This is just trolling and since this isn't a troll site, please don't do it. We detached this post from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18494572.

I think it has less to do with "fiduciary obligations" and more with self serving policies that the people in charge will put in place as long as they can get away with them. Letting one of the accused walk out with a golden parachute instead of firing him without any compensation for acting in a way that openly harmed the company certainly does not play well with "fiduciary obligations".

Oh my goodness yes. Getting sued? Public relations? Decreased productivity from a hostile work environment? These all affect the bottom line.

Seriously, for the love of all that matters in this universe: Take this notion that any company operates on a moral compass and throw it in the garbage. None of them do. Period. End of story. Some companies are better than others. Some leaders (read: HUMANS) do have a genuine sense of good that they make every attempt to instill into the culture of their organizations. That's amazing. I love to see that.

But this only happens when (1) the organization is already financially solvent and (2) the acts of good will won't cause the company to become financially insolvent. Which means the best companies are MOTIVATED by a moral compass, but they operate on a financial one.

This Google case is especially fucking hilarious, to watch some people in these comments (not you, but others) try to justify Google's actions under the banner of a desire to create a safe workplace. Bullshit. They only enacted these policies after a massive number of their employees walked out on their jobs, the public pressure was mounting, and they let known assholes leave on their own accord with, as you say, a golden parachute. Google is easily the most morally dubious company out there.

I mean, I might have put some tobacco, arms, oil, coal, chemical, and surveillance companies up there. Particularly since I don't see them leading the way on harassment, inequity, diversity, or any of the other things Google is being criticized for. It sort of seems as though they have all the same issues plus body counts. But perhaps I've missed the news, are Gazprom and Saudi Aramco famous for how well they handle sexual harassment claims?

Your point about corporate ruthlessness is a solid one, but putting Google at the head of that list seriously undersells the problem. It's worth remembering how bad things are, and how bad they can get.

Hell, now that I'm thinking of it, I'd put Chiquita higher up on the list than Google. They never actually got over the bad old days in Honduras, they were caught funding and directly arming Colombian terrorists in 2004.

But that's not really an option for any company. So they continue on.

- Giving opposing counsel less time to request information/dig through the requested information to find evidence against you because the timeline is expedited compared to a typical court trial.

- The company selects the arbitrator. How often does a company need to select an arbitrator? Not infrequently. How often does the employee seeking damages need to select an arbitrator? Almost never. If the arbitrator wants more future work who do you think they're more likely to side with? Do you think they're more likely to award damages against the company at the high end of the spectrum or the low end of the spectrum?

- Limited PR costs. How many "big" arbitration cases have you ever heard of in the press? Not many I would guess. How many "big" court cases have you heard of in the press? Bad PR can cost the company a lot in terms of the bottom line but also opportunity costs. It's difficult to measure but there are certainly some talented people who will think twice about joining the company after recent PR.

To look at the issue from the amoral, profit-maximizing perspective...

It's not that the harassed workers are a benefit; they are indeed a cost, in terms of lower productivity and legal risk.

Rather, it's that the difficulty of pushing back against the high-paid harassers is a cost, and insta-firing them (or even reprimanding them in a way that makes them want to leave) can hurt profitability because of the difficulty of replacing them.

And, though I shudder to say it, "being able to harass underlings" -- to some executives -- functions as a kind of non-monetary compensation.

Which brings to mind the irony of how very stereotypically corporate the USSR acted with things like attributing the entire output of a coal mine to one miner to boost their productivity figures and circular shipping coal on trains to boost their transported coal metrics.

Other than your repeated assertions and slandering of anyone who disagrees with you as "SJWs", do you have anything to back you up?

How do shareholders benefit from the increased legal exposure of this new policy? And why, if everything Google does is to benefit the bottom line, are they choosing not employ this new policy retroactively? They didn't have to do any of this.

Sometimes fulfilling fiduciary obligations and creating a safer work environment aren't mutually exclusive...

Google obviously gives a shit about its net profits.

> So you're saying that Google's board weren't all hired with the express instruction to maximise earnings per share?

Board members aren't "hired", they're elected by the shareholders. They are not employees of the corporation (usually) and they do not have contracts with shareholders. Shareholders will, obviously, vote them out if company performance suffers.

Salary and bonuses for who? The board doesn't get salary and bonuses.

> Who owns the entity that pays the salary & bonuses?

Corporate ownership is a complex topic. The oversimplification that shareholders "own" a fractional portion of the corporation is not entirely accurate and breaks down in complex cases like this. You get into share classes, the status of the corporate entity as an independent legal entity (which, in turn, goes down a rabbit hole that leads to corporations as non-natural people), and what power shareholders have over the guidance of the corporate entity.

Boards are not infallible, nor are the people on them. They're not even infallible at maximising profit - never mind trying to handle challenging cultural problems without being eaten alive by them.

There is no such obligation. Please stop spreading bullshit.

Edit:

To those who don't believe me, see another post in the thread[1] or other sources on corporate law[2][3]. Note that the duty of loyalty says nothing about maximizing anything, and such a legal standard is preposterous.

[1] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/myth-maximizing-shar...

[2] https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/corporate-fid...

[3] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fiduciary-responsibi...

Seems you & all the fellow downvoters've mistaken my statement of fact for a statement of moral obligation...

Company agents are employed by shareholders to maximise returns on invested capital. It's literally in their contracts: "you get paid X for improving metric Y by Z".

Nope, it's the calling of statements "facts" when they are quite arguable nothing of the sort. Moral obligation was not at issue here.

Myth: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/myth-maximizing-shar...