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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

People downplay such training, but imagine the environment without it. Imagine if nobody officially talked about corrupt practices: it would create a very dark place for such things to occur, nobody would know what the rules are or what to do, and especially the silence would speak very loudly.

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.

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People know that what they hear in the training videos and how they must really act are two different things. If you find out that your boss's boss is corrupting goverment officials in Poland to get a $100m contract (a real case BTW, involving one of MS's big competitors), do you really think the company wants you to raise alarm and blow that contract? What good does it do to your boss's boss career, or the shareholders?

It's not a perfect solution, but nothing is. The training shifts the equation significantly relative to no training (as described in the GP). Our alternative to perfect solutions, if that's what we require, is to do nothing.

> 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).

> People know that what they hear in the training videos and how they must really act are two different things

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"

> It also shifts culpability to the individuals

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.

> 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.

Do you mean large EU companies are more similar to large US companies, or more similar to small EU companies? I presume the former, which would be a shame but not entirely unexpected since I imagine (in the tech industry at least) there is a lot of emulation.

Large EU companies are more similar to large US companies. Small US companies are more similar to small EU companies than large US companies.

Size brings more savvy lawyers.

As soon as you do business interbationally, especially in the US, you have to follow the same anti corruption laws, business conduct and so on. I guess that's one of the reasons big corps are so similar with regards to those trainings.

I think Enron would have been better off if someone had blown the whistle early. Probably would still be in existence.

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.

> Enron would have been better off if someone had blown the whistle early

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

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