Comment by guylhem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by guylhem | Hacker News Reader

I read the article, didn't know the details, but what I now see is :

- somebody who has proofs of great achievements he did

- a backstory showing how these achievements are compatible, possible and repeatable for this young immigrant who is decided to succeess

- during the vice.com video, apparently a self-reflective decent dude, whose only mistake may have been to send a self promotion video to get the job he really really wanted.

He didn't hate. He worked on himself and was pushed my a great internal drive. He was trying to get the right to pursuit happiness applied to his situation.

I call that a success.

Then the haters showed up and hated him, for daring to pursuit dreams, his dreams, thinks that they would certainly never get to do themselves, even in their wildest dreams

These haters may have seen him as a show-off - and that's sad.

I call someone like this a beacon of hope on what we humans can achieve if we really put ourselves to work.

Pay attention - these persons are quite infrequent, sometimes fragile (Aaron). Help them if you can. But they're here on a mission to change the world.

If you are one, I advise you to HIDE the good things you do.

Poeple are jealous. Any good dead you do, any investment on yourself you make, any skill you have (breaking bricks for ex) - whatever. Consider that a dark secret of yours and wait for the day when usual humans will no longer hate, but welcome instead, humans with 'better' capacities.

RIP Aleksey, you seemed like a great man. The word unfortunately was not ready to allow access to people like you... yet.

According to his Wikipedia page, most of the claims he made were demonstrably false. (I had never heard of him before this HN post.)

I followed his resume story pretty closely when it broke simply for the outrageousness of it all and this is correct. I can't speak to what he achieved afterwards. The ones I remember distinctly:

- Video of him skiing in the video is stock footage he bought on craigslist.

- Video of tennis serve at 140 mph.

- Plagiarized an economics paper in his resume

- Claimed to be one of a limited number of people in Connecticut certified for nuclear waste disposal

ivygateblog.com seemed to be the biggest follower of his and may still have a lot of the articles and the paper resume.

Some of these stories such as the nuclear waste one came from stories from people who met him at Yale, and reported in the Yale campus tabloid Rumpus. Jordan Bass, an acquaintance seems to be the source for several of the outrageous ones which were told in the context of Bulldog Days, an official Yale event featuring illegal underage drinking for high school seniors that were accepted. It's pretty clear that most of what he said at this event, assuming he said it at all, was intended as a joke. After it got written up in the campus newspaper and people knew him for this it seems he continued with the joke during his time there since people obviously greatly enjoyed it.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/23/061023ta_talk_mc...

* taught tennis to Jerry Seinfeld and Harrison Ford

* a specialist in Chinese orthopedic massage

* the Dalai Lama wrote his college recommendation

* he is an action star

* he is an espionage expert

* he is a professional athlete

* he practices on the C.I.A. firing range

* he participates in martial-arts competitions in a secret system of tunnels underneath Woodstock, New York

* he competes at skiing competitions in Switzerland

* he worked for the Russian Mafia forging passports

* won two games in a tennis match against Pete Sampras

* founded a charity for troubled kids

* wrote a book called "Women’s Silent Tears: A Unique Gendered Perspective on the Holocaust"

* is a professional male model

* must register his hands as lethal weapons at airports

* is one of four people licensed to handle nuclear waste in the state of Connecticut

* has killed two dozen men in Tibetan gladiatorial contests

My take? He was an awesome guy.

Some of these things (charity for troubled kids, holocaust book) appear in his non-video resume which he sent to the investment banks.

In the context of a huge elaborate joke about himself, this guy is easily someone I would have liked to hang out with, purely for the entertainment factor.

I'm liable to believe it was a little bit of both.

It's somewhat sad given the circumstances, but this reads as one of those Chuck Norris lists.

If Chuck Norris can do it, some other human can do it, too.

I can not comment on things I did not see. As I said, I read the article (and the posted video), didn't know the details or the story beforehand. I'm not usually interested in gossip - but with the news, it was interesting to try and understand the reasons of what looks like another suicide.

In the video, I see him breaking bricks and lifting weights, armwrestling etc.

All this is quite possible for me, and no reason to be ridiculed against. Physical prowess is a good thing!

