Silicon Valley Holiday Parties Are What Wall Street Holiday Parties Used to Be | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley Holiday Parties Are What Wall Street Holiday Parties Used to Be

nymag.com

9 pointsRougeFemme7 comments

In other news: profitable corporations spend money. It's rather unfair to compare them to the Wall Street firms who profited and spent lavishly and then demanded that taxpayers pick up the bill (and Goldman doesn't even belong on that list).

They should see these holiday parties as what they are: a part of the employee's total comp. I hear Amazon does not have holiday parties. As an engineer, I reduces my desire to work at Amazon.

> It's rather unfair to compare them to the Wall Street firms who profited and spent lavishly and then demanded that taxpayers pick up the bill

Tesla Motors took a big loan from the government. It worked out, but it may not have. Technology companies do socialize their losses: cf. Solyndra.

Bull. Can you name 5 tech companies off the top of your head who "socialize their losses"? Few non-tech off the top of my head: Fannie Mae BofA Goldman Sachs GM Chrysler Wells Fargo Morgan Stanley

Whether a company sticks it to the taxpayers depends more on their need and ability to do so, rather than the ethical purity of the industry. Since technology companies have been doing well, and few of them would be bailed out by the government, few have done so. Those who have had the opportunity (Tesla, Solyndra) to shift risk onto taxpayers have done so, as well as automakers.

The interesting question isn't why so many financial companies socialized their losses -- many companies would do so if given the chance. The interesting question is whether the federal government should have bailed them out or not. It's not clear-cut in either direction.

> They should see these holiday parties as what they are: a part of the employee's total comp. I hear Amazon does not have holiday parties. As an engineer, I reduces my desire to work at Amazon.

I hear ya. And it's only getting worse. I was recently recruited by a major tech company and when I learned that weekly bottle service at a popular nightclub wasn't part of the comp package, I lost all interest.

Appealing to extremes always make great arguments!

I think Rap Genius offers this.

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