You Can Always Find an Anonymous Former Employee to Trash the Founder | Hacker News Reader

You Can Always Find an Anonymous Former Employee to Trash the Founder

hunterwalk.com

14 pointsssclafani4 comments

Ok, so are there any posts by Hunter publicly trashing someone? If not, it must be because he's had uniformly wonderful experiences with everyone with whom he's interacted in the valley!

He also completely ignores power differentials between (often, but not always) connected and/or well-off founders and their (often, but not always) less well-off, less connected, less known reports. For those of us who aren't as plugged in as he is, the stuff that trickles out to the industry news is helpful. eg founders that have a history of treating dev teams like shit, or founders that have walked away with millions while their employees walked away with zero (Kevin Rose, etc.)

hi! my problem is with situationally granting anonymity in press articles, not with criticism overall. Although I generally believe people should stand publicly behind their opinions when making specific accusations about other people, pseudonymous systems are very important/valuable for a variety of reasons.

Also, while now, later in my career, I'm certainly better connected than I was when I started out, I'd like to think I've behaved consistently in this belief.

That doesn't really address GP's comments directly. It's never a good career move to trash someone publicly, and it's not fair to call out anonymous sources for protecting themselves from a backlash.

As for your complaint, it's certainly true that almost any angle can be supported by a single source. Good journalists can solve this by finding other sources before publishing or verifying in other ways (viewing email histories, for example).

For members of the tech community I believe it’s quite cowardly to give opinions, for print, without willing to be named as a source.

I take the other angle -- it's quite cowardly (and shitty) for junior "founders" to take advantage of, or otherwise make life miserable for early employees in the ways they are prone to doing: bait-and-switch games with regard to compensation, equity, or verbal agreements; plain old harassment in sexual or other forms; or just sheer incompetence[1] -- and then expect these employees to not only take their lumps financially and emotionally, but to keep forever silent about it -- on fear of appearing "embittered" or "vindictive."

So to those feel they need to keep their anonymity, in order to prevent the damage and humiliation they suffered from living on any further -- as long as they are being truthful, they have my understanding and support.

That is to say: in the right circumstances, there's nothing shameful about preferring to stay anonymous for the sake one's sanity and financial health. And in some cases, it may be downright prudent and necessary -- and for the better good of us all.

[1] "We're sorry things were kind of rough here for you at the beginning. Management was 23 years old, and very inexperienced" was what was told to a friend of mine after moving across country to join a startup that promptly went bust, 6 weeks later -- sans severance, of course.

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