Scifi megacorps are always cheapskates

[Rocketboy1313]

Of all the things that company does, jeopardizing their employees via being cheap is the most realistic.

There is a... boarderline iconic scene from "The West Wing" where Sam Seaborn explains how he will use legal tomfoolery to create an unbreakable liability shield for an oil company because they are buying cheap oil freighters that will almost certainly cause a massive spill and it ends up sickening him so much that he does massive research trying to convince them to buy better ships... They refuse, he quits to work on the Bartlett Campaign, and then later in the series he tries to turn whistle blower when the inevitable oil spill happens.

Companies DO NOT GIVE A FUCK. They are soulless and run by psychopaths. They would gladly order the deaths of countless people if it meant a half-cent rise on their stock price.

Stop believing that ethical behavior is the norm in a company.

[Nealithi]

i know modern corporations do that i worked for one that still used a dos based system until 10 yrs ago and it only stopped because the company collapsed due to its own stupidity. movie gallery---

the guys who worked there didn't know what they were doing.

but the thing that gets me is that this is a question of these things going boom and wiping out all the profits and what they have sunk into it


take the nostromo its been refitted to be a cargo hauler but its unsafe full of wiring faults and is not up to code-but they bride the guys inspecting because its cheaper than fixing it, but here is the thing the ship is eventually going to fail something and be lost along with what ever its hauling, meaning those millions or more are lost as well as the resources and what ever its moving -ie the mobile factory thats making plastic out of oil. in the book.

so why wouldn't they at least make the ship able to ensure they don't lose all that money. Because once they do the work needed its fixed for a long time and im betting the brides they have to pay are probably over time more expensive and it eliminates the risk.

the only way i see it is that the person who would have to sign off on it doesn't want to look bad so its a case of passing the buck, someone has to do it but they keep passing it so that no one does it and they spend more.

Any examples you see like that in sci fi or real life. --want to make this interesting

Okay let's look at the Nostromo and loss. The budget people who have to approve any repairs or upgrades get bonuses based upon saving the company money. So by denying things in the name of 'if it ain't broke' these mid level bean counters get a little bit extra. Also companies constantly weigh failure versus human lives and the costs of various law suits. Car manufacturers do this today. So they got the ship. Expect it to run for say ten trips. They stretch it to twelve. This is much higher margins. And the insurance will cover replacing the ship. Besides the first rule of a vehicle failure is blame the crew. So they killed themselves. Lost ore? Insured. The only way bypassing various safety mechanisms and taking short cuts will be noticed is when it blows up spectacularly. Like say an oil rig in the gulf.

And each line that was crossed? That was one tiny thing that means almost nothing to survival but saves company money and thus puts more into someone else's pocket. But each corner cut adds up on the project.

Yutani Weyland is evil because it sends people it expects to die to get something dangerous and does not tell them. They are all expendable.
Other corporations are worse because they are not evil. They are indifferent.

[ProfessorDetective]

Of all the things that company does, jeopardizing their employees via being cheap is the most realistic.

There is a... boarderline iconic scene from "The West Wing" where Sam Seaborn explains how he will use legal tomfoolery to create an unbreakable liability shield for an oil company because they are buying cheap oil freighters that will almost certainly cause a massive spill and it ends up sickening him so much that he does massive research trying to convince them to buy better ships... They refuse, he quits to work on the Bartlett Campaign, and then later in the series he tries to turn whistle blower when the inevitable oil spill happens.

Companies DO NOT GIVE A FUCK. They are soulless and run by psychopaths. They would gladly order the deaths of countless people if it meant a half-cent rise on their stock price.

Stop believing that ethical behavior is the norm in a company.

Seriously, I've been following the apparent hell that is the video games industry for the last few years and... Glorified gambling targeting kids, employee abuse and exploitation, tax dodging of the highest caliber, cust cutting of the highest caliber... This guy's been chronicling it all for YEARS:
youtu.be/7S-DGTBZU14

[GreyICE]

I don't think you really need to go to sci-fi to find examples of corporations being run by short sighted idiots who cut more corners than they really should. But then that may just be my bitterness coming through as a Californian wondering how much fire I'm going to have to put up with this year because of PG&E.

Worked for GE and Philips at various points in my career.

Can confirm. And all their cost cutting measures are completely INSANE. GE sold off all their specialized equipment because they could "get parts from independent manufacturers." The people who ran it (and were getting laid off) took out a loan to buy the equipment, and now sell the parts to GE for more than it cost GE to make them, because the equipment to make those parts is the only equipment of that type on planet earth (outside of Siemens stuff GE doesn't have access to) and no one wants to spend tens of millions building equipment just to try and bid for a contract.

They also bought a software package to manage their machines where the largest previous client was Underarmor. It was cheap.

Somehow the place had been losing money for years, even after all the cost cutting. Could you guess?

[chaos42]

sounds about right, it seems that all these examples are people who think they know what they are doing but don't, i wonder what causes this stupidity.

Also with the nostromo example the point i was making was that the refinary they were hauling was a huge loss and while insurance is a thing on earth interstellar travel is a lot riskier i doubt even loyds of london would give them odds on those.


but what i was getting at was mega corps in sci fi do some really stupid things and i wanted to see if we could get some more examples

[McAvoy]

Got to remember that there are alot of government regulations and 'For Profit' organizations like OSHA.

