Undisrupted: HubSpot's Reflections on “Disrupted” | Hacker News Reader

Undisrupted: HubSpot's Reflections on “Disrupted”

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I'm only a quarter of the way into the book, and it's really pretty funny, but also insufferably harsh and cynical and misanthropic and holier-than-thou and self-righteous and downright mean. Oh, and I guess I should apologize to Dan for being 25 and therefore knowing nothing at all and being useless. In my opinion as a business owner, the world doesnt owe you a job and if you immediately think you hate the place maybe you should quit. I understand that he had twins though (and thus was doing the wrong thing for the right reasons).

I guess I'm not used to reading something so mean-spirited.

Disclaimer: I don't work at HubSpot and they do indeed sound like a stock-pumping cult that has a large boiler room selling average software.

Every sausage factory needs a salesman. People who don't like the way the sausage is made, especially don't like the way sausage is sold.

I'm about halfway through. So far I find the book to be an amusing send up of startup culture. A bit like an updated version of Coupland's Microserfs with slightly more factual basis. Although, I am confused by his condemnation of HubSpot and his former colleagues for age discrimination when he regularly questions his colleagues for their own (lesser) age. Especially since many of his younger colleagues obviously had more industry experience since this was his first time working for and not writing about a tech company.

Dan has written on Linkedin a summary of his experience as well.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-comes-age-bias-tech-comp...

Basically the same arguments as the book... just condensed. Slightly more bitter if anything. Comparing ageism to sexism or racism, as he constantly does, is a complete cop-out. He was 23 once... as I am now, and I'm in a worse economy. Everyone ages... it's a shared experience; we all do one day. I should add, if he was such a toxic employee from day 1, as his own commentary suggests, he was lucky to make it two years.

Mean-spirited indeed. Given Lyons' long history of sometimes spiteful satire it's hard to imagine this ending any other way. Like the scorpion and the frog. Perhaps Hubspot should have known better than to hire him in the first place!

This entire post is just PR spin. I looked for substance. Couldn't find any. Exactly the sort of response I should expect from a company as awful as claimed in the book.

In 'Disrupted' Dan claims the company is cultlike, ageist, sexist, and whiter than a Klan meeting. The book argues HubSpot is cruel and the management engages in childish as well as grossly abusive behavior. In the postscript even criminal behavior is alleged. I'm not sure whether Dan is a reliable source (and he certainly has his share of character flaws), but the book is utterly damning of HubSpot as a company. Unless HubSpot figures out how to counter some of the claims their reputation is (perhaps irredeemably) tarnished.

What do you mean by substance?

Well, this is the opposite of "substance":

> improving our margins by 12 percentage points in Q4 2015 (non-GAAP)

i.e. not "Generally Accepted Accounting Practices," i.e. "we made up two numbers, and one of them was 12% larger than the other."

The rest was pretty standard damage control lip-flapping. Here's another good bit:

> When people were fired did you actually call it a graduation? Unfortunately, yes. In certain groups we used the term graduation to describe the event when someone was leaving the company, either because they resigned or we let them go.

The curse upon the undead creature which wrote this would not let the words "Yes, we called firing someone 'graduation'" pass its fingers.

>i.e. not "Generally Accepted Accounting Practices," i.e. "we made up two numbers, and one of them was 12% larger than the other."

Numbers don't lie: http://d1lge852tjjqow.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001404655/1ca8a3db...

> The curse upon the undead creature which wrote this would not let the words "Yes, we called firing someone 'graduation'" pass its fingers.The curse upon the undead creature which wrote this would not let the words "Yes, we called firing someone 'graduation'" pass its fingers.

Because not everyone is fired from a company, sometimes they leave on their own accord?

> Because not everyone is fired from a company, sometimes they leave on their own accord?

Absolutely, but most humans recognize the difference. Maybe HubSpot could use "X has graduated" vs. "X has been graduated."

It's amusing that you use the term "whiter than a Klan meeting" as a critique of an article written by Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot's desi founder.

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http:...

One thing that concerns me personally is the work space startups provide for the employees.

In question 4 ('...Is HubSpot really like an overcrowded 19th century sweatshop?') the author shows some pictures that attempt to prove how awesome the work area is. But all the pictures seem to be of people meeting in lounge-sort of areas. Only the last picture shows actual work spaces in the back-right, sort of half-height cubicles.

I want to see what a typical work station looks like, but from the point of view of the worker, showing the distance to the adjacent work stations. That's what matters, not whether my co-workers can pose for a smile.

