[HN Gopher] Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever...
___________________________________________________________________
Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia
(2018)
Author : erlend_sh
Score : 262 points
Date : 2025-03-10 07:42 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.ecosia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.ecosia.org)
| conaclos wrote:
| Does anyone use Ecosia every day? How does it compare with
| DuckDuckGo and Qwant?
| rhodescolossus wrote:
| They just use Bing and Google Search
| https://ecosia.helpscoutdocs.com/article/579-search-results-...
| mrweasel wrote:
| Yes, I haven't used Qwant though. I'd say it's pretty equal to
| DuckDuckGo, maybe a little better after they started mixing in
| Google results. Generally speaking I do think that the Bing
| powered search engines does much better than Google, but Ecosia
| had a few specific searches where it's would fail me, that's
| gone now.
| mixedmath wrote:
| I've been using it as my primary search engine for a couple of
| months. It's not great as a search engine. I find their
| locality of search to not be well-supported (e.g. the search
| "food near me" works good in google and not great in ecosia).
|
| Ecosia doesn't emphasize recent events, news, or posts in
| search results as much as I'm used to --- but I haven't decided
| if this is good or bad.
|
| It's not so bad that I've changed. But I do sometimes use a
| better search engine when I want better results.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I just checked Ecosia, seems to be less censored at a very
| quick glance, at least in comparison to DDG and Google.
| aswerty wrote:
| I really like the idea of Ecosia and Steward Owned companies, but
| as somebody who wants out of the Ad game completely, uses uBlock
| Origin religiously and pays for services like email and search. I
| haven't actually used Ecosia, but am interested in others
| experiences with it. But I imagine in the HN crowd a lot of other
| people fit the same profile as myself.
| dmbche wrote:
| You pay for search and email? What services do you use? May I
| ask you why, if you're wanting to go into it?
| dotcoma wrote:
| I pay for Tuta (tuta.com) for email.
|
| The only paid search engine I know is Kagi (kagi.com)
| dwedge wrote:
| I wish more people would self-host email. Email getting
| centralised to a handful of providers is no good for anyone.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I stopped self hosting when my host got blacklisted and I
| lost about a year of emails with my grandmother... I just
| thought she was reading them but not having the energy to
| respond but when I visited at Christmas I saw that all my
| emails were in her spam box.
| loufe wrote:
| The unfortunate thing is that more than any other
| service, email feels like the one on which I cannot risk
| to compromise reliability. This sort of story (thank you
| for sharing) unfortunately fits with my own experience
| managing my University's undergraduate society's local
| email server. Non-stop headaches and complete
| indifference from every group which affects your setup.
| Novosell wrote:
| Same here about not wanting to compromise on email
| reliability. I self host most things, run Linux, DDG,
| custom rom without Google Play, etc etc.
|
| But I've still got my @outlook.com email address.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't even routinely use my undergrad's email
| forwarding address. It's probably better than it used to
| be but, at one time, it definitely caused more stuff to
| drop in the bit bucket than emailing directly. And I
| assume, at this point, that my Gmail account isn't going
| to go away.
| stavros wrote:
| Not the GP, but I pay for Fastmail because it's just so much
| better than Gmail, and I pay for Kagi sometimes because it's
| generally better than Google.
| iregina wrote:
| How is Fastmaol? Is it inconvenient to not use Gmail?
| hyperbrainer wrote:
| Not parent, but: The primary inconvenience I see with de-
| googling is just the sheer number of things that become
| just slightly harder. For one, Login with Google. Now, I
| know people de-googling will probably want to have
| separate accounts rather than SSO anyways, but it is an
| important consideration. You also lose GDrive and the
| GSuite in general, which alternatives exist, yes, but IMO
| not as good. Also, most people who work online on GDocs
| will now find it inconvenient to collaborate with you.
| aswerty wrote:
| All great points. I try to de-google mostly from a
| personal perspective (though still haven't gotten off
| Maps or Android). I use loads of Google products at work
| though because I'm not the decision maker there.
| ghaff wrote:
| I do use personal Google Workspace now--in part, because
| I used to use it extensively at work. But even if I used
| something else, people casually share GDocs with me from
| time to time.
| stavros wrote:
| No, the only difference I noticed was that it was faster.
| I still use Maps and have my Google account, but I don't
| use Gmail (or Google calendar). I made the transition
| years ago and it was really painless for me.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Transitioning from Gmail was painless? What approach did
| you take? I think I would have hundreds, if not thousands
| of services I would need to change email on.
| stavros wrote:
| Oh, sorry, I have my own domain so I just changed my DNS,
| imported my messages to Fastmail and that was it.
| lentil_soup wrote:
| I did it little by little, no need to rush it. Just start
| changing some main ones and as you log in to the others
| take the min it takes to change it.
|
| On top of that I moved services to their own custom email
| like <service-name>@<my-domain>.com. That way it's all
| neatly sorted inside Fastmail in different folders (and I
| know who is selling my data)
| jacobgkau wrote:
| My approach has been simply signing up for new services
| on my non-Gmail addresses, and occasionally switching
| important ones over. Nobody's making you delete your
| Gmail account, so you can still keep it open for legacy
| stuff as long as you need to (especially since it's
| free).
| toast0 wrote:
| I never found gmail particularly convenient. I still have
| a google account with an @gmail.com address, because
| Android basically doesn't work without that (you can make
| a personal @whatever else address, but that doesn't work
| with Android; you can also make a workspace @whatever
| else address, but that requires payment or time travel,
| and doesn't address the core issue).
|
| The only inconvenient thing is people know how to spell
| gmail.com and have to be told how to spell my personal
| domain, but my preference is to use my personal domain
| anyway, I've been using my personal domain for email
| since before gmail launched; if I used gmail, I'd be
| forwarding my mail to it, rather than using my gmail
| address. Fastmail for mail just works, and I don't
| remember if I had to turn conversations off, but I only
| had to turn it off once (I detest the conversations
| feature, but if you like it, I can't tell you if Fastmail
| has a good one or not :P). Actually, the second
| inconvenient thing is the Android app doesn't really do
| offline content; I think gmail is better at that; I
| griped about this for a long time, but now I just accept
| it --- offline content is a good match for email, but it
| doesn't bother me enough to do anything about it.
|
| I do use my gmail address for something things where I
| feel it's a good thing to "present as a normal person",
| or where my email domain might be embarrassing (I have
| some other email domains, but one of them is a .is, which
| is even worse for getting people to spell). I used to use
| my yahoo address for that, but I got tired of logging
| into yahoo just for that, and google has successfully
| tied me into their account system.
|
| I do not use the Fastmail calendar. Android calendar is
| convenient, and tied to google calendaring.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| In my case it's Kagi and Fastmail. Fastmail primarily because
| I don't want to support Google and Kagi because it's
| genuinely better than the alternatives.
