Hacker News Reader

Comment by Damogran6 | Hacker News Reader

I hate these people. The pessimist in me thinks it's the emergent behavior of universities convincing people they have to have a college education to be successful, which turns out millions of MBA's, who then descend on society, looking for untapped profit to optimize.

It's a position that does nothing for the customer but convince them to spend more for less.

View on HN

"I hoped he didn’t sense the sarcasm in my voice. As much as I enjoyed the perks of the job (free pizza), working at the agency had been a mixed bag. I had spent nearly eight years in grad school analyzing the politics of 18th-century venison feasting, and here I was, Googling high-res images of French-fry containers before I could leave for the day."

I suspect the agency he worked for is going to hear about the article, realize who it was, and hound all his future employers about what a disloyal cad he is.

I appreciated the insights that the article offered, but it felt like a scurrilous bit of whistleblowing to me, the kind you really don't want to know about, like married CEOs sleeping with their staff.

What's wrong with whistleblowing? It's pretty concerning that your example of something that isn't worth blowing a whistle about is basically rape.

A CEO sleeping with subordinates absolutely crosses ethical and moral lines, but it isn't rape. It's not rape unless it's rape.

There's too much depressing shit in the world to report and publicly name and shame everyone that decides to be a cad. If he crosses over from cad to monster, that's when I want to hear about it.

Name a business that you're a customer of, which you don't think is optimized for profit.

There are plenty of examples of freshly failed companies in the sporting goods space.

It's not the optimization so much as the "If we give them 12.5 oz instead of 16 oz, and put it in a shiny box, we won't piss them off enough to stop buying our product!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com