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Comment by ryukoposting | Hacker News Reader

To people who don't work in finance, maybe it seems reasonable to take away bonuses from employees at a failing bank. It sounds crazy to me. My finance friends are in PE, not banking, but they do soul-crushing work for grueling hours specifically because of that end-of-year bonus.

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This is literally showing how parasitic these organizations are. Bankers think that banks exist to make themselves a lot of money, not to serve customers.

This is why organizations like SVB need to fail without any kind of bailout and executives need to go to prison for paying out bonuses if they paid them out knowing they couldn’t meet their fiduciary responsibility to customers.

that is literally capitalism. Just because its a "service industry" doesn't absolve it from the fundamental economic driver of capitalism.

It's not "parasitic," it's an incentive structure. Bonuses are standard practice in the financial sector intended to reward high effort and good performance.

Unless you believe nearly every employee at SVB down to the entry level is in some way responsible for this, then complaining about bonuses doesn't make any sense.

For the record, I don't think they should be bailed out.

> Bankers think that banks exist to make themselves a lot of money, not to serve customers.

the business of a bank is to make money. If serving the customers make them money, it will happen. If there's some other activity which makes even more money, that activity would be done instead (or as well as).

Does the farmer that grow your food also exist solely to serve you food?

Yeah, unlike those people working on third party companies depending on the bank for their salaries...

I mean, who works harder and needs the money more, a finance executive waiting for their bonus, or a single mother of two working two jobs, one of which happened to be in a company depending on this bank for its salary payments?

Obvioysly the former!

What if the single mom worked at the investment bank?

Then they would still have a better chance at getting a bonus?

Really is a bunch of oblivious neolibs in here.

Or maybe just people who understand that banks aren't simply giant piles of money and have such things as "operational costs" that exist outside their holdings for their clients?

I just think the "single mother with 3 kids" is being used as a strawman in this case.

Then she'd have her bonus already! My point exactly.

And she'd be much better off than the single mothers not working there, but depending on the bank for ther salaries, even without a bonus!

It appears you're injecting a lot of details into the situation that were not specified in the article, seemingly to stir the pot. I see no mention of "executive bonuses" specifically - just bonuses, which are common for employees on the lower rungs as well. What makes you think there aren't "single mothers working two jobs" at SVB?

Who to say the bonus isn't going to a single mother of three or four or 18. Who deserves it more logic ends up in no one being deserving enough. Why give any money to these groups when there are people living/dying on the street. Do humans even deserve it, there are many species in worse shape.

Which is exactly why I think "these poor bankers worked so hard they deserve it" as some kind of moral appeal falls flat with me.

SVB has 17 branches, do you think they all are staffed with "financial executives" or more like "single mothers"? You're making it look like only billionaire fatcats work at banks, but if you visit any branch, you'll find it's not exactly the case.

> To people who don't work in finance, maybe it seems reasonable to take away bonuses from employees at a failing bank. It sounds crazy to me.

If the roles were reversed and a tech company had delayed bonuses due to internal financial troubles, the pitchforks would be out against the company.

The article explains that this was really just normal, scheduled payroll processing. It just happened that bonuses were scheduled on the March 10th payroll, which had been scheduled ahead of time.

Basically, they were operating as usual and paying out the money owed to employees as they agreed to doing. They were operating like normal right up until they were taken over.

Withholding employee's earned and scheduled compensation wouldn't have kept the bank liquid.

  They were operating like normal right up until they were taken over.

No they weren't. I know people who couldn't withdraw money on Thursday, the day before SVB paid these bonuses.

I think there's a lot of fervor for personal liability at the upper levels of companies that harm others through malfeasance. I agree in principle, though to have a regulatory agency step in and seize pay bank employees are owed without due process is not a power I would like the government to have.

Harsh civil penalties for the decision-makers do seem appropriate though.

>My finance friends are in PE, not banking, but they do soul-crushing work for grueling hours specifically because of that end-of-year bonus.

I should feel bad for someone who, for the sake of extra money, willingly chooses to have their soul crushed every year, if they don't get a bonus this year?

Sure, but I feel bad for them for completely different reasons.

> for the sake of extra money

Do you know what the money is for or why they are sacrificing for it? Of course not, you just want to sound high and mighty

Every single bonus-earning employee in PE is in dire straits?

one does not have to be in dire straits to be sacrificing for more money.

Poor vampires, how will they survive?

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