'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

Scaled from eBay's $11.1B/y to a person making $70k/y, that's proportional to a $18.92 fine.

"The statutory maximum for these six felony offenses."

“ The seven members of eBay’s security team were all criminally charged and sentenced to prison, home confinement or time served.

Other executives went on to other corporate jobs. Wymer and Wenig left eBay in September 2019, before the charges were filed. The following year, Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Wenig has been on General Motors’ board since 2018 and now runs an AI start-up. Jones remained at eBay until 2020 and now sits on Prudential Financial’s board.

The Steiners sued the trio and other former executives along with the company in the case that led to the $56mn payout. Under the terms of the settlement, Wenig agreed to pay $2mn, Jones must contribute $500,000 and Wymer $50,000, according to the pair’s lawyers.”

  Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Wenig has been on General Motors’ board since 2018 and now runs an AI start-up. Jones remained at eBay until 2020 and now sits on Prudential Financial’s board.

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18602070/united-states-...

[2] Page 19, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.227...

So I'm ready to believe it might have only been one. Although it naturally raises the question. You can't imagine they would volunteer data on additional harassment campaigns.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cursedcomments/comments/wqc1an/curs...

Do you have any evidence to support your claim?

On the contrary, a 2019 analysis [1] combined 400+ experimental treatments, 44,000+ participants, and 47 countries. Participants surrendered roughly three-quarters of the money they could have obtained through maximal lying. In repeated experiments, fewer than one participant in twenty consistently claimed the payoff-maximizing outcome. Increasing the potential reward from a few cents to approximately $50 did not cause people to approach maximal dishonesty.

In a field experiment [2] with 17,000+ apparently lost wallets in 355 cities across 40 countries, people were generally more likely to report wallets containing money than wallets containing no money. The effect appeared in 38 of the 40 countries. The researchers’ follow-up evidence pointed to concern for the owner and an increased aversion to thinking of oneself as a thief when more money was involved.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA14673

[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax5034

Idle hands are the devil's workshop. / The devil makes work for idle hands.

When the leave is too long, the soldier goes wrong.

Some people might be absolutely moral, but most just don't want to experience consequences

Before that policy, you had a bunch of items listed for $1 + $60 "shipping" to dodge fees. I'll take the current structure over that.

Super niche stuff you need to be able to advertise to Timbuktu & Japan & LA & NY in hopes of finding a single buyer… fine take your 15%.

Great place to buy new stuff w/o enriching Bezos. Filter Buy It Now + Lowest Price First & hope they’ve fixed the “list a 99 cent cable alongside the $15 widgets you actually want, or price cap + use Best Match.

He's much happier doing live auctions on WhatNot these days, which seems to be eating into eBay's business

At every place I’ve worked, the employees likely had worse thoughts, at least at times, than anything an outsider could publish about the company.

One thing I learned through that project was that eBay was a den of vipers when it comes to corporate backstabbing and turf protection, and since then I've come to believe every company above a certain employee count will inevitably become this due to unavoidable incentive pressure.