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Comment by sukuriant | Hacker News Reader

Forgive me, but... why should we care?

It's his money, he can do whatever he wants with it. It's not humble and awe-inspiring. He announced it to the world on twitter. I mean, it's nice of him, or whatever, but.. I don't care? Why should anyone care about this?

I could write a long tyrade about how this could be useful if more companies did this, because yes, the employees would have an invested interest in this company; and la la la; but really, this is just Notch tooting his own horn about giving his money away. Congratulations.

Yes, what you've done with Minecraft is absolutely amazing, and I love the game, but... very nice of you. Moving on.

awaits the downvotes

[edit: in seriousness, could someone tell me why the public, even the programming public, should care that Notch gave away his dividends? We're not told why he did it. He's not encouraging others to follow his example, he just did it and told everyone.]

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Fine I'll bite,

it is INTERESTING it is different it sparks debate and it gives life to a conversation about bonuses and compensation in our industry. Lots of people here are also founders (or plan to be) so form that perspective it is interesting to contemplate the effects of such a move on early employees, it isn't so different from talking about vesting for early employees in that regard, something which is also a common topic here. I'm not sure why you would choose to make this a personal thing about notch, HN (for me at least when it is at its "best") is a place to come for NEW and INTERESTING perspectives, this absolutely falls into that category - for a number of reasons.

Your response seems to be "wow look at notch trying to draw attention to himself" the impression I have from the rest of the comments here isn't "wow look how generous notch is; he's so awesome" it seems to be more like "wow this is cool/different/unexpected I wonder how this will play out".

And that makes the HN comments interesting, which I will agree with. It's the initial creation of the article I'm questioning, is all.

I am absolutely not questioning that the resultant dialog isn't interesting; as I have read it, and that is interesting. I'm questioning the original article, which does not look like this dialog was the intended result.

[edit: addendum] I also have nothing against Notch. If this were about where Page's, or Zuckerberg's, or any of the All Stars of our time's money was going, I imagine I'd have a similar response

So you're not actually questioning the act of giving away the money either? Your point of contention is "Why is he posting this?" ?

That's actually quite an interesting line of inquiry. I'd suggest it probably helps raise his company's profile, it helps draw potential employees to his company, and, admittedly, it also probably makes him feel good about himself - and it should - he's doing a Good Thing (TM) he should be able to highlight that. It cost him $3MM why shouldn't it buy him some goodwill?

Flaunting charity seems to negate the effects of the charitable giving some. Perhaps that's a pet-peeve of mine; however, it has effectively:

* raised his company profile;

* draw potential employees to his company, though I fear that might be for the wrong reasons: "bonuses here are ~amazing~" as opposed to "I love the work I do here" (money vs love-of-the-art)

Also, did he do a good thing? I know this sounds silly; but, why couldn't he have just had it in the employee contract that all employees will be getting X% of the dividends, based on some criteria; or, just given everyone stock so they could reep the rewards of dividends directly. The latter seems less effective in the spirit of the giving than the former.

Hugely successful boss decides to reward his employees.

It's a tragedy that this is _newsworthy_.

By spreading the news, maybe Notch hopes that other hugely successful business owners will consider following suit.

Does he? What makes you think that? He posted in a tweet. I think you're putting words into his mouth

Because it's unusual and smart brains crave unusual information?

I mean more "why should anyone care?" It's really not that unusual, and honestly tastes more like gossip, to me :/

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be on HackerNews. If someone posted it and it's receiving upvotes, clearly it's worth being on HN. I just don't understand why it matters at all

I'll admit to just enjoying the gossip from fellow techies and entrepreneurs. Note that it was used as another excuse to discuss tax rates, lifestyle choices, and healthcare in the comments - things we are all interested in in the choice of where to live and where to work.

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