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"

▲

mindcrime an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	ktm5j 23 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		So you think making bad business decisions is holding up to fiduciary duty? You can't throw money at every problem that you'd like to solve, calling that malice is silly was the point I was trying to make.
	▲	30 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

▲

tripletao an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲

ktm5j 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

I said it's their biggest priority, not their only priority... solving a problem that doesn't cost money and the solution doesn't make money is bottom of the barrel. Come on guys, be real.

	▲	usefulcat 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		FWIW I totally agree with that. What I (and several others) disagree with is the idea that the concept of fiduciary duty confers an obligation to pursue profit at the expense of all else. Is there an incentive to do that? Yes, or at least it's obviously quite possible. But is there an obligation? No. Relative the comment you were responding to, it sounded like you were defending the idea that an obligation exists.

▲

usefulcat an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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".