Comment by johnnyg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyg | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with your post. When you represent one thing and do another, it is call lying and it is a slippery slope.

What happens if you prime the pump with using questionable means and it works?

* You now have a lead a growing company. You are the moral compass of the company. Are you the guy to say they should be acting ethically even when it is harder to do so? Do you expect people to believe you? If they don't, do you expect them to respect you? Can you lead without that?

* How much trust can there be between people that know you will shave the edges if there's immediate gain? How long until this behavior results in a bunch of corporate sharks instead of a team working on a goal together?

I lead. I have been right here. CPAPAuction.com isn't a huge business and we need to project activity to grow, but damn it, the metrics are real. I run other businesses that have done better. The people working in those businesses know that those metrics are real too, as are their pay checks and managements communications relating to future prospects.

I've been in plenty of other situations where I could see no white or black to choose from even if I wanted to, only gray. In those dark times, you need people around you who know in their gut that you are moral.

I feel like I get it.

But the thing I get is that you never, ever pull this crap. You never give an inch when you aren't absolutely force fed an impossibly difficult situation. You let your people see you doing the work and what you get back in exchange is the ability to build strong teams, be wealthy and sleep at night.

Buy cheaper desks and put the money into integrity. Then earn it.

PS. If you answer posts/list items/take the action your website exists to facilitate and identify yourself as with the company, I see no moral issue. If you don't identify yourself, I do see that as being dishonest with your user base and by extension, everyone associated with your company.

I've been in plenty of other situations where I could see no white or black to choose from even if I wanted to, only gray. In those dark times, you need people around you who know in their gut that you are moral.

You seem, to me, to see "lying" as a black and white moral issue when it's about as muddy and gray as it gets. Lying is not absolutely immoral; the context and intention of lying is what can make it immoral in some situations. (I'm talking a modern, secular morality here.)

Knowing that your best buddy cheated on his wife and giving him the chance to improve his relationship rather than running to her and spilling everything is not "immoral." Telling your wife that she looks great in a fusty old dress is not immoral. Putting on a fake image to get your business kickstarted is not, necessarily, immoral. Convincing your kid Santa Claus exists is not immoral.

Considering any form of lying to be a tarnish against one's morality is fundamental puritanism and both rare and, commonly, impractical. Lying is no more a "slippery slope" than playing violent computer games is a slippery slope to committing mass murder. Smart, moral people understand that lying is an abstract concept with many uses and consequences, some with a net positive, others with a net negative, and use their gut instinct to make the choice.

http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

4. Naughtiness

Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter.

It's kind of creepy when people quote Paul Graham like it's gospel.

But in this case I think it's appropriate. Naughtiness does seem more prevalent in successful people than in average joes.

I disagree. Not with PG, but with a quote from him being a worthwhile comment. The OP was sincere; I think he deserved an actual response, not a robotic one listing the relevant entry in the works of PG.

Of all the people to have a cult of personality, PG is a pretty decent choice.

It's better than citing him like an xkcd comic, with just a URL as a punchline.

I find it less creepy when people quote Paul Graham, a real human being who's achieved things we admire, than when people quote long dead historical (at best) and sometimes perhaps totally imaginary characters (often more likely) from the Bible, as gospel. ;)

The parent commenter's point is that this is a rule that matters.

Really? Your response to his sincere post was to quote PG as if his words were gospel?

If it works, it means you can reinvest your profit to live up to your claimed size.

In regards to other employees, yes it can cause some problems, but I doubt it'd be that much...fake it till you make it is a pretty popular phrase, so people understand when you put it to use...especially when starting out.

In regards to your site, your metrics don't actually sound real. If I saw those, I'd think you were just giving me fake info.

In regards to taking the high road, I feel like it's something promoted by those who are already financially secure. Pretty much every company that started from nothing did unethical shit to get ahead early on...whether it's spamming, or faking their stats. I mean, even in your example, you say "buy cheaper desks",and talk about employees...but most companies start with nothing, where the founder isn't even making $500 a month, let alone the $2-5K/mo to pay an employee.

If my metrics look too good to sound real, want to buy a website? You know for a fact its owner undervalues it. ;-)

i didn't say too good to be real, i said they look fake.

1-it says you have 20K users, but the powersellers are all in the 18-20K range...and a random look at a dozen profiles before that yielded nothing.

2-items for sale, the front page item has 3 featured items, they don't change, has to be pretty dead if you aren't even changing the featured items.

3-those featured items, lead to items, the top # is 103008, my guess is that the first 2 #s are just being added automatically, so the total is something like ~3,000 listings(and I bet it's lower than that, since I doubt you started at 100000). So at 99K bids, that's ~33 bids per item...and with $1.7 million in sales, that's an average price of $566...and that's assuming every item got sold.

4-i sorted by bids, and there are a total of 41 bids, across the entire site. And that's with a 14 day listing time. If you have 14 bids in two weeks, I find the 99K total bids # suspicious.

So yeah, it sure seems like you are doing the exact same thing you are complaining about

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