> "But we had to do <terrible thing> because it's the law" isn't an excuse

If the “terrible thing” you’re referring to is paying someone according to a contract signed then, yes, it’s an excuse for why they had to do it.

That’s literally how contracts work.

If you agreed to pay one person enough to do nothing that you have to lay off thousands of other people, I don't care if you signed a contract to do it—it's still worthy of condemnation.

All it changes is the timing of when the action worthy of condemnation occurred.

$10M/yr = 50x $200K/yr

Not paying him and getting sued for it would save about 50 jobs temporarily. Not "thousands"...

Changes the semantics, but not the underlying ethics.

Why is paying a celebrity spokesperson terrible?

Because many of the engineers here either do not understand or are unwilling to accept that society operates in more dimensions than the technical and "rational". They see celebrity and functions like marketing and sales as inherently bullshit and unnecessary.