Former Microsoftie here.
After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.
After all the business ethics training videos I had to sit through, I am infuriated by this.
And also obeisance -- on the part of the person required to sit through these trainings (and pretend that they had some connection to reality).
Happily, it was better than that. Most of these courses were online, and you could just let the videos of actors working through scenarios run in the background and then answer some simple questions. The questions never varied and the correct answer was usually pretty obvious (e.g., don't pick any answer that includes hiding a body).
Siemens ask different questions in reruns of end tests, vary the order the questions are in, and also ask questions you can’t answer from understanding the topic. Eg ‘what colour was the background of the graph demonstrating the effect?”
Sounds like a bad test. You are not supposed to fill your head with details like what color shoes your teacher was wearing.
My method was to open another browser tab, then you can play several at the same time. The next company I was at prevented that somehow. So I opened a few different web browsers. Then they broke that and also made each clip about 2 mins long and had loads of them, so you can’t even queue them up in one browser.
This is the definition of ineffective training :)
Edit: By training everyone, not just the people directly involved with such situations, anyone considering corrupt acts will know that everyone - from the tech support person who helps them send the corrupt message to the receptionist who takes the corrupt call to the finance underling who mails the check - everyone will recognize it. There is no talking the rube into helping them; there are eyes everywhere, all the time.
> What good does it do ... the shareholders?
Note that we commonly talk as if people will naturally care about the interests of one group of humans they don't know, the shareholders, but not another group, the public. Various rules say you should care about both (and there are many more rules regarding the latter).
It also shifts culpability to the individuals; aka CYA for the org. Corporate counsel will say "We have training for this every year; they knew they were not supposed to do that,and we weren't aware they were doing that, so it's not our fault"
Very important to highlight this; since joining a different big tech company I have quickly realized how much the internal processes (everything from expenses to security posture) are structured to put the maximum responsibility on the person furthest down the totem pole.
In small European companies I've worked for this would be considered a big red flag and a sign of broken company culture, but for US companies it is seemingly the norm.
Try working for a big European company, it’s no different.
Size brings more savvy lawyers.
Me, I'd be more likely to narc to the government, especially if I can get a share of the penalty like SEC narcs do.
Blown the whistle to who and about what. As I understand it, Enron's brilliance was breaking up the actions so each low ranking employee was looking at legal things and you had to be quite high up to see the issues
Initially the training software was badly written so you could just open up DevTools and type "v = document.querySelector('video'); v.currentTime = v.duration - 1000;" or similar and just bop through the sections. Later they seemed to track time on the server, so really the most I could do is turn off the window focus check and leave the tab open in a second monitor. So annoying.
Microsoft does business worldwide, of course. Wouldn't that imply that many are in that position?
How many MSFT devs do you think travel to foreign countries to close deals? I do not think one has to have worked there to come up with, "mmm, probably not very many", and thus devs are like, "WTF do I have to watch this?"
We laughed. Instructor not so much.
Did you have similar guidelines inside Microsoft?
That was... interesting to say the least.
LOL that's NOT how discovery works
Me, a low-level employee: "Yeah, I don't think that that's true, Dad."
Them: "I have the worst [expletive] lawyers."
This is from the DOJ's brief:
> Plaintiffs respectfully request the Court to sanction Google LLC (Google) for its extensive and intentional efforts to misuse the attorney-client privilege to hide business documents relevant to this case. Google has explicitly and repeatedly instructed its employees to shield important business communications from discovery by using false requests for legal advice. These efforts directly harmed Plaintiffs, undermined their discovery efforts, and subverted the judicial process. The Court should sanction Google and order the full production of withheld and redacted emails where in-house counsel was included in a communication between non-attorneys and did not respond. Alternatively, the Court should hold these silent-attorney emails are not privileged and immediately order their production.
As one there before, during, after that little DoJ/IE kurfluffle, I recall the guidelines to be simple: there are things you don't talk about in email[0]. Which is why this Google thing mystifies me: why are you talking about it in email at all? And then to rely on what sounds like some crackpot legal theory? (I mean, maybe it's not, and IANAL, but it reeks of "sovereign citizens don't have to pay taxes".)
[0] Yes, that is a vast oversimplification (though accurate) to make a point.
[1] - "The Constitution of the Russian Federation"
Article 17
1. In the Russian Federation recognition and guarantees shall be provided for the rights and freedoms of man and citizen according to the universally recognized principles and norms of international law and according to the present Constitution.
