Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder if this was the inspiration behind the scene in the 2nd season of "Silicon Valley" in which a top engineer speeds out of Hooli after spending a few minutes with the team led by Baghead:

http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-story-of-clinkle-2014-...

Everything below is directly copied from the Business Insider story linked above:

One day prior, Duplan had proudly announced a new hire, Chi-Chao Chang. A former Yahoo and xAd executive, Chang was Clinkle’s new vice president of engineering. It was a position recruiters had been trying to fill for months, and Chang had come highly recommended by former Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz. The soft-spoken engineer had stood up and shared a few words about his background. He said he was excited to be joining Clinkle.

Now, just 24 hours later, Chang was nowhere to be seen.

Duplan cleared his throat, nervously shifting his weight. “Chi-Chao has left Clinkle,” he announced. “He decided it's too much for him.”

There was a long pause. Duplan stumbled over a few more sentences trying to explain. Instead he talked in circles, a trait employees described as typical. Some began to wonder whether even he knew why Chang had left.

McCarthy stepped in.

“It’s not the kid’s fault,” McCarthy said, defending his flustered boss. McCarthy sometimes took over for Duplan during the weekly all-hands meetings on Fridays, correcting him and referring to him as “kid.”

Chang had been well-vetted during the interview process, McCarthy insisted. The news came as a shock to everyone.

“It was disheartening,” says one ex-Clinkler. “That was the moment when we were like, ‘Oh, no. Things are not good.’”

“It obviously looked bad,” another former employee recalls. “Like the guy saw our product and it scared him away.”

Adding the last part of the story

----

Chang left his first day of work feeling uneasy. He called Duplan that evening to share his reservations. The conversation lasted well into the night. The next morning, Chang told Duplan he wouldn’t be coming back to the office. He left a long list of recommendations about how to launch Clinkle, then they parted ways amicably.

Of course, the only person who really knows why Chang left is Chang himself.

When reached for comment, Chang declined to elaborate, stating simply, “Lucas is one of the most impressive people I have ever met. I believe he will lead Clinkle to a successful outcome and I wish them the best.”

----

The comment at the end interests me. Does McCarthy and Duplan have enough connections to make Chang's life hell? Or is it that if Chang says the truth ( Duplan is duplicitous ) would that alone make prospective employers look down on him?

Perhaps both.

Most likely it's just that Chang has enough class and good sense to not bad-mouth a former employer publicly.

I believe it would be just a matter a class if Chang had said nothing. The Theranos article posted yesterday had oodles of that. He decided to say nice things, however, which to me, means he wishes to reduce his association with failure by reducing Clinkle's failure.

Interestingly, when I was going through the history of Clinkle, I saw one person who was ostensibly there for a very long time write:" "without a product" is not at all an accurate reflection of the state of things (as the TechCrunch article and plenty of other sources can corroborate)."

This was contradicted by the very same TechCrunch article which asserted that they had no app, let alone product for a very long period of time: "Still, there was no app, and Shontell reported that contributed to internal turmoil."

I see a pattern between the words of Chang and this commenter, which is that if a person invests considerable resources in a venture that fails, they'll do everything in their capacity to make it sound right in their head. Even if that entails making it sound right in the public sphere.

I would be hard pressed to do differently in the same position.

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