| heeton wrote:
| Same here. Both products are actually better than the ad-
| supported versions. Fastmail masked-addresses are great.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Fastmail and Kagi. The former is amazing - Gmail UX and speed
| is atrocious in comparison, and the latter is amazing to find
| reliable, to-the-point results.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Kagi and Soverin for me. I bailed from GMail after the AMP-
| in-mail proposal,[1] and EU hosting was a bonus; ended up
| blogging about my choice back in 2018.[2] If there was a good
| EU equivalent to Kagi I'd be definitely interested.
|
| [1] https://blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing-power-amp-
| gmai...
|
| [2] https://www.robinwhittleton.com/2018/02/18/dropping-g-
| suite/
| aswerty wrote:
| Fastmail and Kagi. And I'm very happy with both.
| iglio wrote:
| Kagi and Proton here
| nosioptar wrote:
| I pay for purelymail after seeing others on HN say they like
| it. It costs something absurd,like $0.8 per month, and I've
| never had a problem with it.
| herrherrmann wrote:
| Not OP, but just checking in as a another happy Kagi + Fastmail
| user here!
| stakhanov wrote:
| Does anybody happen to have a pointer to further research this
| "Steward Owned company" legal structure? Since they're based in
| Germany, I assume this is a translation of a German legal term of
| sorts, but I couldn't find the original or anything that would
| let me learn more about it.
| onli wrote:
| https://purpose-economy.org/en/companies/ gives an impression
| if you click through to the company descriptions, they tend to
| explain what is meant. Otherwise the term seems to be
| understood in English, there is a wikipedia article that seems
| correct to me. Or was that one missing the information you
| seek?
| stakhanov wrote:
| Thanks for the pointer!
| blankton wrote:
| It sounds like a gGmbH, but the Imprint
| (https://www.ecosia.org/imprint) still says Ecosia GmbH (->
| For-Profit).
| stakhanov wrote:
| I looked up the bylaws just now (mostly because I'm
| procrastinating). It looks like they have a gGmbH that owns
| 99% of the shares (by number of shares), but founders retain
| 99% of the voting rights. Founders' shares are barred from
| receiving dividends, and the gGmbH has veto rights in
| relation to any certain changes that would fundmentally alter
| this ownership structure.
| nbadg wrote:
| Something I don't really understand, maybe you have
| thoughts: is there a benefit to gGmbH over the company
| being a wholly-owned subsidiary of a Stiftung?
| stakhanov wrote:
| They have a brief paragraph here [1] that indicates they
| considered these and decided against it: "The team
| considered several alternative ownership solutions to
| address these questions, including converting the
| business to a German non-profit and establishing a
| foundation. Both of these solutions had constraints,
| though, and neither offered the mixture of
| entrepreneurial flexibility and structure security they
| sought."
|
| Stiftung (Foundation) generally work well if you have a
| bunch of money and you basically have a fixed "algorithm"
| that you want to execute around the money like: "Invest
| it all into an index fund, and in any year in which the
| fund returns a profit, pay out the profits to the family
| members of person X in the same ratios that would apply
| if those people came into X's inheritance". You then
| appoint a bunch of lawyers to serve as the board of the
| foundation. Because the "algorithm" is so precisely
| defined, the set of circumstances where the lawyers do
| their job wrong will be well-defined, and will constitute
| a breach in their fiduciary duty. There's basically no
| room for making entrepreneurial decisions along the way.
| It's a bit like taking a pile of money, putting it on a
| ship, putting the ship on autopilot, and giving up any
| and all direct control of the ship. Depending on what
| precisely that "algorithm" actually is, this might get
| you tax advantages. Or it might create non-financial
| positive outcomes you might be trying to achieve like
| making sure that your progeny will continue to enjoy the
| wealth you created for many generations to come while
| limiting the probability that any one generation can
| screw it all up for the later generations.
|
| Social entrepreneurship is different from that: A social
| entrepreneur wants the goodwill and favourable tax
| treatment that comes from giving up their claim to
| ownership of the money generated by the business (this is
| what the gGmbH status does; it's a bit like 501(c)3 in
| the U.S.) -- But they want to retain control over the
| business. They want to make entrepreneurial decisions as
| they go, changing strategies along the way in whatever
| way they please, without restricting themselves too much
| to the execution of any predefined programme.
|
| [1] https://purpose-economy.org/en/companies/ecosia/
| nbadg wrote:
| For context, I live in Germany and am familiar with the
| landscape here. Also, I would not equate a 501(c)3 to a
| gGmbH; gGmbH is more like a B Corp (at least in some of
| the states that allow it; corporate law differs from
| state to state in the US). A gemeinnutzige Stiftung
| (Foundation for public purpose) is much closer to a 501c3
| than a gGmbH, and a Familienstiftung (Family foundation)
| is closer to a family trust. (At least for tax purposes,
| which is the territory I'm most familiar with in this
| comparison).
|
| But that's not what I'm asking about. Unlike in the US,
| Stiftungs in Germany (both family and public-purpose) can
| own an unrestricted percentage of shares -- including all
| of them -- in normal companies (Kapitalgesellschaften).
| And I'm specifically interested *not* in restructuring a
| GmbH as a Stiftung, which is what Ecosia decided against,
| but rather, I'm wondering if there are any resources
| available discussing pros and cons of forming a Stiftung
| as a holding entity, fully owning a GmbH subsidiary (such
| a construct is not legally possible in the US).
|
| From my perspective, this holding structure would provide
| much better legal insulation (in both directions) from
| the founders, preserve the operational flexibility of the
| (operational) GmbH, while allowing distributions from the
| GmbH (which would, by definition of being a 100%
| stakeholder, flow exclusively into the Stiftung) to be
| distributed by the (purely administrative) Stiftung,
| according to the founding documents. But I've never seen
| such an arrangement discussed in depth, which is why I'm
| asking about it.
| stakhanov wrote:
| Okay, well it sounds like you're deeper in the rabbit
| hole than I am, then. (I also live in Germany and have a
| passing interest for the law, though I'm no lawyer).
|
| Regarding your last paragraph, where you say that a
| foundation provides better insulation from founder
| control, it sounds to me like you answered your own
| question: Retention of control vs. insulation from
| control is precisely the distinction here.
|
| Foundations are typically for people who don't have the
| option of retaining control, even if they wanted to,
| because they are typically close to death and in the
| process of structuring an inheritance. Handing over
| control to person X is something they see as a threat,
| because they assume that X will screw it up, so they'd
| rather make it so that no one can have control.
