Comment by FirmwareBurner

1 year ago

>It wasn't profit that made Audi hire a vocal political extremist

Sure, the problem with these huge wealthy companies like Audi, Google, Apple, etc is that the people who run them are insanely detached from the trenches the Average Joe lives in (see the Silicon Valley satire), and end up hiring a buch of useless weirdos in positions they shouldn't be in, simply because they have the right background/connections and the people hiring them are equally clueless but have the imense resources of the corporations at their disposal to risk and spend on such frivolities, and at their executive levels there's no clear KPIs to keep them in check, like ICs have.

So inevitably a lot of these big wealthy companies end up hiring people who use the generous resources of their new employer for personal political activism knowing the company can't easily fire them now due to the desire of the company to not rock the boat and cause public backlash for firing someone public facing who might also be a minority or some other protected category.

BTW, got any source on the Audi story? Would love to know more?

> So inevitably a lot of these big wealthy companies end up hiring people who use the generous resources of their new employer for personal political activism knowing the company can't easily fire them now due to the desire of the company to not rock the boat and cause public backlash for firing someone public facing who might also be a minority or some other protected category.

Exactly. This has been my experience. The political axe grinders get hired. They bring their personal politics to work. Slowly they hire people who agree with them. Then they're all bringing their politics to work. Finally, the entire company changes and becomes dysfunctional.

This is what Coinbase and Kraken FX stopped in their company saying it was destroying them.