Comment by thaumaturgy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thaumaturgy | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't say partnerships can't work out -- they obviously do, often enough -- but I would say that they can fail no matter how much you believe yours won't, so it's a really good idea to have a backup plan just in case, no matter how long you've known your friend for or what you've been through together.

I got my eyes opened on this last year. I was part of a pretty tight-knit group of friends. Some of us decided to get together and apply to YC. It's a good thing that didn't go very far, because a few months later, one of our group got in pretty serious trouble with the law. I took the view that he was a good person that didn't deserve to have a bad decision follow him around the rest of his life; my girlfriend and I attended his court dates and argued for his parole, and when he was released, we moved him to our area and helped him get back on his feet.

Our previously close-knit group of friends, it turns out, were really unhappy about that. They quit talking to us altogether, even though, as climbing partners, we've been responsible for each-others' lives on several occasions, and have generally been there for each-other through good times and bad.

Never saw that coming. Suddenly partnerships looked a lot less wise afterward.

To my mind, that response really depends on details such as "what sort of 'trouble with the law'?".

The illegal kind.

Bad parking or Murder?

If I were willing to discuss any of the details of my friend's case, I wouldn't be purposely obtuse.

The takeaway from that was only supposed to be that while I won't tell anybody that their friendship may not (edit: I meant, "won't") work as a business partnership -- even if they've done it before -- in my experience, even strong friendships aren't invincible, and they can collapse quickly over issues you've never imagined. So, when it comes to business, treat it like business.

There is no takeaway without context

No one is asking for his name, or the details, or anything that can be traced back to him (or you). Just the general charge.

Since he's too polite to, I'm just going to step in before this thread embarrasses us any further and say it's none of our business.

Fair enough -- there's no real need to know whether your friends were being unreasonable, or you were, only that it was enough to cause a huge rift.

I agree ... without giving us some idea what kind of trouble he got into, there's no way of assessing this anecdote. Getting popped for having some weed in your car is way different from being accused of killing someone, or stealing money from your employer, for example.

No, it doesn't. Also: he pretty clearly doesn't want to get into details, so how rude is it that this thread is trying to push him to?

Of course it's relevant to that judgement. Whether he and his girlfriend were right to take in and support this guy, and the reasonableness of the rest of the group in cutting off contact do in fact depend on what this guy did.

The thing is that we don't need to make that judgement. It's not relevant to the takeaway of "tight friends can have friendship-ending conflicts over unexpected things". I acknowledged this in a response to him.

(And, no, from just the original comment, it's not clear he's that opposed to revealing details. Later comments do make that clear.)

Not a great example because I think at least 50% of people would do what your friends did. Like others mentioned, it depends which law he broke but chances are it brought up to question this person's sense of responsibility, integrity and whether this is someone that could be trusted. These are foundations for any business relationship (let alone the distractions that come with someone who has problems with the law).

Perhaps the only saving grace for this person is if they were responsible for a notorious but awesome hack job that only few people (read: no script kiddies) could do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com