|
| With social entrepreneurship like Ecosia, founders are
| typically still young and somewhat idealistic. They want
| to retain the control, because them being in control is
| not something they see as a threat. Rather that's what
| they see as the best possible mechanism for their
| company/cause retaining its idealistic values. (Also,
| they are looking for something meaningful to do with
| their lives).
|
| A cynic might notice that you're kind of looking at
| regular narcissism vs. communal narcissism here.
|
| If you wanted to structure your social entrepreneurship
| type business as a foundation which owns 100% of the
| shares in "your" for-profit corporation, that doesn't
| work as a "have your cake and eat it too" solution,
| because either that means that the trustees of the
| foundation are actually your boss and you're just a
| replaceable employee with replaceable employee wages or,
| if you try to pull any shenanigans to make it so that
| this is not the case, the trust loses its tax-free /
| "community interest" status. Trying to game this system
| is something that rich people are routinely trying to do.
| I'm not saying that some don't get away with it, but the
| authorities generally have a lot of tools at their
| disposal to fight this sort of thing.
| nbadg wrote:
| Control is maybe the wrong word here. GmbHs are required
| to have one or more natural persons as a Geschaftsfuhrer,
| which would presumably just stay the founders, so they
| would retain control of the GmbH. The holding Stiftung
| would then impose the rules under which the GmbH would
| issue dividends, and (presumably) also retain the ability
| to fire the Geschaftsfuhrer:innen, if the Satzung der
| Stiftung decided to. And of course the founders could
| also put themselves on the board of the Stiftung for
| added control. Interesting side note, this would probably
| result in the founders being
| Sozialversicherungspflichtig, but that's a whole
| different can of worms. But the founding documents of the
| Stiftung could perfectly well spell out exactly the
| situations under which the founders could be removed as
| Geschaftsfuhrer der GmbH.
|
| What I mean by legal insulation is more that, in this
| holding construct, the GmbH ceases to have any financial
| relationship to the founders. Stiftungs are sort of...
| headless financial pools governed strictly by their
| founding documents, completely divorced from the people
| that created them, and the GmbH would simply be an asset
| in that financial pool. That means that, for example,
| were someone to sue the founders, even for something
| completely unrelated, there is no possible way that
| shares in the GmbH could possibly end up someone else's
| hands. Typically when we talk about the liability
| limitations in corporations, we're talking about them in
| terms of shielding the founders from the actions of the
| company, but the inverse is in my opinion just as
| important (if you're truly interested in forming a self-
| governing social organization pursuing a social good).
| I'm not sure if there's any examples of shares in a gGmbH
| being assessed as assets in a civil case; that would be
| another interesting question to inform the decision.
|
| That being said, one of the reasons that I'm so
| interested in the idea of a Stiftung holding, is that I
| think it also opens up options for actual democracy
| within the leadership of a company, which is a
| fascinating idea. That isn't a requirement in a Stiftung
| holding relationship, but I do think it's an interesting
| possibility.
|
| At any rate, I think probably the primary downside of
| this idea is that, like I said, I've not seen any
| examples of it discussed publicly. Which means you'd need
| to be doing a lot of the legal legwork on your own --
| which means lots of time spent talking to lawyers, which
| would be really expensive. But I think there's some
| really interesting possibility for innovation in terms of
| corporate governance here, in a way that, like I said,
| wouldn't be legally possible in the US, and it definitely
| seems like the structure that gives the social purpose
| the maximum possible protection.
| stakhanov wrote:
| I 100% agree with you that a Stiftung like that (possibly
| with a for-profit company as a subsidiary) would be the
| right structure if you wanted to maximize credibility
| around your community-interest status.
|
| This stuff actually gets a lot of attention from
| lawmakers: For example, in the U.K. you have the "CIC"
| (community interest company). Some 13 years ago, David
| Cameron tried pretty hard to motivate enthusiasm for the
| idea of a "third sector", something that's not government
| and not for-profit. In the U.S. you also have the "L3C"
| (low-profit limited liability company). In Germany, you
| have the idea of "Verantwortungseigentum" which was on
| the agenda for the previous government, though they then
| didn't get around to it, and you had Sahra Wagenknecht
| making it into a big talking point for her campaign.
|
| But I don't think a lack of legal infrastructure is
| really the limiting factor here: As you noticed, we do
| have foundations (Stiftung) of various types, as well as
| coops (Genossenschaft). In addition, regular partnerships
| (like KG, OG) have recently been opened up so that their
| bylaws can now prescribe a purpose that isn't for-profit.
| A club (Verein) which in and of itself isn't for-profit,
| can have a sort of dual identity because it can become
| the proprietor of a sole proprietorship with a for-profit
| purpose (at least I seem to recall reading that such a
| thing is possible). Oh, and, of course, a corporation
| can, in theory, own 100% of its own shares. I recall
| reading about that, just please don't ask me where. You
| can basically wipe out ownership that way, without being
| subject to the stringent rules around foundations.
|
| So, legal structures are as powerful and flexible as they
| are underutilised: I think it's the psychological side
| that explains why.
|
| Usually, even if you have very good intentions, your best
| bet initially is to start your entity as a for-profit.
| Being able to operate cheaply and without cumbersome
| decision-making structures beats lofty aspirations for
| any business that just gets started. Not turning a profit
| in a given year (and not paying taxes because you don't
| turn a profit), is an option you always have. (There's no
| special paperwork needed for that). In fact: Not having
| any profit to worry about when it comes to your structure
| is the likely outcome. Having a profit and trying to
| decide how to make it so that your profits won't corrupt
| you in your idealism is a problem you would quite like to
| have! (Again: From the perspective of a founder who is
| just getting started).
|
| Then, the day comes where you turn a profit quite
| regularly. And, at that point, once the flywheel has got
| going, truly giving up control will be psychologically
| difficult.
| nbadg wrote:
| Very much agree in terms of the best strategy being
| simply to start a plain-jane Kapitalgesellschaft,
| probably either UG or GmbH, and go from there.
|
| It is indeed possible to have a so-called "kein-Mann
| GmbH" where the company has bought back all of its
| shares, though my understanding is that it's a bit of a
| legal grey area, and certainly not settled law.
|
| I agree that the legal infrastructure is almost certainly
| there, at least in the sense that there are absolutely
| plenty of lawyers and lawmakers that specialize in this
| area. My point is simply that, because it's so much less
| common, basically every situation ends up being unique,
| which means that the work that the lawyers are doing is
| almost always a one-off, which makes it really expensive.
| And so it's just not worth the effort.
| dwedge wrote:
| I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this
| always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of
| money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia
| are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to
| see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO.
|
| You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income
| from it every month - especially if now that can't be taken away
| from you.
| __alexs wrote:
| Yes avoiding another Mozilla situation should be a high
| priority for anyone interested in this area in future.
