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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Vindicated whistleblowers should get a raise and a promotion. Instead they are the subject of prolonged acts of revenge.

Engineers speaking out about safety issues that then get swept under the carpet must be amongst the most frustrated people in the world. First you go to school for many years to learn how to do the very best job you can and then some pencil pusher annuls all that by refusing your input because it affects the bottom line in a negative way.

Kudos to this man, I'd hire him in a heartbeat if I was in a position to do so. He's even more courageous than it might seem at first glance because in the society he's from this is an absolute taboo to the point where airplanes have crashed because people did not dare to disagree with someone senior in rank.

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They should really get a minimum settlement (10 years pay or something similar), because it's completely unreasonable to think that it would be tenable for them to continue their employment without severe strain.

Not just that, but the exposure hurts their chances of getting a new job with another organization as they become branded 'disloyal,' which is a quality managers don't like even if they're not explicitly breaking the law.

I wonder whether MBA students learn about the Coase theorem, for which there's abundant empirical evidence. It seems to me that deliberate attempts to shirk the costs of externalities are little more than the 'conspiracy to defraud the publick' that Adam Smith famously mentioned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

I'm not seeing how a theorem about resource allocation applies here?

It has broad applicability because many externalities are torts.

Could this have promote an interesting incentive? -> notice safety breach/design defect -> don't speak up -> manufacture and distribute -> highlight defects to management -> whistleblow if they don't recall -> profit???

Or similar?

Just interested to see if anyone could elaborate or dispel this notion for me.

I guess it comes down to the character of the person?

In step 2, while not speaking up, you could get scooped by someone else who notices the defect and the fact that you're keeping mum.

Sounds like prisoner's dilemma...

He resigned shortly after his employment was restored. This is totally expected given the amount of ostracization he would have faced, but I think it's still a better outcome for him in the long term than if he had just gotten a large settlement.

He's close to retirement age anyway, so by resigning voluntarily instead of being terminated for cause, he gets to keep his pension and other benefits. (South Korea has a public pension system, but large corporations often add a lot on top of that.) Hyundai also agreed to drop all other complaints against him in exchange for his resignation, which would not have happened had the court just ordered them to pay him a bunch of money. This man deserves a peaceful retirement.

I hope he moves to another town and runs an auto shop or something :)

> Instead they are the subject of prolonged acts of revenge.

Not always:

"Whistleblower awarded $1m in $40m Princess pollution case"

http://www.seatrade-cruise.com/news/news-headlines/whistlebl...

There is this proverb about exceptions and rules. The vast majority of whistleblowers are ostracized and will never work again in their industry, if at all.

That's a pretty high price to pay for just doing your bloody job and society should make sure they get rewarded properly for providing some necessary transparency and safety.

Given all that what should really surprise you is how much integrity these people have, they know that they'll be dealt with unjustly, that their lives and the lives of their dependents will probably be ruined and still they blow that whistle, loud and clear.

We need more of these people, and fewer 'team players'.

If you've been paying attention at all, whistle blowing is actually a learned technique.

Some blunder forth into hell unimaginable, and others create a springloaded safety net before cutting away. It's often difficult to distinguish between the two, since whistle blowing often captures spectacular attention, and even the flame-outs that jump out of the frying pan and into the fire seem inspirational in that sense of a tragic, yet dashing pyrrhic victory.

But seriously, any given whistle blower should consciously attempt to organize a launch pad and a landing zone, even if for a crash landing. For every poorly understood tragedy, we usually get another negative example of "why no one should do such a thing," rather than "what went wrong and how to do it right."

That was a court-ordered payment, not an act of generosity on the part of his or her employer. He or she may have been unpopular with his or her coworkers if the whistleblower chose to remain in the same job.

>Vindicated whistleblowers should get a raise and a promotion. Instead they are the subject of prolonged acts of revenge.

I absolutely agree with you, but there's a bit of a nitpick to be made here--but an important one:

From Google: "A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person who exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct within an organization that is either private or public."

Whistleblowers by definition do not need vindication.

Your last sentence does not follow from that definition.

Yes it does. From google:

Vindication: "proof that someone or something is right, reasonable, or justified."

A whistleblower is not a whistleblower unless they reveal wrongdoing.

Edit: For example: Snowden is by definition a whistleblower because the information he leaked revealed illegal and unconstitutional activity. The courts already ruled it illegal. So he is by definition already a whistleblower/vindicated of wrongdoing. Perhaps the OP intended (and rightfully so) some statement about public opinion/perception of the value of whistleblowers.

By contrast: someone who leaks information containing no wrongdoing or nothing illegal is not a whistleblower. In other words: perhaps in such cases some extenuating circumstances may mitigate or vindicate the offender of wrongdoing. Whistleblowers, however, are not in such situations.

The whistleblowers themselves do need vindication though; proof that their actions were justified. See e.g. the need for Snowden's leaks, and his responsible handling of sensitive information, to be vindicated publicly.

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