The rest I don't know, and considering the "media fame" and joking aspects you mention, unless the claims are directly attributed to him by verifiable sources, I would call them hearsay.

I'm really not trying to drag Vayner through the mud any more than he already has been, but I thought I'd clarify why I think he was ridiculed.

The ridicule against Vayner wasn't because he played tennis, lifted weights, practiced karate, or ballroom danced. The ridicule existed because he compiled these accomplishments into a video resume which he sent to UBS. He was ridiculed because he thought this was the best way to present himself to a potential employer and to many, came across as egotistical and pretentious.

This video alone was enough to go viral, but add to it the fact that there was evidence that a lot of the claims in his video and resume were falsified makes the story even more outrageous.

> As I said, I read the article (and the posted video), didn't know the details or the story beforehand.

I went straight to Wikipedia, which at least tends to have decent citations to follow. While it doesn't seem like anyone has a copy of his resume, the at-the-time President of Charity Navigator [1] says he literally lied on it [2]. I don't really see why Stamp would weigh in unless such a claim had actually been made, and Stamp's call for expulsion doesn't appear to have been rescinded.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20071012124658/http://charitynavi...

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20070929071909/http://www.trentst...

Here's his résumé, which you ask about:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070222123930/http://www.ivygate...

Here's an article about his sister, who has been successful since age 22 investing in real estate:

http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/04/real_estate/investment_prop/...

She's relevant because an address she owns was used as the address of the charity. There's no evidence she knew what he was up to.

Students who know him considered it all to be a joke or at least not malicious:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080422030103/http://www.yaledai...

> But Won Chai ’07 said that while Charity Navigator has a right to be upset with Vayner, he thinks the humor of Vayner’s resume should be appreciated.

> “I think clearly he was trying to play a practical joke or just trying to draw attention to himself,” he said. “Whether or not it was a good thing or not, I couldn’t say. People seemed to be enjoying it. I-bankers are forwarding this stuff to each other. Maybe it’s good for a laugh now and again.”

> Pieter Morgan ’09, who has lifted weights with Vayner, said he thinks Vayner often makes seemingly unbelievable claims because he genuinely believes them to be true. Morgan said he thinks Vayner is a genuine person, despite his penchant for seemingly implausible stories.

> “I think it’s like in ‘A Beautiful Mind’ with Russell Crowe,” Morgan said. “When he tells you these stories, it’s completely genuine, which is what is completely amazing. He’ll tell you with a completely straight face that he knows the Dalai Lama, and he is completely serious. I think he is fundamentally a nice guy.”

Here's his charity site which seems to only have been active in November 2006. There was a web comment that mentioned that he used these sites to get girls and was apparently quite a player.

http://web.archive.org/web/20061129145614/http://www.empower...

I agree with everything here and would add that the whole story reminded me of what it was like poring over my developer resumes a decade ago trying to impart a sense of achievement and drive in as terse a way as possible (don't go over one page, don't use pronouns!) and with little hard experience.

Today, aside from the sheer chance of being in an industry with more talent demand than supply, I can point to code that I've written and my raw merit as a developer can almost instantly be understood and I can easily find a job. Github is a resume and all that.

But I often forget that it's not always so easy for people outside my discipline and it's everything a person can do to differentiate themselves and show determination and a sense of personal development. That is the tragedy of his video resume, because there is certainly a talented and proud and sincere person underneath that production and all that so many people could do was find a way to tear it down.

I don't they are really comparable.

Swartz was in effect martyred by the US Government over an "information wants to be free" matter of idealism.

Vayner became a laughing stock because some asshat in UBS leaked Vayner's awful, awful, AWFUL video resume. And all Vayner had going for him was some athletics.

It's "The people deserve access!" versus "I can karate chop 7 bricks, hire me UBS!"

If you think people laughed at Vayner out of jealousy, you haven't seen the video resume.

Swartz was a great man? OK

Vayner? Not so much. More like an above-average guy, unfairly hounded.

ADDENDUM: There's a lesson here, you should be very careful about what info you give to an organization, even a 'respectable' one like UBS, even in a job application, so that you don't give some bastard the chance to ruin your life... I doubt the person who did this to Vayner even loses sleep over it.

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