| stavros wrote:
| No, but it aligns with the interests of the consumers better if
| you're actually targeting consumers (for the recurring revenue)
| rather than burning cash to get as many users as you can lock
| in, and then selling to someone who will milk them when they
| have no option.
| dwedge wrote:
| That's true, but the product can still get worse chasing
| revenue from those consumers.
| stavros wrote:
| Hm, I've seen this line of argumentation a lot, and I'd
| like to name it as a fallacy. It's basically "perfect is
| the enemy of the good", where one good action is dismissed
| because it's still not perfect.
|
| The product will get less bad for me when chasing revenue
| from me than how bad it will get for me when it's chasing
| revenue from someone who isn't me.
| dwedge wrote:
| > The product will get less bad for me when chasing
| revenue from me than how bad it will get for me when it's
| chasing revenue from someone who isn't me.
|
| I'd like to name this as a fallacy - begging the
| question. The product will be better chasing revenue from
| you because it will be worse chasing revenue from someone
| else.
|
| Every company has the option of chasing extra revenue
| from customers. This company has no other options.
| Perhaps this makes them better as a company and want to
| develop a better product so that people naturally want to
| use it more. Or perhaps they, like so many companies
| before them, try to see how much they can milk out of
| their userbase before they lose it.
|
| They also aren't immune to costs around them. If their
| office rent goes up, or power for their servers costs
| more, they have limited options. Reduce wages (unlikely),
| do less good, or get more from users.
| stavros wrote:
| > I'd like to name this as a fallacy - begging the
| question. The product will be better chasing revenue from
| you because it will be worse chasing revenue from someone
| else.
|
| I said the product will be better _for me_. I generally
| believe that things are better for me when they 're
| trying to entice me versus when they're trying to entice
| someone who isn't me, but we can debate that, if you
| want.
| dwedge wrote:
| I agree with you that it's usually true, I just don't
| agree that it has to be true. When a company is well
| funded and focusing on userbase, that's great. When they
| need more money, it might not be. I know they are totally
| different types of companies, but look at social networks
| - when they are expanding they are good for everyone,
| once they decide it's time to earn more money from their
| exist users (focusing on the user) that's when it gets
| worse.
|
| In Ecosia's case it's different I think - without
| accounts and nothing keeping you there, every customer
| today is a customer that needs enticing again tomorrow.
| stavros wrote:
| The problem with social networks is that they decide to
| earn more money _from advertisers_ by selling the users.
| I don 't know how a company can say "I'll only ever want
| a specific kind of customer", but at least saying "I'll
| never want to sell" is a step in that direction.
| wesselbindt wrote:
| I see it a lot too, and it's called the Nirvana fallacy
| [1]. We shouldn't do anything about tax evasion because
| people will evade taxes anyway (ignoring that you reduce
| the total amount of tax evasion). We shouldn't ban drunk
| driving because people will drive drunk anyway (ignoring
| that you reduce the total number of drunk drivers). We
| shouldn't trust non-profits, because they seek revenue
| anyway (ignoring that it's much less severe for any non-
| profit in comparison to a for-profit company).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
| stavros wrote:
| Nice, thanks for the name! Your examples are also spot
| on.
| zbyforgotp wrote:
| They can do the milking without selling - don't they?
| HunOL wrote:
| Yes, but opposite of "maximizing profits" does not
| automatically imply targeting consumer or better product. In
| this example they state that they interested in maximizing
| amount of tree they plant. Cool, good for them, but it's not
| something I'm interested in when using a search engine. After
| one of Vivaldi's recent updates, I was asked to try Ecosia as
| my default engine, and I did, but after a few days I went
| back to Google.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Even if the CEO makes a million a year, it is a pittance
| compared to the potential equity value of a tech company.
| motbus3 wrote:
| I would love to see it too. Also relations with for profit
| companies as well.
|
| But how much a CEO of a company like this should make? It seems
| quite lot of work and one needs to make a living. But how much
| would be fair in your opinion?
|
| I honestly have no idea
| ghaff wrote:
| In the US, the CEO/executive director of a mid-size non-
| public company would probably expect a few hundred $K/year.
| Which isn't starvation wages, especially by European
| standards, but is something a lot of individual contributors
| in Silicon Valley would consider a relative pittance. And
| toss in no equity.
| sponaugle wrote:
| That is a good estimate.
|
| You can see US non profit compensation online -
| https://datarepublican.com/nonprofit/assets/
|
| Many of the presidents/vps make in that exact range (~$200
| - $300k), although there are other like:
|
| https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/36
| 3...
|
| Feeding America, which pays their CEO a tad under $1m.
| fadesibert wrote:
| I'm not sure how much that's creating outsized income for the
| founder...
|
| There are between 98 (2022 annual report number) and 120
| (ZoomInfo) and 133 (LinkedIn number). German filings are
| notoriously opaque vs Europe or UK.
|
| So that's 637k EUR / 120 employees (although the payroll number
| jumps around between 450 and ~640 - weird, but who knows, # of
| employees shifting around or some paid quarterly or on
| commission?).
|
| That's around 5,300 EUR / month per employee, or 64k / year.
| Germans notoriously don't work on the cheap - so unlikely that
| everyone else is working below market to line the CEO's
| pockets.
|
| That said - they are still a profit seeking enterprise (another
| commenter noted that they aren't gGMBH - but also they set up a
| Feeder fund in January - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/dat
| a/1999332/000199933224...)
|
| Which presumably CAN be profit seeking.
|
| So yeah - it doesn't invalidate their mission - if you're into
| that - but it's not 100% of what it says on the tin.
|
| Also - monthly financial statements may be a German thing
| (sorry, I actually quite like Germany and Germans - just German
| company law is quite cumbersome) - but annual statements would
| give a clearer and more transparent picture.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > That's around 5,300 EUR / month per employee
|
| If the salary is 4300 (instead of 5300) per employee for
| those 120, that would give the CEO the extra 120x1000 per
| month.
|
| I am not implying the CEO does that, I am merely saying that
| "non-profit" is a relevant term and unless
| supervised/regulated can become a big earner for one/some/all
| of the staff.
|
| Unless they report all salaries (anonymised) and this would
| be signed-off by an independent/external auditor (give 20k
| per year to one of the Big4) we would be somehow certain that
| there isn't a hockey-stick graph (with the CEO and his
| wife/husband/son/etc/) getting 70% of the salaries for 3
| people versus 30% of the salaries for the 117 people.
| bombcar wrote:
| In the US salaries for the top dogs at nonprofits is
| reported.
|
| Some trick this with "consulting fees" to companies
| controlled by the top dogs, but it sat least something.
| nkmnz wrote:
| > the payroll number jumps around between 450 and ~640 -
| weird, but who knows
|
| Where did you get that data from? The difference might be due
| to headcount vs. FTE and/or including vs. excluding
| freelancers.
