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Comment by colinmhayes | Hacker News Reader

Why would they waste employee time on antitrust training if they were innocent?

Because they were trying to correct or prevent it? If they hadn't done the training, you'd be saying that they never even tried to avoid it.

This isn't about prevention. It's training to avoid recording damning evidence. The bad behavior can continue as long as it isn't written down. Preferably implemented in pieces that lend plausible deniability.

Even companies who are innocent, and don't have any damning evidence because they did nothing wrong, need policies like this. You can be innocent and someone can still sue you, find the suspicious-sounding messages, and use them against you. Proving your innocence may cost money and reputation, not to mention that since the justice system is imperfect, there's always a chance that you can still lose the lawsuit.

This is just the corporate equivalent of "if you're not guilty, you have nothing to hide". You damn well do have something to hide even if you're not guilty, and that's why companies train their employees this way.

Counterpoint:

Corporations as a legal fiction have no expectation of privacy and as such all business records are free game.

Like it or not; if you're playing these word games out of necessity, it's time for a reckoning.

You are confused. The "damning evidence" is usually only damning in the court of politics and opinion. That's where it gets used too. You can't prove an antitrust case on the basis of some random set your of 500k employees saying "market share" in an email (unless they are like c level exec). Think how stupid a basis for liability that would be - "we are breaking up your company because a fresh college graduate you hired a month ago said market share in an email". The end result would be to ban email.

This is why these emails get highlighted in press releases mainly. In court, it would have to be email from someone who matters. Look at the level of exec in the emails in the Microsoft case.

Those kinds of execs are often getting regular advice from legal counsel, so usually the lawyers think whatever they are doing is okay. That's also why you also end up with emails from them later. If you have been advised you aren't doing anything wrong, there is no reason to act like you are doing something wrong. They will happily email as a result.

...Unless you are aware fundamentally that the nature of litigation is not set ahead of time, and highly dependent on the receptiveness of a judge/jury at the time of litigation.

The Judiciary is completely free to "interpret statute however it wants in the presence of a reasonable and convincing explanation of why previous case law doesn't fit the bill". This is why even a lawyer's take should be taken with a grain of salt.

Sure, but when you are trying to prove a company did something as a company, particularly as a company, you are usually going to need evidence that someone with sufficient authority to bind the company acted. For something serious like antitrust, arguing the apparent authority of low level employees (vs actual authority of high level ones) has never been a winning strategy.

I thought it was generally accepted that changing verbiage/language has a huge impact on the way people think. Do you disagree with that notion?

Data retention training is always about limiting liability. These are the sort of companies that delete emails after 18 months no matter how much that kneecaps the employees. No amount of training will change the behavior of the sociopaths calling the shots. They need their underlings to not ruin everything for them with careless mistakes. Any other story is just a cover because they can't state their true intentions.

Companies tell employees to delete emails after 18 months because there are two alternatives: 1) delete emails after 18 months (or some similar time period), or 2) never delete emails, ever. If your policy is "delete emails based on personal preference", someone can sue you in court and claim that the selective deletions of email is evidence of wrongdoing even if you just happened to have a full hard drive that day. And you don't actually need to be a wrongdoer for someone to claim this.

All big corps require you to take this kind of training.

> All big corps require you to take this kind of training.

I've worked at a couple "big corps" as an internal developer. JPMC, BestBuy, Experian, etc. Never encountered it.

I suspect it's only for those companies in danger (or with a history of being charged with) breeching anti-trust.

I worked at two Fortune 250s (both publicly listed) in completely different industries.

Both had antitrust training for all corporate employees not just leadership. I believe —but have no data—that this is common among publicly listed companies.

The discussion hasn't been circling back to "all big corps have this kind of training" in a more general sense, but in a more specific one.

There's antitrust training and there's ANY training that says "never use these words", which are wildly different.

Is there any big corp that doesn’t do “never use these words” training? “We are going to crush the competition” has been taboo in emails since the mid 1990s. Not to mention a lot of words that should be avoided for sensitivity reasons.

> Is there any big corp that doesn’t do “never use these words” training?

As I stated I've never seen it, in the context of anti-trust. If your company has to have that in literature, they are already skirting and it's just a matter of time.

All the companies are buying pretty much the same training units from the same set of providers. If you haven't experienced personally at the American office in the big corp you claim to work out, I'm not sure what to tell you.

> If you haven't experienced personally at the American office in the big corp you claim to work out, I'm not sure what to tell you.

It's disingenuous to continue to move the goalpost out to a more general scenario than what birthed the thread. Re-read the specific issue at hand. You can go to the companies mentioned and there is no anti-trust training, for developers (of any level) that covers what phrases or words you can say. Whatever "generalized training" you are handwaving about does not contradict that fact. GL with whatever.

I have had the training in companies not in danger of anti-trust, but only when in a leadership position, not as a developer. And not a single-purpose anti-trust class, but as part of a business ethics class or similar.

Maybe it depends on the industry? I've worked in big companies with big interests in goverment-regulated industries and every single person has had to do this sort of training, regardless of role (there'll be a course every month, and big responsibilities like anti-money laundering and corruption get rehashed yearly).

JPMC didn't have antitrust in the onboarding stuff? I find that difficult to believe. The bank I work for tells employees to never discuss products or prices with competitors without going through compliance. It's not really emphasized (it's one bullet point amongst many) but it's there.

I just checked and it's in the JPMC code of conduct on page 4,

https://www.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/jpmc/jpmorgan-chas...

It's not unusual for required training for employees to be mandated in the aftermath of, say, a class action lawsuit. So maybe it wasn't the case when you were there, but became that way later.

Such training programs are often part of a settlement or judgement against a company that transgressed.

The guilty individuals are long gone, but everyone after them has to take a mandatory ethics/antitrust/anticorruption/sensitivity class each year.

s/all/many/

But the point of the argument is still valid -- it is present often enough and not only for nefarious purposes.

I've worked at one of the companies you've listed, definitely had to do anti-trust training.

One of my companies competitors (I'm not told which) was caught red handed bribing a government official someplace. Because of a very close look at all their practices - including the anti bribe training - the courts concluded this was a rouge employee doing something the company didn't want him to do (even though it would have greatly benefited the company) and so the company is still around.

Training is a part of a robust process to ensure that your company only does legal things at all levels. It is a given in any large company that somebody will do something immoral/illegal. The real question is it one person and so the company can fire the bad person and be done, or is it the whole company and firing one person is just making a scapegoat.

So you don't do it by ignorance as it becomes their responsability?

Corporate ass-covering.

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