Ground stop at JFK due to staffing

Who knew electing shitty representation leads to a shitty environment and economy? I wish those effected by the shitty government the best

Forcing people to work and not pay them is slavery!

I got in trouble at a BigCo because I said "we all do this for the money", and they claimed that I had a "bad attitude".

But I don't think I was wrong. Work is fundamentally a business transaction; I sell my time and expertise and they give me money and benefits. Ultimately for any job I've had, even jobs that I really loved, if they stopped paying me I'd stop showing up [1]. It's nothing personal, that's just the transaction that I agreed to.

If I had some bloviating wannabe-demagogue telling me that I should keep working and to not expect backpay, I am quite confident that I would quit, or at least keep calling in sick. I am not going to blame anyone who would do the same. I have no fucking idea why half the country voted for this.

[1] This has actually been tested for one job.

We almost certainly could have floated through this had Reagan not gutted the ATC union (while firing a huge amount of staff) with congress neutering their negotiation power.

We never really fully recovered from that. We took away the power of employees in a high stress job to voice their concerns and needs which, as a result, made the job extra hard to hire for.

You should ask BigCo if they're only providing goods/services to their customers "for the money."

Surviving at BigCo is all about saying one thing, and often doing quite the opposite to advance your career.

If you don't like it, working at a BigCo could be quite soul-draining.

I mean, if I heard you say that, I would probably think you had a "bad attitude" as well. Yes, getting paid is an important part of your job, but presumably you could get paid at many different places, and you choose the one you work at because it has additional benefits on top of a purely transactional relationship.

It's like telling your girlfriend you're dating her because she's really hot. I'm sure that factored in, but she might get annoyed if that's the only reason you can come up with.

It's not just wrong, if a company is registered as "commercial" (as opposed to non-profit or public-benefit), then "for the money" is a legal obligation.

Shareholders can literally sue the management if they don't pursue the obligation.

There are a few privileged folks that get to work a job for those other benefits. The majority take whatever they can get because they need to eat.

> "we all do this for the money"

BigCo

To Investors : We are in it for money. We will earn you money. It is money we dream, covet and will go to any lengths for. Ethics, Integrity, Truth, all those don't matter in the long term.

To Society : We do CSR, we are a good for society, we are ethical, we have integrity, we value society, we care much more than just money.

To Employees : We are family, if one of us is hurt everyone is hurt, we believe in work-life balance, we believe in fairness, equality, openness, transparency.

BigCo is a liar and a hypocrite.

The company is not family, will never be family, and will chew you up and spit you out the moment it is better on net for them.

Profit is not the only obligation. We all exist in a society. Poisoning the water can be very profitable, and yet shareholders cannot sue to force management to do it.

Management is often shareholders themselves and you can bet that if the fine is lower than the money saved they'll poison the water for 1000 years.

We've had rivers catch fire because poisoning the water is profitable.

We all exist in a society. However, the people most likely to own businesses and be successful at it seem to have no moral qualms about harming society so long as it personally enriches themselves.

Bad attitude != incorrect, of course.

Actually good attitude often == not honest.

It is a failed state, and we have seemingly overnight given Russia and China the biggest beautiful gift they could have asked for.

Our military is over extended, science has been flipped over and defunded, and that alone will settle it.

Now add unreasonable volatility from tariffs, and wait, give it time, wait some more until it’s impossible to unwind, then if we’re not in a major war, economy crashes, chaos ensues.

Would you have have chosen to work at your job if you were never going to get paid?

I didn't say it was the only reason to take a job, and I clarified that even at the time. It's perfectly fine to factor in other benefits to the job, (e.g. how much you like the work, how much you like your coworkers, etc.). I actually quit that BigCo and took a paycut to work at a different company because it was soul-draining. When I say "we all do this for the money", I'm saying that this is a necessary component for the job, and ultimately if they stopped paying me then I would not work there anymore, even if I otherwise love the work and environment.

Again, to be clear, I said all this at the time.

I don't think the hot girlfriend analogy applies in this case; if I had a hot girlfriend and she stops being hot, if I liked her I probably wouldn't up and leave her. If a company stops paying, I will absolutely leave.

I'm very bad at that kind of dishonesty. It's not like I'm some hyper-ethical straight-edge nerd, I'm just really bad at the corporate propaganda stuff.

I have worked and done well at BigCos where they were a little less intellectually dishonest, so I don't actually think it's intrinsic to big companies.

I have a friend who's a few years younger than me, and he was a coworker with me at a previous job. He was fresh out of his masters and this was his first job out of school. We became friends fairly quickly, and during lunch one day I mentioned the above "business transaction" stuff, and mentioning that corporations are not your family. It's fine if you like your job, that's a good thing, but just keep in mind that love you show the job will not be reciprocated.

He thought I was being extremely cynical (and I suppose I kind of was) and he disagreed with me.

About a year later, he felt screwed over by the company, and admitted that maybe I was right. I mentioned it is just a conclusion that nearly anyone comes to when working for the corporate world long enough.

It was one of those things, I didn't even consider that it would upset people. Like, maybe it's something on the spectrum for me, but when I said it I assumed it was effectively a truism and I didn't think I'd get any pushback because everyone already knew and agreed with it.

It didn't occur to me that people would say I had a bad attitude because I did think that literally everyone I was talking to would agree and I didn't see why they'd be bothered.

Mix in telling people the news is the enemy of the state and everything bad is because of their neighbors and you have quite a lot of opportunity for chaos.

