.

OK they are no Google. But none the less I like working in one of these.

I downvote fairly rarely, I think, but I always downvote complaints about downvotes!

Thanks for sharing...

It takes a certain amount of bad will to read an innocent question of an inexperienced user as a "complaint" worth downvoting...

I think a question is a different thing from a complaint, even when posed by an experienced user.

I don't think you deserve to be downvoted. My take on downvotes is that they are best reserved for comments that detract from the conversation - ones that are mean, sloppy, or misleading.

While I don't necessarily agree with your comment I'm glad you shared it. I appreciate hearing different opinions and ideas.

When people down vote to express disagreement with a well-articulated idea it makes HN a worse place. It silences dissent (by pushing it down on the screen and fading it).

Couldn't agree more. I've been noticing this a lot recently, where I and others get downvoted for earnest, articulate comments that do nothing but express a dissenting opinion.

I think HN needs to explain that downvoting isn't "I disagree with this sentiment", it's "I think this is a bad comment that detracts from the quality of the conversation". I suspect new users might not know this since it's different from many other sites.

Why do you think that's what downvotes mean around here? pg explicitly disagrees with you, and his opinion would seem to matter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

I don't think his opinion matters more than anyone else's opinion. What's more, he's not an especially active member of the community these days.

Luckily I clicked through and discovered the pg's opinion was not what I thought it was, and I consider myself to be a fairly knowledgeable user of HN.

Regardless of what the intention of the up & down vote buttons are, what matters is the reality of what the userbase interprets them to be. I've always been under the impression that a downvote on HN is only for inappropriate discourse (as it is supposed to be on reddit, but then maybe I should go double check that belief as well), rather than disagreement.

There's a subset of HN users who react poorly to any criticism of the morality of capitalism in general, and tech startups in particular. Basically, people who've fully bought into the notion that disruptive technology is the one road to humanity's bright future, and if people are hurt in the process, that's just the cost of progress.

It's not everyone on HN, just a significant group. You shouldn't take it to heart.

Also, it's not uncommon for comments to get downvoted several times in the first few minutes (by people skimming New Comments), and then brought back into the black later on by more thoughtful readers getting the full context.

I think you're getting downvoted because of this quote: "The sort of person who feels guilty for making a good profit is at a disadvantage..." Nobody feels guilty for making a lot of money. It's the how to do it that people's opinions differ on.

I love the reframing angle. Sooner or later we have to realize that we can only control our life and how we show up in it. Frustration, anger, and resignation are our choosing. Faced with this situation, you have one of two choices. You can decide to avoid it and hope it goes away, or you can decide how you will engage it. I speak from experience in this department and would love to work with you as part of a free challenge I have thrown out to my fellow software developers. http://goo.gl/forms/pa3tkykjoyBmcCn52

Was going to enrol in the course but I hate coming up with new passwords. Please have a Google login.

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