Hacker News Reader

Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

I can’t understand the rationale behind blowing up your life and career in which you made $300k+/year for a tiny $1m gain split between 3 people and their families.

Why are people who should otherwise be much smarter than this doing incredibly dumb things? Just greed? and entitlement?

View on HN

My wife owns a small retail clothing store. It is her experience that the people who attempt to steal, are not generally lower income, they are often among the most well-to-do members of the population that goes through her store. Very different stakes, and very different age group (she mostly sells to teenagers and twentysomethings), but same psychology, I think. "I'm not the sort of person who gets arrested and sent to prison". Which is true until suddenly it isn't.

I call this the "National Park effect".

Being constantly coddled in some way dulls your ability to recognize when circumstances have changed, and those safeguards are no longer present.

See: tourists who wander off in National Parks with no cell service, with no water or survival gear, and then think it's a good idea to pet a bison

The concept of laying bleeding, miles from the nearest road, with broken bones, as night falls and the temperature drops is so foreign to their experience that it just isn't an imagined possibility.

>Being constantly coddled in some way dulls your ability to recognize when circumstances have changed, and those safeguards are no longer present.

It will be interesting to see this happen nationwide if the music were to stop(or slow down) in the US economy as some are predicting.

That's what the 2008 crisis was at its root -- too many people, at all levels, who'd forgotten to be alert for danger and mistakenly assumed that the recent past served as fundamental bounds of future possibility.

Yes but a large chunk of the country never really felt the music stop in that crisis. I wonder if they find a way to keep kicking the can down the road indefinitely. If not, then we will finally see what happens.

There's also the "cynicism effect".

If you believe "everyone does it" -- Congress, billionaire X, the C-suite at every company -- it becomes a lot easier to justify you doing it yourself. You're not doing anything wrong, everyone does it.

Generally--because they're used to this kind of cheating and have never been busted for it before.

The problem is that people think they've graduated to "no longer has to worry about consequences" at the $1 million range. And that's true--unless the Feds get involved. At that point, you need to be in the $100+ million range to get away with crime.

So, there is this danger area between $1 million where you get lots of local feedback that you are above consequences and $100 million where you actually are above consequences.

It's very easy to get complacent and trip up in that window. (I'm remembering the Silicon Valley option backdating fiasco and how many people it caught ...)

> Why are people who should otherwise be much smarter than this

Being smart at your job doesn't mean you aren't ignorant. In fact, I'd say the culture of equating "good at computers" meaning you are probably "smarter than this" does more to shield us from the truth of our own ignorance.

It seems to be a problem common among specialists, especially among highly valued specialists. I’ve heard the same complaints about lawyers and doctors, for example, so it doesn’t seem to be specific to the “good with computers” crowd.

probably thought they could get away with it

lol well yeah.

but the SEC literally has to run one query that shows someone with a big gain buying stock and options before earnings and work at said company which i’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be doing in the first place whether you had special info or not

This is a total guess, but based on the fact that all the perps names are Indian, there is a chance that they are immigrants who are either not aware of the law or the serious consequences involved if you get caught. If they're convicted this will almost certainly affect their immigration status and likely get them deported too.

Not excusing what they did at all, but it should be noted that the judicial systems in India and the US are very different; its not very common to get busted for financial crimes.

I honestly think that whenever immigrants come over they should be required to attend a class about the law enforcement situation in the US, and how there's very real chances of getting prosecuted if you do crimes.

Publicly traded companies make office employees periodically (usually annually) go through a corporate anti-corruption training course covering inappropriate gifts and insider trading.

If these fellas were smart enough to be hired at Twilio, claiming ignorance is beyond ridiculous.

If somehow twilio decided to skip all these trainings, twilio can be held liable and sued by their employees who get in trouble. Do you think their savvy legal team (c'mon, it's in Telco space, they have a legal army) could be that dumb? Having been present during an IPO and working for publicly traded companies, I can confidently say "No, not a chance".

And for the rush of it? And for the money itself? 300k when you earn 300k boosts you one year ahead. It's not a small amount of money. Also smart and wise is not the same.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com