[HN Gopher] Stop Offering Me Amazon Gift Cards
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       Stop Offering Me Amazon Gift Cards
        
       Author : trevoragilbert
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2024-07-17 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.trevoragilbert.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.trevoragilbert.com)
        
       | Suppafly wrote:
       | I get these offers all the time, but work for a company that
       | would fire me if they thought I'd accepted any of them.
        
         | silverquiet wrote:
         | I've gotten them on occasion and I never even really thought
         | about the ethical implications; I'm not sure it would be that
         | bad? That said, I always suspect phishing whether it's real or
         | a test and do not respond to them.
        
           | Suppafly wrote:
           | It really depends upon your industry and the cultural norms.
           | My company doesn't even let vendors pay to cater the food
           | when they visit. When I worked for a big for profit company,
           | I loved when we'd have vendors pitch us stuff because they
           | always catered lunch.
        
         | smegsicle wrote:
         | how about you send me yours, and i'll send mine to you
         | 
         | no conflict of interest to connect them
         | 
         | criss cross
        
       | josefritzishere wrote:
       | Agreed. Gifts and cash are forbidden in most corporte vendor
       | management policies. Even the appearance of impropriety can get
       | people fired. That's not worth a $5 gift card. If they even offer
       | it I know I'm not intersted in them.
        
       | percivalPep wrote:
       | I worked for a company that sent out remote controlled cars to
       | their top 300 global targets, with the message "if you take the
       | meeting you'll get the remote". Needless to say about 280 were
       | returned, and the remaining 20 didn't take meetings (I assume the
       | cars look good on office bookshelves).
        
         | blessedwhiskers wrote:
         | ...I wonder how many reverse-engineered the protocol or just
         | bought a remote from the manufacturer.
        
       | dmart wrote:
       | One of the first things anyone should set up on a new corporate
       | email account is a filter that sends messages containing "Sales
       | Engineer" straight to spam.
        
       | neilv wrote:
       | > _2: Gift cards as an incentive aren 't always bad. It's when
       | they're confusing your personal vs. professional roles. For
       | example, if a company reaches out offering a gift card in
       | exchange for a personal G2 review or as part of a research
       | initiative, I don't see a conflict there._
       | 
       | Even the "personal" outreaches, such as market research to poll
       | you as a subject matter expert, no mention of your employer...
       | might actually be to try to milk you for information about your
       | employer.
       | 
       | It could be on behalf of competitors of the company, and it could
       | also be on behalf of prospective investors in the company.
       | 
       | Just say no to anyone offering to pay you for a call like that.
       | 
       | However, they can be even more evil, and harder to weed out:
       | rather than some market research pretext, they can pretend to
       | approach you as a recruiter.
        
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       (page generated 2024-07-17 23:16 UTC)