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Comment by s73ver | Hacker News Reader

Why employers continue to insist upon stealing from their employees, I'll never know.

It's just so easy to be a little unfair to employees, that it's probably harder to be fair – you have to pay more attention. And since employees have no bargaining power against companies, there's not much they can do to push back.

This is what unions are for.

At least for the Bay Area, employees have a plethora of companies they can migrate to if they aren't being treated right.

Depends on how well they're paid. For example it's unlikely I'm going to just walk across the street and into a position that pays as well as my current one does.

I mean, I could probably get any $100k + "equity" gig on AngelList, but I don't feel like taking a ~50% (rough numbers here, it's less than 50%) pay cut. And I know I'm not even close to the only one in my pay bracket.

True, but pay isn't the only thing to take into account. Work-life balance, training opportunities, having to be on-call or not and being compensated if so, and promotional opportunities that can get you into a higher bracket with the former benefits included, and being somewhere where you feel stable are non-pay-related worth considering. Once you reach the point where you can "afford" the Bay Area, Quality of Life becomes pretty important IMHO.

I think it's more concerning that it's probably just incompetence. You can fire thieves and criminals, incompetence and lack of attention to detail is cultural.

> I think it's more concerning that it's probably just incompetence

Greed is more likely.

That's a pretty large amount of incompetence. Not saying it isn't possible to be that incompetent, but it's a bit of a stretch.

Systemic features built into the American political and legal systems. Corporations before Humans every time.

so which "cultures" do you think this applies to? BTW this is a realy racist POV you have here.

I'm pretty sure that the comment above was referring to corporate cultures that condone sloppy practices, and there was no racism implied.

Any relationship to race with regards to "culture" you're reading in there strikes me as inferred, not implied.

There is a pretty decent argument that American corporate culture is very happy to screw workers, defend people who screw workers, and commiserate with those who get caught screwing workers.

Perception is every thing ask a BME person about their interactions with the police

You are conflating the larger definition of the term "culture" with a specific, narrower one and it's not making the point you think it's making.

Eh, it's a Pavlovian instinct. See the word "culture" in any context, shout "Racism!"

If it doesn't make sense, and people point this out, just double down and shout the same thing but louder.

Yawn.

I agree with him in many contexts that there is a profoundly racist tilt to American culture, and there is a profoundly racist tilt to "tech" culture as well.

But that's not what was being referred to here, no.

Calm down.

A company - in this case, Zenefits - will have its own distinct culture. This is what's being referred to ... not "businesses overall" (although there can be a lot of similarities) ... and certainly nothing at all to do with something like societal culture, much less the culture of a specific demographic or race.

Honestly, the word culture in this context has nothing to do with race.

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