| Galanwe wrote:
| Not sure how fiscality works in Germany, but if similar as
| France, then that would be 64k _super_ gross per employee per
| year. So you would remove ~25% of that to get employee gross.
| Meaning, more like 50k gross per year.
| rendx wrote:
| > German filings are notoriously opaque vs Europe or UK.
|
| German company filings (for-profit and non-profit) are public
| at the registry of commerce (Handelsregister) but not easy to
| parse.
| fweimer wrote:
| And you can view many of them for free at
| unternehmensregister.de.
| rendx wrote:
| You can read ALL of them for free at the source,
| handelsregister.de - they stopped charging for access in
| 2022.
| fweimer wrote:
| Huh, I didn't know that. But it seems incomplete, at
| least for Baden-Wurttemberg. Not sure if that's a bug, an
| outage, or if they didn't submit all the data. On
| unternehmensregister.de, you can usually view lots and
| lots of information, including annual reports (with
| increasing detail, depending on company size).
|
| As far as I understand it, on unternehmensregister.de,
| you only have to pay for access to files (including
| annual reports) of small companies that make use of the
| SS 326 Abs. 2 HGB exception:
| https://www.buzer.de/326_HGB.htm And maybe for formally
| authenticated copies? Everything else should be free of
| charge.
| stakhanov wrote:
| FWIW: They have provisions in their bylaws (which can only be
| changed with the assent of their public interest asset-locked
| shareholder) that restrict salaries to a level that's
| commonplace in the industry specifically in Germany. In
| Germany, software engineers and managers tend to make a lot
| less than they do in the U.S., certainly not an amount of money
| that's a meaningful tradeoff for giving up rights to dividends
| and other distributions.
| elric wrote:
| Depending on where in the world you are, paying yourself a high
| wage results in much higher taxes than paying profits in the
| form of dividends. These taxes may benefit society at large,
| which may well be in line with their goals.
| antonkochubey wrote:
| Oh but you can pay expenses to a "consulting company" that
| your wife/brother/daughter/... owns which will keep their
| profits and pay off dividents
| Galanwe wrote:
| Yes, you can, but that's not legal.
|
| If you want to compare the merits of two systems, you have
| to do it on legal grounds. If you allow cheating, then
| nothing is comparable, everything is possible, no system is
| better.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I don't have any special information here, but I wanted to
| mention that's it's just as exhausting when people approach
| every single interaction assuming the worst possible intentions
| as the reverse. It's OK to not be cynical once in a while.
| notTooFarGone wrote:
| Yeah seriously.
|
| "Oh no the entire company has wages - let's assume it's
| exploitation"
|
| Is basic divisive language that just perpetuates the "world
| is bad and there is no lesser evil" bs that drives current
| news fatigue imo.
|
| People are sure that 1 < 100000 but Google Vs ecosia is
| somehow more muddy.
| brookst wrote:
| "They're trying to do better, which means they're claiming
| to be perfect, but I am wise enough to know nobody's
| perfect, so they're a bunch of liars who are no better than
| all those other liars"
|
| It does get fatiguing.
| dwedge wrote:
| That's a lot of projection in a forum where you're
| supposed to assume the best of people you talk with. I
| never presented that false dichotomy.
| dwedge wrote:
| You're right. I don't necessarily assume the worst from them
| and I don't assume the worst in general, but it's difficult
| to switch off from the fact that this article is marketing,
| and it's marketing for a company that the author makes money
| from.
|
| Listening to cool ideas like this is nice, but a little
| skepticism when sharing marketing is, I think, valid.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| If only there was this much scepticism around the manifestos of
| Thiel, Andreesen, Yarvin and the like from within the tech
| community.
|
| Nah, the guys working to give people options and save trees.
| THEY must be up to something
| lxgr wrote:
| That's certainly a fair point, but currently even the
| (non-)possibility of shareholder ownership and for-profit
| takeovers seems to be on shaky ground with what OpenAI is
| trying.
|
| I think we should definitely ask for both (i.e. no executives
| profiting from excessive salaries _and_ no future possibility
| of any dividends in any form to any owners), but I 'd take at
| least one instead of neither any day.
| maltelandwehr wrote:
| Both of these conditions are true for Ecosia. They have
| bylaws that prevent excessive salaries.
|
| In 2020, no one there made more than 100k as far as I know.
|
| Source: I interviewed at Ecosia for an interim CPO role.
| maltelandwehr wrote:
| The CEO of Ecosia makes less than EUR 100k per year.
|
| At least that was the case when I interviewed there for an
| interim CPO role.
| prisenco wrote:
| I don't see a problem with a non-profit CEO (or any employee)
| taking a large salary. Even if they do, the non-profit
| structure still removes large shareholders, who are not
| employees and can have an outsized influence without a
| commitment to the project or an understanding of its
| workings.
|
| A successful non-profit that's also able to pay big, healthy
| salaries should be celebrated.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non
| profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever
| being "profit"_
|
| or more to the point, profits are not "bad", they are a measure
| of "good". profits mean you are providing something of value
| that people want, that without you is otherwise scarce. your
| profits attract competition/substitution, driving the price
| down and the value up to consumers.
|
| there are many sources of distortion to markets and eliminating
| them increases the good that markets do, but profits are not
| bad, just a measure of what is happening elsewhere in the
| market or in adjacent markets.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Profits are not a measure of good. It's just as profitable to
| mitigate a problem that you caused as it is to authentically
| solve a problem for people. Profits are a measure of
| efficacy, but there's no reason to expect that a profitable
| endeavor isn't making things worse for everybody nearby.
| jmcqk6 wrote:
| Profits are bad when they exist due to unethical cost
| cutting. Profits are bad when they artificially lower the
| cost of the good by exporting the costs to other people.
|
| If a clothing company is profitable because they use slave
| labor, that is not good profit.
|
| If an oil company is profitable because they do not address
| the environmental impact they have, that is not good profit.
|
| If an insurance company is profitable because they refuse
| required treatments for their customers, that is not good
| profit.
|
| You have a very simplistic view of profit that is not based
| in actual history. We have centuries of seeing this exact
| thing happen over and over again. Just because something is
| profitable does not make it good. Only someone obsessed with
| theory while ignoring the practice could think otherwise.
