In most cases I choose to lay low and believe it was a case of hanlon's razor.

But the one case with the CTO who took a leading position at the vendor he was promoting, that was something. It happened almost 9 years ago now.

It's a fun story that me and my friends still laugh about and refer to whenever similar situations come up. But I'm not prepared to push the whole whistleblower agenda in this case. Feels like throwing rocks at a hornets nest for no reason other than principal.

I've witnessed similar and it's usually Hanlon's Razor. Can't say for sure with every case but I've seen a fair few senior execs who are just legitimate suckers for sales pitches. There's a lot of pressure on them to bring innovation and cut costs and when someone comes along promising to do both they have a hard time passing it up.

Unfortunately it's super hard to just buy innovation. You can buy the best tool in the world, but it won't do you any good unless you pivot your business practices to take advantage of it. Sometimes a good tool can by the catalyst for that rethinking. The re-imagining can be as valuable as the tool itself.

>to anti-corruption unit at your org

Do most companies have this?

"Internal Audit" is pretty common. Though I wouldn't just assume they would take your side. Whistleblowing is tricky business. Someone may decide that the public tarnish of "it happened" is worse than letting it slide.

A lot of the larger ones have a Code of Business Ethics and is a required training you take yearly. Either Netflix didn't have this, or this guy just didn't care.

In my experience, Business Ethics exists to silence whistleblowers. In either case they have about as much influence over executive prerogative as diversity offices have — the people who make the decisions will never give them enough power to question decisions at or above the VP level because they don’t want their own decisions investigated.

It depends. If it puts the company at legal risk, they're pretty quick to act in all companies I've been at.

If it puts the company at just PR risk, varies by company whether they will do anything or participate in the cover up.