Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

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That sounds reasonable to me, much better than what we have today. If you're not trusting your employees or practices to follow the law, you should either be improving that situation so you do trust them, or not operate a business.

Right now, working in a white-collar job, there is no fear of punishment, which is why we're seeing so many companies and executives skipping the law. Or they make a cost-profit equation, and figures out that the fine is worth the profits the crime would pay.

Edit: actually, the more I read and try to understand your point of view, the more I'm afraid of your position. You're already worried that your colleagues might be "doing something terribly wrong behind [your] back", but you're all fine with that, as long as you don't get punished? Isn't "I am responsible" one of the justification executives use for their high salary? The whole point of being the manager of others is to take responsibility over them. Sounds like you don't want that.

Mmmm... to offer a counterpoint. Unless you are putting spyware on every company computer and have cameras all about, there are likely some things your employees are doing that you don't know about (not necessarily illegal data breach, just, you can't track it all without invading their privacy quite a bit).

I think it might be better to put a 'without due dilligence' clause if something like this were to be the law.

One other thing... it's kinda hard for salespeople to do their job without a list of people to contact... there are some jobs where you implicitly have to trust people with data... those are sources of data leaks as well, and there's not much you can do other than to hire people you trust, I'm afraid :/

Just my two cents, hope your having a good day (and stay well)

I don’t think anybody is asking for executives to be responsible for every little act of wrongdoing. Most examples of corporate wrongdoing were widely known throughout the company and often caused by unrealistic expectations from above. I work in medical devices and I have seen it multiple times that leadership pushed unreasonable deadlines while ignoring warnings. I don’t think anything illegal has happened so far but I can easily see how somebody could take shortcuts just to relieve the pressure. So while the executives didn’t do anything wrong personally they created a climate that could cause illegal activity. This certainly happened at Wells Fargo and I bet a lot of other companies.

Many C level executives earn a literal fortune every year, with compensation packages in case of dismissal that would make anyone's eyes water. Accepting/demanding that but brushing off any risk and demanding to be considered immune from any repercussions even when it comes to major acts of mismanagement seems a bit unreasonable.

This isn't for any minor misstep from an employee. Rather for not putting in place enough safeguards to avoid that result. Or the CxO turned a blind eye to this happening although all the signs were there. Or worse, they directed it. Look at the captain of a ship to see what the responsibility could look like.

As for the "I'd rather close the company than risk going to jail", I don't think that would be the case even for current levels of compensation. A mistake driving a car could easily kill or land the driver in jail (and this happens all the time). And the benefits of driving a car are far lower than what some of the above mentioned C level execs can get from that position.

> A mistake driving a car could easily kill or land the driver in jail (and this happens all the time).

And nobody is dying from App Store policies. Violating a civil regulation is much different than violating criminal statutes.

Before you advocate punishing private company managers, consider holding government employees, managers, and politicians to the same standard. Every manager in government should be sure that the people who report to him or her are following the law, else, the manager gets fined and goes to jail.

I don't think anyone is saying this shouldn't be the case either.

Its also red herring, to be completely honest.

I would even argue that much of the corruption we see in politics is in large part because private companies can get away with so much with so little consequence in the first place.

In either case, I 100% agree with the assertion here.

That would be considered corruption and would be normally be persecuted as government employees are considered to have a duty of care to the public they serve.

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