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| In other words, profits are bad when they necessitate some
| threshold of negative externalities.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If a clothing company is profitable because they use slave
| labor, _the use of slave labor_ is bad.
|
| The profit is not the problem. It wouldn't be any better if
| the company made no profit.
| hamdouni wrote:
| On the contrary, it will be an incentive to stop.
| jmcqk6 wrote:
| This is a distinction unworthy of merit. The slave labor
| creates the profit. The only reason it exists is because
| of the profit.
| keybored wrote:
| In the narrow sense it's good. It's an optimization function,
| yes. With a wider lens it leads to problems that are just
| lumped into the big pile of things called Externalities. One
| of which is ecological collapse. Or just climate change if
| that sounds too drastic.
|
| Capitalism is the most advanced mode of profit-driven
| systems. Where it inevitably leads to more and more
| inequality. Why? In part because money becomes the most
| fungible commodity. You can use it to buy everything (except
| happiness?). In turn you can buy all regulation. You can buy
| half of people's everyday time (labor). There's no breaks on
| it.
|
| So it continues until some outside force stops it. Becaue it
| can't regulate itself (with what, money?).
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Actually economic profit is an indicator of market
| inefficiency. Demand is what tells you that you're selling
| something of value. Extended profits mean competition hasn't
| caught up yet. It has nothing to do with good or bad. If
| there is profit to be made in a market, firms will enter
| until it reaches an equilibrium where profit is 0, then when
| it becomes overcrowded and firms are losing money, they leave
| the market. This is why anticompetitive business practices
| are so successful at generating profits, and at the same time
| are so horribly bad for the free market. In an efficient
| market, profits converge towards zero.
| gdubs wrote:
| Nobody wants to see grift, but we should also normalize non-
| profit employees and CEOs making a good living.
| charlie0 wrote:
| So your argument is that people who do good things must be poor
| or else they actually aren't good people?
| bmicraft wrote:
| I'd say they mustn't be filthy rich. Otherwise "doing good"
| clearly isn't the main priority.
| odiroot wrote:
| I'm proud to say that I have worked for Ecosia, though ages
| ago. Christian, the CEO, is really one of the kindest and most
| honest people I have worked with. Also 100% committed to the
| cause, he walks the walk.
|
| Yes I'm just some rando from the Internet, and things might
| have changed since I've left, but I have my faith in that guy.
| reify wrote:
| I have and still use Ecosia Daily.
|
| Its a search engine, the same as all the other search engines.
|
| Ecosia delivers a combination of search results from Yahoo!,
| Google, Bing and Wikipedia.
|
| Advertisements are delivered by Yahoo! and Microsoft Advertising
| as part of a revenue sharing agreement with the company.
|
| Ad revenue is then used to plant trees
|
| you cant complain about that
| notTooFarGone wrote:
| apparently you can - see this thread.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| Ecosia have been going a while, and I don't want to be that guy
| 'just asking questions', but...
|
| Is there some sort of independent verification of the trees being
| planted and their impact? I wonder if there is a study into the
| effect of their interesting green reinvestment setup vs a
| traditional for-profit businesses (Google is the obvious example)
| and their environmental impacts.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Yeah, I've got similar worries since there has been plenty of
| greenwashing that has happened with planting trees. I'd be sad
| but also not surprised if some of those trees being planted are
| sitka spruce wood plantations or so.
| slevis wrote:
| This is my main problem with Ecosia as well. I don't believe
| planting trees is really a good option to help the climate and
| I have zero trust in tracking progress of those projects in a
| lot of countries. I would much rather them e.g. investing in
| solar or sponsoring open source projects.
| MrToadMan wrote:
| It seems they are also diversifying their investments into
| other climate impact projects like solar (see some of the
| projects here: https://blog.ecosia.org/climate-projects/).
| johnisgood wrote:
| Since we are all doing it: I'd rather they support nuclear
| energy.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Shares can't be sold at a profit or owned by people outside of
| the company. No profits can be taken out of the company.
|
| It it a worker-owned coop then? If so, why not calling it that?
| shafyy wrote:
| No, that alone does not make it a worker-owned coop.
| aswerty wrote:
| The model they use is relatively well known:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steward-ownership
|
| My personal experience with this model boils down to: you make
| a company and a charity. Where the charity owns special share
| categories in the company.
|
| You can then have other share types for founders and investors.
| These share types can essentially be bought out (e.g. an
| investor share can be bought for 5x of it's initial value, say,
| allowing for investment with a 5x cap). Essentially allowing
| the charity to gain full shareholding at a certain point. But
| there is no requirement to have these other share types - but
| they are useful drivers to get the company off the ground.
|
| Obviously this type of investment isn't something traditional
| VCs care for; other more philanthropic oriented sources are
| required.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| Their website is confusing. So it's a non-profit for planting
| trees.. that's also a search engine? How are those two things at
| all related or have any benefit to being combined into one
| company?
| andy12_ wrote:
| Because ad revenue can be used for the non-profit? Ecosia's
| whole thing is that when you use it, you indirectly help plant
| trees - "the search engine that plants trees".
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| Do they disclose what percentage of their revenue is donated?
|
| If it's just a token amount, then I'd rather not support a
| marketing gimmick and would prefer to just donate directly to
| an organization focused on trees. If it's a significant
| amount, then it seems unlikely that they'll be able to
| compete with for-profit alternatives that can focus on
| developing the best product.
| MrToadMan wrote:
| You can explore the amount paid out to projects by month,
| region and partner projects in those regions here:
| https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-
| planti...
| scarfaceneo wrote:
| You can donate to an organisation and use their search
| engine.
| cdblades wrote:
| But are you donating to an organization to plant trees?
|
| What has the lower barrier of entry: making a point to
| donate your money, or switching your default search engine?
| lxgr wrote:
| Definitely switching default search engines.
| notTooFarGone wrote:
| So by your definition it should not exist, but it does and
| they donate non negligible amounts.
|
| So where is your fault?
| mrweasel wrote:
| I really struggle to understand your confusion. How do you
| think normal companies work?
|
| Ecosia is profitable, they take some percentage of that
| profit and use to plant trees. In a "normal" company that
| money goes straight into the pockets of the company owners.
| Profit is measured after investments into R&D, salary,
| marketing everything that come with running a business.
|
| Sure they could "just" spend more on developing their
| product, but from what I can see they don't really need to,
| it's already a good product. So rather than stuffing the
| pockets of an owner or shareholders, they donate that
| profit, or parts of it, to organisations that plants trees.
| Most people wouldn't donate to a tree planting
| organisation, but they will switch their search engine, if
| it's good enough and even if that plant only 100 trees,
| that's better than no trees.
|
| I worked for a company that spends it's profit on helping
| sick children. The owners make enough money. They donate
| over EUR1.000.000 per year to a foundation, rather than
| putting that money into the pocket of the owners. The
| customers might not even know that they support that
| foundation, but that also doesn't matter as long as they
| get the products they want and the price they want. Your
| suggestion is that the owners should pocket that cash, and
| I should go donate to that foundation directly?
