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Comment by anonymouskimmer | Hacker News Reader

You're missing that boards have fiduciary obligations to govern and cannot do so when the CEO isn't fully communicative with them.

Yet another reason why it's a bad idea for a CEO to also be on the board. And probably also evidence that it's a bad idea for conflating the jobs of CEO and chief spokesperson.

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Nope. This is a 501c3 board, so it explicitly doesn't have any Revlon or other fiduciary responsibilities.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38323470

Dropping this link to another comment I made because people often forget what "fiduciary" actually means.

You see it all the time in legal dramatizations where the lawyer is telling the client that they can get more money, but the client tells the lawyer they just want the legal process to stop. The client gets their way because the lawyer has a fiduciary duty to them.

Edit to add: I'm curious what word "Revlon" was supposed to be.

> Edit to add: I'm curious what word "Revlon" was supposed to be.

I'd guess "revenue", but who knows. Autocorrect is a disaster for clear communication these days. It's strange to me that it's as bad as it is. Is there a patent on using context to decide which word is appropriate? If not, I can't figure out why it isn't done more commonly. It seems certain the poster didn't type "Revlon" with a capital R, and it also seems certain that any statistical model wouldn't think "Revlon" would be the most likely word here.

It’s all about edge cases. Sometimes, people are discussing some random proper noun, and with modern lax internet/SMS etiquette all sorts of unusual constructions pop up occasionally. Hard to know when it’s intentional, and any amount of over-zealousness is immediately noticeable.

At least that’s a layman’s guess

Sure, and thus the default should be to assume the user is correct and not change anything. But how much chance is there that the user actually typed Revlon with a capital R? I think practically nil. Instead, something was typed that wasn't in the dictionary and the autocorrect decided that "Revlon" was best fit. Depending on what was typed this might be true by Levenshtein distance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance), but I'm really doubtful it could possibly be the best fit in this sentence by any metric of likelihood that considered context. Hence my question of why context isn't used by most autocorrect systems.

> But how much chance is there that the user actually typed Revlon with a capital R? I think practically nil.

Uh.......

You might want to spend a second researching what "Revlon" is before speculating like this. I'm 100% positive that they actually typed Revlon with a capital R, because I know what Revlon is, and it's completely topical and contextual. It's very well known in certain circles, much like Chevron, Howey, and Brandenburg.

Wow, thanks for the hint. I presume you mean this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revlon,_Inc._v._MacAndrews_%26.... That does make it very likely that I was wrong and that is indeed exactly what they typed!

Yep, "fiduciary" is about a trust relationship. A fiduciary is obligated to act in a trustworthy manner. 501c3 board members are entrusted with the welfare of the organization vs. their own interests.

I surmise that "Revlon" stands for "an entity worth billions". IOW having a component with large monetary value to manage.

Apparently Revlon is a legal standard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326869

A quick search for e.g. "Revlon legal standard" will clear that up.

Having served 20+ years as a director on various 501c3 boards, I'm pretty familiar with the requirements of the role. Fundamentally, directors have the duty to serve the interests of the organization vs. the interests of directors. This quote [0] sums it up succinctly:

    Board members are the fiduciaries who steer the organization towards a
    sustainable future by adopting sound, ethical, and legal governance and
    financial management policies, as well as by making sure the nonprofit has
    adequate resources to advance its mission.

So yes indeed, board members serve with the burden of explicit fiduciary duties to the organization.

[0] https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/running-nonprofit/govern...

You're nitpicking via an overly literal interpretation of what I wrote and missing the point entirely.

In the case of nonprofits, the fiduciary duties of board members pertain to keeping the organization financially healthy as opposed to representing the interest of shareholders. But you already knew this, right?

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