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ktm5j • today at 7:03 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

Definitely not a myth, friend. Read this article from Harvard Business School: https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/fiduciary-duty-to-investors

"Accepting funding from investors puts you in a fiduciary role in which you’re responsible for managing their money and putting their needs above your own"


Replies

mindcrime • today at 7:38 PM

The reality is "it's complicated". But the strongest form of this - that "companies must maximize profits over ALL over concerns NO MATTER WHAT" is basically a myth. See:

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

https://www.legislate.ai/blog/does-the-law-require-public-co...

https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/archives/56/5/end-sharehol...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325023

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value

So yeah, "fiduciary duty" is a real thing, but that's not quite the same thing as saying that every single decision has to be focused on nothing but profit maximization.

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tripletao • today at 7:40 PM

Nothing in that article says you're obligated to maximize profit, and you're not:

> To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

Executives are free to pursue near-term profit at the expense of everything else if they choose, and the shareholders are free to replace them if they don't. That's a choice by those executives or shareholders though, not an obligation.

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usefulcat • today at 7:32 PM

Where on that page is there anything to indicate that hiring more QA or mods would be so bad as to be considered a breach of fiduciary duty? That seems like a pretty big exaggeration, at best.

This behavior is a matter of incentives, not obligations. No need to apologize for them.

"Fiduciary duty" does not mean "pursue profit to the exclusion of all other considerations".