| jefftk wrote:
| _> In a "normal" company that money goes straight into
| the pockets of the company owners._
|
| Only if the company returns money to its shareholders
| (ex: pays a dividend or does a stock buyback). Many
| growth-focused companies don't do this -- Amazon didn't
| do it for its first 22y, Google for its first 17, Netflix
| for 24, etc.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Ecosia isn't an stock based company (AG), it's a GmbH.
| SahAssar wrote:
| A gmbh is basically equivalent to a LLC (US) or a Ltd
| (UK) from my understanding. A gmbh can still be stock
| based.
| lxgr wrote:
| But GP raises a good point: Are these two things that benefit
| from any kind of synergy in terms of skills required by the
| employees working there, target audience etc.?
|
| If not, it generally seems like a better idea to keep the two
| concerns separate in two different non-profit organizations.
| (I don't think it would be a problem for one non-profit to
| donate funds to another, especially if doing so was
| explicitly stated as its goal when it's incorporated.)
| andy12_ wrote:
| It seems they kind of do this already. [1] "We send out
| payments to different partners each month to plant and
| protect trees in biodiversity hotspots across the globe."
|
| [1] https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-
| planti...
| moooo99 wrote:
| Ecosia themselves does not really plant trees. Instead they
| pay out money to different projects all around the world.
|
| They are very transparent about it. They list the amounts
| paid, the partners, the tree species, etc.
|
| They are also fairly efficient from what you can tell by
| their reports.
| lxgr wrote:
| I didn't assume so, but they still do two things: Making
| money, and picking a purpose of what to do with it (in
| this case, planting trees).
|
| As somewhat of a sympathizer of effective altruism (the
| idea of efficiency being an important factor in
| charities, not necessarily the implementation and even
| less the community), this isn't super appealing to me.
| tasuki wrote:
| > Making money, and picking a purpose of what to do with
| it
|
| Who doesn't? Why else would one make money other than to
| do something with it?
|
| If they didn't make money, how would they support the
| tree-planting?
| lxgr wrote:
| Via direct, tax-deductible monetary donations.
|
| This just seems like a donation with complicated extra
| steps, in the same way that e.g. "rounding up to charity"
| or even "round up savings" do not appeal to me at all.
|
| That might well be an idiosyncratic preference, and to
| some the idea of "planting trees via running web
| searches" might appeal much more than a nonprofit search
| engine that donates to a basket of charities, or one that
| directly pays the user for showing them ads and lets them
| decide what to do with the money and then the user
| donating the proceeds themselves.
| panstromek wrote:
| yea, I could't figure out what's the idea either.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| Same, they really need a better landing page.
| mapt wrote:
| We have legal structures with which to make statements like this
| about nonprofit status, structures which bind the promise so that
| we don't have to take your word on it.
| guhwhut wrote:
| They've used those, this is a blog post for humans who care
| more about the intent from the ceo rather than the specific
| legal frameworks.
| hoseja wrote:
| Trees don't need planting.
|
| Trees need a safe place to grow without saplings getting
| destroyed.
|
| But trees absolutely don't need planting. Besides, a healthy
| forest has to go through pioneering stages first.
| guhwhut wrote:
| As a forest land owner, trees absolutely need planting. Then
| they need to be protected from humans and deer and invasive
| species and disease.
|
| Many trees fail to grow. Most people would be astounded at how
| many trees don't make it.
| jgraham wrote:
| I think there is a lot of truth in this, but presented in a way
| that misses some nuance.
|
| It's true that if your goal is to regenerate native forest,
| which it generally[+] should be where that's an option, then
| it's indeed true that you want to allow existing forest to
| regenerate as naturally as possible. The problem in these cases
| is either land use (land is used for forestry / agriculture /
| etc. so there's nowhere for new trees to grow) or over-grazing
| (either by livestock such as sheep or by high populations of
| wild herbivores such as deer). In those cases you need to solve
| the underlying problems rather than just counting the number of
| saplings in the ground (in a heavily browsed area planting may
| have the advantage that you tend to put in tree guards. Ideally
| one could instead install appropriate fencing around the entire
| area to reduce herbivore numbers below the problematic levels).
|
| However you aren't always in that scenario. For example if
| you're in a landscape with few seed sources then natural
| regeneration might take an implausibly long time. An extreme
| example of that would be "regreen the desert" type projects
| where you need to bootstrap the conditions for tree growth by
| putting in a lot of trees in a short space of time, although
| those have a high failure rate. You might also be worried that
| natural regeneration is too slow in the face of changing
| climatic conditions, and want to plant trees right for the
| anticipated climate 100 years hence (although that itself is
| likely to be controversial).
|
| And of course frequently in the real world tree-planting
| projects have goals totally unrelated to climate change e.g.
| just forestry, and as such one shouldn't expect those things to
| be especially good for the climate, or at all good for
| biodiversity.
|
| Anyway, I like the idea of companies dedicating part of their
| revenue to tackling severe global problems like climate change.
| But I tend to agree that Ecosia's continued focus on tree
| planting as their headline activity makes them look a bit naive
| to the audience that is likely to be most receptive to changing
| products specifically for environmental reasons. Hopefully some
| of the other project types they're moving into look better in
| the details than just tree planting.
|
| [+] But not always of course. Converting peat bog to woodland,
| for example, is going to reduce its effectiveness as a carbon
| store, and likely reduce biodiversity as well.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I am pretty sure "planting trees" is just an oversimplification
| and goes beyond just planting if they are actually "helping
| trees".
| lxgr wrote:
| > [...] my two promises by turning Ecosia into a so-called
| "steward-owned company". This model imposes two legally binding
| and irreversible restrictions on us:
|
| I really hope that we'll get a legal precedent for this actually
| being possible and durable in at least some countries, because
| that was the promise of OpenAI at some point as well.
|
| (That's not to say I have reason to suspect anything bad of the
| current or any potential future stewards of Ecosia, but I'll
| prefer a hard legal guarantee over a promise any time, especially
| when charitable donations are involved.)
| mminer237 wrote:
| OpenAI is legally bound to its non-profit goals, but the
| problem is that any law requires enforcement. If OpenAI acts
| against that public interest, is the Delaware attorney general
| really going to know and be able to prosecute the case?
|
| I think what's arguably more important than theoretical legal
| rights is actually having stewards that care about the public
| benefit rather than leaving someone who would really love to
| funnel everything to his pocketbook if he could in charge and
| trusting him to respect the law.
| lxgr wrote:
| Definitely; by "hard legal guarantee" I mean the entire
| thing, i.e. both a law and it being enforced/upheld.
| (Conversely, it doesn't even need to necessarily be a law,
| but I'm afraid a strong social norm is even further out of
| reach at the moment.)
