
I called the Wells Fargo ethics line and was fired - jflowers45
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/21/investing/wells-fargo-fired-workers-retaliation-fake-accounts/index.html
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csense
If you rock the boat, the system will find a way to retaliate against you,
unless you find a way to remain anonymous.

Having a formal process for whistleblower reporting which protects the
whistleblower looks good on paper, but in practice it seems that the concerns
often go into a black hole and the paper protections aren't a practical shield
against retaliation.

The takeaway? Be very paranoid; if you're thinking of being a whistleblower,
you need to either find ways to raise your concerns anonymously, or be
prepared for whatever powerful people you threaten to do their best to ruin
your life. Which means either finding someone more powerful to protect you, or
accepting that if you do the right thing, there will almost certainly be very
serious consequences for you, but only a small chance of meaningful positive
change.

If I ever personally was in a situation like this and decided I saw something
that needed to be reported, I'd go the first route -- total anonymity. I
deeply respect people like Snowden who choose martyrdom instead, but I like
living a comfortable life too much to be willing to sacrifice it for my
principles.

~~~
sharemywin
Ethics aside.

The problem is there's a name for someone like that scapegoat. You best course
of self preserving, none martyrdom action is to leave the situation as fast as
possible.

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folz
"The bank earlier this month paid $185 million in penalties and has since
apologized."

Wells Fargo has a yearly revenue of $86b, so the $185m fine is like someone
who makes $100k a year getting fined $215.

~~~
poikniok
Revenue != Profit

~~~
coev
Your salary is revenue and not profit as well, the analogy is sound.

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eridius
Not really. Any money you make above cost of living is effectively
discretionary cash. And it doesn't cost money to get a raise. But with a
business, it usually costs money to make money. As a trivial example, if you
have a company with razor-thin margins, lets say 1% margin, then you can have
very large revenue, such as $86b, but not a lot of profit (in this case
$860m). And that doesn't even take staffing and fixed costs into account,
which would drive that number significantly lower.

Or to put it another way, you can run a company such that you roughly break
even, at which point it doesn't matter what your revenue is, $185m is still a
big number. In that case hopefully you have a lot of discretion as to how you
spend your money such that you can just spend less in one area to account for
the $185m, but if you're breaking even because you can't do any better, as
opposed to breaking even because you're putting all your profit back into R&D,
then $185m might be hard to deal with.

All that said, for a company like Wells Fargo, it probably is basically just a
slap on the wrist.

~~~
metaphorm
an individual's "discretionary income" can also be used as savings or
investment. you're argument doesn't make any sense.

~~~
eridius
Well yes, it's discretionary. That's what discretionary means - you can use it
for whatever you want. Using it for savings or investment in no way
invalidates my argument, because that's exactly what I'm talking about. If you
have a bunch of money in savings, then getting hit with a $215 fine isn't a
big deal, you can pull that small amount of money out and pay it. But the
whole point is that since the extra "revenue" you get from a higher salary is
discretionary, then you should be able to easily absorb a small fine, but a
company with large revenues doesn't necessarily have a lot of discretionary
cash.

Now it's certainly possible that your investments aren't liquid enough for you
to free up the $215 to pay the fine, but that's a different situation (and is
your own damn fault). Companies can be in this situation too, but don't
mistake the existence of this situation as a refutation of my argument,
because it's not. My argument at its core is that a person making $100k can be
expected to much more easily be able to absorb a particular fine than a person
(with the same cost of living) making $50k, but you can't necessarily say this
about companies, because a person's salary isn't dependent upon how much they
spend, but a company's revenue is, and so if company A has a higher revenue
than company B that does not mean company A's profits are higher.

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matt_wulfeck
Which brings us to the first rule of whistle-blowing: C.Y.A.

I'm surprised they're talking to the news. If I were them I would be lawyering
up right now.

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jackskell
A class action from fired employees?

Not if they signed an arbitration clause as a condition of employment...

