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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

You jest, but once a company goes public, the hierarchy of bosses loops on itself - the company bosses answer to shareholders, many of whom answer to, or themselves are, regular people with regular jobs and regular bosses...

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That's not a proper loop, because those the regular people who are shareholders don't answer to their work-bosses about any vote they might do as a shareholder.

(Of course, in practice regular people by and large don't vote their shares.)

I've in fact always been afraid to vote my shares against the recommendations of the board. What if someone finds out and takes it personally? I need the job much more than I need any potential upside of the shares I own, so even if all the proposals amount to "let the executives steal whatever isn't nailed down", I figure I'm better off going along with it or just throwing my proxy card away.

Because of the implication. Yes. It's always better in aggregate if people fight back, in order to prevent the inevitable slide towards power consolidation, but it really requires leadership because it's frequently good for the group but bad for the individual, and it's the first through the wall who gets bloodied.

Are you talking about shares of the company you work for, or shares of random companies you have stocks of?

For the former, if at all possible, you should sell those, and invest in the general market: your job already gives you plenty of excess exposure to the fortunes of your employer, and your career gives you excess exposure to the general industry you are in. No need to concentrate your effective investments even more. Diversify.

For the latter: don't bother picking stocks as an individual investor. Just go with a low cost index fund (and they can vote the shares for you).

I mean shares in the company I work for. I don't /want/ to be heavily invested in it, but I get grants in the form of RSUs periodically, and also we have an ESPP which is essentially free money in that I get to buy shares at a discount. I get a better tax deal if I keep them at least a year after I buy the shares/exercise the RSUs, (long-term capital gains vs short-term capital gains). I absolutely sell them as soon as they are considered long-term but in the meantime I'm a shareholder and I could vote those shares if I wanted to.

I'm not sure why I would care about what the board/management of some /other/ public company (that I don't work for) thinks about my vote. Almost certainly they won't think about it at all.

IIRC voting rules for the company I hold the most equity in are that a board-opposed measure does not pass unless more than half of all voting shares vote in favor. Which is a significantly different measure than half of all votes cast. (Essentially any unvoted shares vote with the board.) Imagine if we needed half of all eligible voters to vote for a new candidate before we could change the president. (U.S.A)

In the US regular voters can't change the president at all, I thought? Once they are in for the term, they are in for the term.

(There's an impeachment process. But that's not available for regular voters.)

Correct, but I'm trying to draw a parallel between regular, scheduled shareholder votes and regular, scheduled votes for elected officials. In the U.S we typically have around 60% of eligible voters participating in presidential elections. My analogy assumes that voting against the incumbent follows the same rules as voting against the board, in which case we would need something like 84% of cast votes to be for the challenger to avoid re-electing the incumbent. (Assuming I haven't gotten my math wrong.) I'll also go so far as to suggest voter participation is low in both cases but it isn't a very effective tool for changing policy. :-)

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