I hate OSHA with a passion. My job was to keep the company within OSHA compliance along with FAA, among other things. But OSHA is the worse. I could make the whole company perfect and OSHA could still come in fine the company for $500 for some bullshit reason (which the company can fight and get it reduced to $100).

Anyway imagine removing all of that. Makes the company operate much cheaper right? But it removes alot of the forced safety regulations. It reverts the work force 100 years where working at a high height without some sort of safety control. Just an example.

Imagine Space. Where travel takes so long that you have to hibernate. And it's deep space too. All of those regulations can go out the window because in deep space who is going to enforce it?

[GreyICE]

sounds about right, it seems that all these examples are people who think they know what they are doing but don't, i wonder what causes this stupidity.

For a certain size of company, being a good manager is far more about politics than it is about managing. Profit and loss are very abstract - some days the market is down, some days the market is up, you can't judge a manager's performance in a division with 2 year production cycles on that. And besides, you manage hundreds of people, you must be important.

I remember one meeting, we were supposed to find ways to use the (crappy) engineering software to improve the crappy workflow. Find ways to streamline things and reduce time. So I asked what tasks were critical path, optimize those first. Doesn't matter if non-critical path tasks take longer, they're not critical path.

I watched someone with theoretically thirty years of experience in the division fumble around for what a "critical path" was, and then tell me that everything was critical path. A statement so obviously absurd all I could do was nod and tell him "okay, we'll work on everything!" I got pulled aside by a co-worker (who was also aware the place was insane) and told "don't ask questions like that, it might remind them they have no idea what they're doing." As long as we never talked about any engineering questions, they might not realize they hadn't been doing engineering for their entire time in management, and were now as close to being engineers as they were to being Olympic athletes.

There was one manager who would patrol the offices of other divisions looking for employees who were goofing off or doing something so he could reprimand them so his division would look better. Well known for it. His job could have been better filled by a stuffed Winnie the Pooh doll, but all the other divisions got written up way less than his - his people always followed every regulation to the letter.


Oh god the shit we pulled. We were supposed to reduce costs 10% every year, so purchasing decided to do that by telling all of our suppliers we'd be paying them 10% less every time it came to renegotiate the contract. Eventually they'd balk and leave us. So we'd move to another supplier. Eventually everyone competent knew not to do business with GE. So we'd essentially con people into supplying shit for us with shitty contracts where they'd go "okay, I'm barely making money this year, but I'll get the line up to speed and we'll get used to making this, and then we'll turn a decent profit" and hit them with the 10% cost reduction bullshit the next year.

It just goes on and on and on. We were the most garbage company. I fully believe any sci-fi megacorp could fuck over their own employees for like, no fucking reason at all.

[chaos42]

the old percent game, reminds moe of the bit with the doctor being stolen and sold to that hospital that has the screwed up medical system that gives people medicine, that could cure people who are dying at that moment, to prevent a future possible issue saying they are more valuable. the doctor points out to the head doctor of one level that if he doesn't keep using all his resources the computer will take away what he doesn't use and so he will get less and less, reminds me of my job till recently we had something were they had a quota but i don't know how they did it but every year they kept upping the number of units we needed. when i joined after i got use to it i started upping the weight on that and after a little bit i was getting more than the entire quota for our store and then some. but after a year or so of doing that the total when up, nothing i couldn't handle but then they really when nuts and started upping it to insane levels, combined with people not being as interesting in the item anymore, they finally switched to a percentage of transactions instead of just a lump sum based on last year, but i have a bad feeling their just going to keep upping how high the percentage has to be because they are moron and don't understand math. one manager i had constantly made math errors and she claimed to have been an accountant at her previous employ, these claims always made me skeptical of her honesty

[Artabax]

Well you don't have to look any further than Amazon as an example. They are famous for making people work their asses off (not bad in itself) but they will try to keep them only working certain amount of hours so they are qualified for any benefits. Ever wonder why you get a giant box for a small item packed with a single or two packing pillows (whatever they are called)? I was once told its due to how they pack trucks. It's like Tetris with boxes. Some computer program tells the packer to use a certain size box so it can fit perfectly in the truck and prevent anything from shifting around. I even heard they are pretty strict with their truck drivers too.

I could easily see Space Amazon cutting corners there too. No care for the crew manning the Space Amazon Truck etc...

Doctor Who did a Space Amazon episode. Space Amazon is just as evil as the Real-life version. Chibnall is total SJW so the evillest of all are the Workers.

[GreyICE]

Got to remember that there are alot of government regulations and 'For Profit' organizations like OSHA.

I hate OSHA with a passion. My job was to keep the company within OSHA compliance along with FAA, among other things. But OSHA is the worse. I could make the whole company perfect and OSHA could still come in fine the company for $500 for some bullshit reason (which the company can fight and get it reduced to $100).

Anyway imagine removing all of that. Makes the company operate much cheaper right? But it removes alot of the forced safety regulations. It reverts the work force 100 years where working at a high height without some sort of safety control. Just an example.

Imagine Space. Where travel takes so long that you have to hibernate. And it's deep space too. All of those regulations can go out the window because in deep space who is going to enforce it?

Safety regulations are written in blood. Is there a regulation? Someone got crushed, maimed, their organs got shredded, they suffered and died. Our manual crane had two safeties on top of its standard operating safety (aka three separate ways to stop it from crushing someone). We still had someone die. He was the guy in charge of the crane safeties, and was probably one of the only people who knew how to disengage one of them.

Every “stupid regulation” cost someone an arm. Or much worse.