Comment by _2d30 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _2d30 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Blog posts like this are usually best interpreted as the bitter ranting of an ex-employee who was let go. The author himself was semi-notorious (possibly still so?) in the Redis community for being a bit of a self-serving demagogue (to put it nicely).

Generally speaking, if an individual was a remote, WFH, IC employee whose manager didn't even talk to them for a year, they probably don't have the working knowledge to do much critiquing of the company at large.

It should also be noted that Pivotal was acquired by VMware for ~$2.7B.

Points like this:

> At the other end, you have employees who create your products being treated like unwanted interns because development and engineering isn’t given recognition for generating revenue. Obviously only sales and executives are money makers. Developers are just an unneeded, low skilled, interchangeable burden reducing your profits because they have non-commission-based salaries. Why not just fire all your developers then sell what they made without fixing or improving anything—wow, infinite profit!

Coupled with him making $220k/yr in salary (no mention that I saw about equity) doesn't seem to gel. The entitlement is strong with this one.

> It should also be noted that Pivotal was acquired by VMware for ~$2.7B.

This doesn't mean much. Both Pivotal and Dell were controlled / belonged to Dell at the point of the acquisition, so this was more of a Dell-internal restructuring than an acquisition on the open market.

That said, I agree that the OP is way over the top to be taken seriously.

Wait, so how much did Dell buy it for?

I think GP poster means “both Pivotal and VMware were owned by Dell.”

IIRC Pivotal’s stock price collapsed, it didn’t seem to have much of a future as a public company, and so Dell consolidated it into VMware to save face.

gotcha, I looked it up, apparently EMC spun Pivotal out from an internal dept, but still maintained a majority stake in the company, then Dell bought both EMC and VMWare, and at some point Pivotal went public, but then I guess due to poor performance the price dropped so dell had VMWare buy it all back.

I'm guessing that's what OPs referring to when he says that the customers and investors were the same, probably most of their customers were other Dell companies.

> The entitlement is strong with this one.

And stupidity. He is already behind $50,000 for refusing to sign off his rights to tell his 'story'. Maybe he feels there is a market for his skills (and to your point, um, attitude) for his take on things. (There isn't)

And the idea that there is no potential blowback from the company because of free speech means he is simply not aware of what a willing and able (financially) adversary can do to you if they want (using legal or other means). Company could decide to go after him just to send a message even if no chance of actually winning or collecting or other tangible benefit.

Yes, this is self-sabotage, I would never hire him and I would leave a company if they were to hire him. Yikes.

Edit: and I didn't catch the audio clip at the end until just now! Wow. What is this guy thinking??

> I would leave a company if they were to hire him.

Wow. I don't know you, but going by nothing but that statement, you sound as privileged and entitled as he is.

> The entitlement is strong with this one.

You'd need to know what sales were earning before you resort to name calling.

I'm not sure why the amount that sales is earning is relevant. The sales team could all be earning $20B/yr each but it may very well be the case that they are worth that. He was making $220k/yr as a remote employee. That, again, disregards any possible equity comp as well. The median _household_ income in the US is ~$60K, indicating he was earning over 3X the median. Speaking from experience, that $220k/yr is very much so inline with the cash comp at top end firms for a Sr. SWE. He was clearly NOT being treated as an "unneeded, low skilled, interchangeable burden".

The world isn't zero-sum everywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com