Let's not pretend that HN is full of blue collar workers. Most of us here are in software development and have options.

In your OP, your primary argument, as I read it, was that business is fundamentally a business transaction. When I pointed this out, you changed your argument to how there are other benefits to a job.

My point is that if you go around and tell everyone at work that you're doing it because of the money, you're... not coming off particularly well? A statement like that comes off a bit odd and socially tone-deaf? And yes, I understand that it's true that you would quit your job if they stopped paying you, but things can be true and still not a great idea to say out loud. It can be an objective fact that my manager is ugly; it's not a good idea to say this during a meeting.

No? But there's a difference between knowing that (which is an obvious fact that anyone would agree with) and walking into your job one day and reminding them you're only there to get paid.

> Shareholders can literally sue the management if they don't pursue the obligation.

Anyone can sue anyone for anything. It’s not remarkable.

Now cite even a single case where shareholders sued and won. In reality, the “obligation” you are referencing has basically only ever been relevant in situations where the board or management is taking bribes. I’m not aware of any cases where shareholders won because the company was too nice to customers, the environment, or whatever.

For whatever reason, “shareholders” live rent free in the heads of Internet commentators, but it’s hard to understate their actual influence.

I said “they give me money and benefits”, and I didn’t define what those benefits were. As I said, I hated working at that BigCo and took a pay cut to work with people I liked more to do work I thought would be more fun. To me the benefit was being able to do work I enjoyed more. I apologize if that wasn’t clear, obviously there are more categories to choosing a job than net pay; if there weren’t we wouldn’t have any teachers.

It wasn’t like I just blurted it out when people were deciding which database to use, it was relevant to the discussion. I can’t remember the exact conversation but IIRC we were having trouble hiring someone for a role and the topic of compensation came up. I felt my comment was relevant, and I genuinely didn’t even consider that people would have issue with it because I thought it was borderline tautological.

The Dodge v. Ford case is known for just that.

If they are not doing just for money. Surely you should be able to give very good discounts to customer. After all why are profits aka. money needed?

And so will a SO if they're needs are not being met anymore. Family has to be family by definition if you're using blood lines. But families can often be MUCH worse than a company.

Try talking to a kid who used to be beat by their parents, at least the company is up front (usually).

My point isn't that shareholders have pure motives. It's that they are not obligated to harm society in the name of profit.

If they don't do it for the money, then presumably the execs won't mind if you swap your pay package with theirs.

How about management suing the shareholders that want less climate destruction?

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234358133/exxon-climate-chan...

But there's also precedent in the other direction:

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. - https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/13-354

> While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits.

Some of the law professor quotes in Wikipedia's "Significance" section may be of interest as far as "Known For" vs "Means":

> Among non-experts, conventional wisdom holds that corporate law requires boards of directors to maximize shareholder wealth. This common but mistaken belief is almost invariably supported by reference to the Michigan Supreme Court's 1919 opinion in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.

Or

> Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and is not the law. Shareholder wealth maximization is a standard of conduct for officers and directors, not a legal mandate.

>But I don't think I was wrong. Work is fundamentally a business transaction; I sell my time and expertise and they give me money and benefits.

On the one hand, I've been saying this for two decades, in small and large cos. I've never been promoted in title, but I've also never been fired and generally been given more and more people to manage. I'm too direct and honest, but as I got older I learned to own it and do it smoothly without disrupting too much.

But the 'consultant mentality' helps me maintain my sanity, sleep a little better at night and never get married to a company. I wish I put my money where my mouth is, though, because peers who move every 2-3 years make significantly more than me despite being more junior.

On the one hand, the FounderSpeak about internalizing the job, loving what you do, and work life balance being bad business nauseates me... On the other hand, some of my high performing workaholic friends are not only richer than me, they seem like they're more purpose driven in their lives as their corporate jobs give meaning it doesn't give me.

It seems then that, for me, self-honesty and work life separation achieve less satisfaction and a lot less pay (and perhaps delayed early retirement).

I know many people have reason to be frustrated, but please don't post like this to HN. It's not what the site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair, this case fits the bill, but it’s interesting we have to go back more than 100 years to find one. Also worth noting that a major fact in this case is that Ford explicitly said and maintained that shareholder value was not his priority.

That’s a mistake that business leaders have long since learned from. Wanna drop a billion dollars to add legs to your metaverse characters? Do whatever you want and just present a plausible argument that it serves shareholders. You don’t need evidence, any rationale is fine as long as you don’t explicitly state that you don’t care about shareholder value.

Another similar case might by something like eBay v Newmark, in that to the extent shareholders got relief it was because of things the business leaders said about shareholder primacy, rather than any actual actions taken by the company.

I guess that’s the real influence of shareholders: boards and executives can do whatever they want as long as when they talk, they don’t speak ill of shareholder primacy.

Not for "anything", judge would dismiss a case if they don't see a way it could win in trial. Defendant can file a "motion to dismiss".

The “suing” part of a law suit comes before the part where dismissal can happen.

For latest example of a stupid lawsuit where this has happened, see Justin Baldoni v. Blake Lively. Baldoni sued Lively and others. After a lot of legal maneuvering, a judge dismissed the case.

But even if it was dismissed, it’s still a fact that Baldoni did sue Lively. You can sue anyone for anything. Doesn’t mean you will get any relief, but you can do it anyway, and in our age of dumb performative lawsuits, many do.