| DannyBee wrote:
| "I really hope that we'll get a legal precedent for this
| actually being possible and durable in at least some countries,
| because that was the promise of OpenAI at some point as well."
|
| Lawyer here - it is basically impossible to do what they (and
| others) want.
|
| There are few (if any?) countries, where either provision would
| survive bankruptcy, for example.
|
| They could always choose to dissolve rather than restructure,
| but if they did choose to restructure, i'm not aware of a
| country where the restrictions here would be enforced on the
| successor.
|
| On top of this, in most (all?) countries, agreements not to
| file for bankruptcy are not enforceable ;)
|
| So that's one mechanism.
|
| In most countries, however, these provisions would be "easily"
| removable through shareholder + officer vote.
|
| Some companies go pretty far down the path of trying to use
| trusts as shareholders and requirements on trustees and such to
| try to ensure such a thing never occurs.
|
| You can also do hilarious (to me) things like create enough
| shareholders (let's say 7 billion), make shares non-
| transferrable, etc, so that even though theoretically it
| requires a vote, such a vote is practically impossible.
|
| I also had a friend who explored whether you could legally
| require the place of voting to be like "the surface of the sun"
| or something that ensures voting can't occur, but
| unfortunately, you usually can't.
|
| Companies really aren't meant for this kind of thing - not that
| there is something better, but what tehy are trying to do is
| pretty fundamentally opposed to how countries want companies to
| operate.
|
| If it's really a big enough deal, the "correct" answer is to
| create a new corporate form, much like we created LLC's, etc
| (LLC's are less than 100 years old, so it's not impossible)
| vessenes wrote:
| It seems to me you could create non revocable trust that gets
| most of this done, with specific instructions to the
| trustees. That trust would own 100% of the company, and could
| issue voting and economic rights akin to shares, with the
| proviso that the trustee cannot implement a sale.
|
| That said, creditors could still force the sub into
| bankruptcy in most countries; even then I think the trustee
| could be instructed to always choose a restructuring rather
| than a windup if possible. You'd probably put that trust
| somewhere with UK Trust law.
| deadbabe wrote:
| But what if there was a way to make a profit planting trees?
| Wouldn't this accelerate the rate of trees?
| roughly wrote:
| There's a thing we tend to do as engineers where we hear a thing
| and then start thinking through the implications and design,
| which is normal, but also we seem to assume we're the only ones
| who've ever thought about it, and therefore our concerns must be
| unaddressed, and we're brilliant, so clearly nobody's ever
| thought of them before, so we've gotta share them. If you'd like
| to see this behavior in action, this is the thread for you.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| That sort of arrogance is absolutely out of control in the tech
| industry and it's bizarre because I've never seen it at the
| remotely same level anywhere else.
| roughly wrote:
| It's also why our cars keep running people over and our
| websites keep overturning democracies
| yifanl wrote:
| The proliferation of Hanlon's Razor has been one of the most
| damaging things to society.
|
| People as a whole are not incompetent, every individual (and
| every grouping of individuals) have goals and will take
| appropriate actions to achieve them with intent, but somehow
| a neologism has tricked people into believing this is the
| exception and not the norm.
| tehjoker wrote:
| It's because most of the time people see mostly powerless
| people trying to do their jobs and messing up. They don't
| have as much of a frame of reference for how powerful
| people act, especially because there is so much
| mystification in the media (literally owned by the said
| powerful people). The rule you apply to your friends and
| co-workers isn't suitable for the maniacal supervillians
| running society. Of course, those guys also fuck up in
| bizzare and stupid ways too, so people will point that out
| and be like look, they're just bad at their evil jobs!
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| It can make it difficult to work in the industry because you
| find yourself surrounded with expert beginners who (generally
| privately) think they're geniuses.
|
| I love working with people who aren't afraid to solve
| problems, but are also firmly in the camp of recognizing how
| clueless we usually are. We shouldn't be terrified of
| failure, anxious about what we don't know, etc. But man, some
| humility goes a long way.
|
| The alternative leads to terrible software, team dynamics,
| work-life balance, etc.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I only feel like a genius after I solved a hard problem[1].
|
| https://programmerhumor.io/programming-memes/the-two-
| stages-...
|
| [1] Otherwise I have a serious impostor syndrome.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| law and medicine communities definitely have similar
| qualities in this way imo
| LiquidSky wrote:
| In a different way. There's the old joke and doctors and
| God, and you will certainly find attorneys who are full of
| themselves. But while I've never met an attorney who
| thought they were an engineer simply because they were
| excellent lawyer, I've encountered plenty of engineers who
| believe themselves to be masters of the law (including here
| on Hacker News), having logically deduced it from first
| principles with their superior intellect.
| pyrale wrote:
| > I've never seen it at the remotely same level anywhere
| else.
|
| To be fair to the other ones trying, we've set a fairly high
| bar recently, with "Let me show you how to run the world's
| first superpower".
| keybored wrote:
| Skepticism should be the default stance when consuming press
| releases.
|
| In fact it's better to be arrogant than to be "neutral"
| (agnostic) towards a press release.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| Whenever I catch myself doing this, I try to reframe my
| concerns from statements (e.g. "the wording here doesn't
| exclude XYZ scenario...") into questions (e.g. "does anybody
| know if XYZ is possible with this wording?").
|
| Then what happens is I realize I can go answer that question
| myself by doing some research, and either I discover my
| original concern is unwarranted OR I can now state "well they
| said this but if you look here it's actually XYZ in fact!",
| which is much more interesting.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Yeah, there is just too much here - i started down the path of
| trying to explain some of the legal issues and problems, and
| how people often think and deal with them (with pointers to
| some of the more interesting attempts, etc), since as you say,
| this is a thing that's been thought about, by many people, many
| times, but i feel like i'd end up writing 50 comments and so
| gave up.
| stephantul wrote:
| As someone who works at Ecosia, thank you for this. I'm used to
| people being skeptical about Ecosia's business model. But this
| is something else.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I really wish you would say outright what you're referring to,
| because to me right now your comment comes off as a bit of
| cryptic snark. Perhaps there were some comments along the lines
| you mean earlier, but scanning through the top 6 or 7 comments
| now, none of them appear to display the kind of arrogance you
| are implying.
| hatthew wrote:
| It's not that we think we're the only one who thought about
| some implication, it's that that implication seems important
| and nobody has explicitly mentioned it yet, and maybe other
| people who have also though about this implication are trying
| to hide it because it's inconvenient.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Rather than make promises of dubious enforceability, why not just
| share the index as a public resource.
| nobodywasishere wrote:
| What index? Their results are sourced from Google and Bing
| perrygeo wrote:
| Given how bad Google search has gotten recently, I'd give this a
| try even without the trees. If they can provide a decent search
| experience _and_ reduce CO2, even better.
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