How is that different from a corporate board member who sits on several different corporate boards, which is a very common practice?
I've worked a full time w/ benefits job and freelanced on the side. The only aspect of that I would feel that would be unethical is if I were to mix IP from the firms that should remain private.
Otherwise, who the hell cares. If I'm doing task work and meeting expectations then I'm holding up my end of the bargain. I'm not a slave and my work does not own me. Standing around the proverbial water cooler wasting company time is acceptable, but doing something productive during my downtime is not?
If that's not "stealing" but regular people actually working multiple jobs with actual deliverables in a way you couldn't even tell is,
then "stealing" is good and I will help as many to do it as possible, especially from the HN poster companies coming out and countersignaling it so hard.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
One thing that is REALLY helpful when supervising highly complex operations like a large corporation is knowledge of how similar operations are run at a large number of other companies
It makes it easier to identify things like pointless ‘not invented here’ syndrome, or where a company is being very inefficient in an area because they don’t know of any alternatives.
It’s common for companies to hire in outside consulting firms or independent contractors who also work for a great many companies in an industry for the exact same reason. It’s a way of keeping on top of what the industry norms are so the company doesn’t fall behind and lose competitiveness.
Plenty of pros and cons there, but that is a big part of why.
The other reason is the board of directors works for the shareholders, and represents their interests.
Institutional shareholders hold shares in a lot of different companies, and if they have someone they know , trust, and are happy with performance wise, most would prefer to have them on the boards of as many companies as they think they have the expertise to oversee.
That’s pretty much never what happens though if someone does it when applying for a full time salary position, and line managers know it, which is why you see people get worked up about it. People doing it try to convince themselves it’s not a scam, but it almost always is.
The folks doing this on boards, despite any hate and derision they are getting here, are often exceptionally talented, educated, and have a long list of references where they have been doing it before successfully. They were voted in with full visibility to their other board memberships, and while being open about it and any potential conflicts of interest. They’re just not software engineers. I have yet to meet one that didn’t work their asses off either, just not in the way you might recognize.
There can be (and is, of course) nepotism, cronyism, etc. that happens, same as anywhere, and the shareholders who vote that in get what they deserve as well in my experience. Sometimes it’s also as simple as ‘x owns this company, and wants y to takeover when they’re gone, so y sits on the board.’. Rare in public or widely held companies though.
Ownership has it’s privileges, and it’s costs after all.
Just because something is the status quo and it is happening without mass protests, doesn’t mean people are agreeing to it.
Too fucking bad they don't "like it". I don't give one bit of care to the centimillionaire and up club.
Oddly, that's the second time I've used that word today: talking about Rishi Sunak earlier.