2. Fundamental human rights and freedoms are inalienable and shall be enjoyed by everyone since the day of birth.
3. The exercise of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall not violate the rights and freedoms of other people.
Article 18
The rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall be directly operative. They determine the essence, meaning and implementation of laws, the activities of the legislative and executive authorities, local self-government and shall be ensured by the administration of justice.
Article 19
1. All people shall be equal before the law and court.
2. The State shall guarantee the equality of rights and freedoms of man and citizen, regardless of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, property and official status, place of residence, religion, convictions, membership of public associations, and also of other circumstances. All forms of limitations of human rights on social, racial, national, linguistic or religious grounds shall be banned.
3. Man and woman shall enjoy equal rights and freedoms and have equal possibilities to exercise them.
and so on...
A gridlocked political system is not guaranteed to create "good legislation" as Scalia puts it, take US as a prime example of that, almost every legislation is packed with pork and other things unrelated to the legalisation itself.
To Scalia defence he might have meant "not awful legislation", like avoid harming a minority, because of the bicameral legislature. But good legislation? No.
It is true that in Europe it is common to mix the legislative and the executive with the same election and thus chamber. However in Sweden the executive power is divided in half, with the elected prime minister with his cabinet (regeringen) on the one hand and the independent government agencies (myndigheter) on the other. This is a separation of powers that US doesn't have.
And it is in the executive that has the highest risk of political corrupt behaviour, because it deals with all the practical details of running a country, therefore separating the executive into two separate branches, the elected and the civil servants, creates better protection against political corruption.
Scalia main argument is that US can't become the Soviet union because of the bicameral gridlock built into the system, however what we have seen in the US when the legislature is politically paralyzed is that the executive, and to some extent the judiciary, has encroached on the legislative powers.
How many of the wars that US has been involved in since the second world war has been formally approved constitutionally by the senate? Zero.
Did President Obama execute a US citizen without a trial? Yes.
This is a gap in Scalias argument, the executive power is too unrestricted, hence it is the US executive power that will be removing citizen rights from the citizenry, not the legislature.
The US does have not have this. That's why Biden couldn't fire the postmaster general, or the fed chair, or numerous other posts. Yes, the President fills the leadership roles when they are available, but they don't totally control many agencies.
Of course, they do control other agencies.
Compare the US Department of Justice with the equivalent in Sweden, in Sweden that would be split in multiple different organisations first with Departement of Justice, headed by the minister of Justice (elected politician) and a staff of civil servants, but they don't handle any criminal cases.
Thus there is several other government agencies like Riksåklagare (Prosecutor-General), Polismyndigheten (Police Authority), Säkerhetspolisen (Security Service), Ekobrottsmyndigheten (Economic Crime Authority) etc all independently governed by civil servants.
This is a central part of the Swedish constitution and is tradition that dates back several hundred years.
Most of the trainings are about a fine we got due to being caught doing something bad, say 10 years ago, and part of legal settlement is apart from direct fine, a nice 30-60 min training where they tell you that stealing and lying and cheating is bad.
Those trainings keep re-appearing quite consistently so they are really not that effective.
Implication: they can fire that employee and continue to give bribes.
Ps. Full disclosure, I never witnessed anybody giving bribes, nor worked with anyone who would be in a position to do so.
Dilbert: Is it ethical to steal our lunch hour to make us attend a work class?
Pointy Haired Boss: I wouldn't know, I'm not required to take the training.
Who had been fired.
For running HR like a harem.
If I, a middle-class independent contractor, attempt to bribe a government employee to award me a contract, I am going to jail.
If someone with even lesser means attempts to bribe a social worker to award them welfare of some kind, they are going to jail.
That is the discrepancy that matters.
No need to take a shot at the other comment; maybe they just don't understand you. I didn't know who you meant; 'lower classes' is a vague term, especially in context of foreign corrupt practices.
—Composer and Software Architect Frank Wilhoit
https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
Compare the treatment of Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. Why is the conservative in the out group and the liberal in the in group?
Former here, too, I found it part of "big company" overhead. Had similar things many years ago at a different European based employer.
Turns out it is some MS corporate thing. Feeling lucky now!
Edit: Yup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Muntz
If its true that microsoft were doling out 40k bribes, that would be less than five minutes of what an sbc episode must cost to produce. The irony.
I'm infuriated that I'm being offered t-shirts and maybe a lunch and someone else out there is getting a cook for a month. Damn right I'm taking the cook.