My 2 cents (Well, 1 cent really):

Something that stuck out to me when reading an article about Hubspot that Dan posted: "Hubspot's offices were colored bright like a Montessori school" as some type of criticism.

However, having walked around their offices all too many times, I can say that it's orange and white splattered around a brick-and-glass warehouse[1]. Pretty standard way to brand your own offices, and stark contrast to Newsweek's offices[2].

If Dan is making a fuss about something like this, I'm really not inclined to take him too seriously, despite the good points he makes.

[1]https://media.glassdoor.com/l/48/40/0b/62/new-lounge-area.jp...

[2]http://www.dc4mf.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/articles...

Wait, so you think orange and white is more standard for an office than wood colored and white?

The Newsweek office looks like it could be anywhere. There's nothing even remotely non-conventional about it. The Hubspot one screams pretentious start-up, probably in SF or someplace in the US following its lead.

Didn't say it was a standard office. I can appreciate a company doing something different like painting their walls orange. But to critique a company based on its colors just comes off as childish.

Boohoo, the office is branded and colorful.

It wasn't just colors - it's toys and candy walls and obvious childish behavior

Well then color me childish. Almost all co-working spaces in Boston have had free snacks and candy for years.

Hubspot grew out of the CIC in Kendall, who are well known locally for having free candy and food. And I'm a happy camper here too.

He said "Pretty standard way to brand your own offices", meaning using your own brand's color scheme to color your stuff. Yahoo's offices are purple, Virgin's offices are red, etc etc

Purple offices. Sigh.

Remember that this book is entertainment, and Lyons advertises it as entertainment. I have already forgotten everyone's names, and would have forgotten the company's name had it not come up in the news recently over this book. But the book has valid revelations about the industry (one reason I read the book was to hear this, since I am a software developer with lots of startup experience and now some big-company experience); and it also has sad material about poor inter-personal interactions with lots of covert aggression (which can happen in any industry, but it will be mitigated or exacerbated by company culture and the quality of the role models --- which is one reason you want elders in your company, for if you don't have role models and coaches, you are in for a sorry life).

To make a book entertaining, you need material. This startup and some of the employees gave him lots of material that he didn't want. I think that Lyons would have been much happier if the startup had provided a flourishing environment rather than material for writing such a book. I do not think that he sought this out --- I've experienced a languishing environment and it is punishing. The irony is that (based on his telling of the story) people used quite a bit of covert aggression towards him, assuming that he would be some powerless guy out of fear of losing his job due to his age, yet he has power through an audience that will read his books, and the aggressors walked right into it with poor behavior.

A similar thing happened to the Australian comedian Judith Lucy when she was a breakfast DJ for 2DayFM. She turned the experience into a stand up comedy tour called I Failed.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-reviews/judith-lucy--i-fa...

I thought that was a solid response, take ownership of some of the more egregious things, re-contextualize some of the impressions. But I was pretty amazed at the 12.6% annual turnover? That is 126 people a year, it would be interesting to know the mean and median tenure length. Its very expensive to replace that many people a year.

It depends on what % of their workforce is sales. The average turnover rate there is quite a bit higher than 12% as far as I know. In IT depending on who you ask it may also average higher than that. With average age 29 they probably have a lot of people doing the 2-and-out salary ramp strategy as well.

While not knowing too much about the company, if they are indeed hiring predominately younger, recent college graduates, then that number isn't too crazy.

Just ask investments banks, accounting firms, consulting firms, and other premier tech companies their turnover rates. I bet they are the same or worse, especially for younger employees.

...maybe because those places are also shitty places to work?

Turnover rate is one of the best indicators of whether a place is a good place to work. You can game most indicators without significantly impacting people's quality of life. But ultimately if people don't like working at your company they'll leave. You can delay that a bit by having equity take a while to vest but that doesn't prevent some people from leaving and when it does, it really only delays the turnover by the vestment period, doesn't change the rate.

Thats true in my experience as well.

Is there any way that data can be accessed easily?

No, but you could try data mining LinkedIn...

I ask in the interview. A lot of companies are willing to share. It's a small red flag if they won't or can't tell you.

These are probably mostly sales reps. Telemarketing (sorry, "inside sales") involves getting a lot of young people, just out of college, and burning through them quickly.

Sales/Business Development Reps have an extremely high attrition rate and Hubspot has teams of them. It's not uncommon to have >50% turnover in those departments.

Good response, I'll give him that. It succeeds it bringing focus away from the fact that they tried to kill the book before it got published

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Trying to kill the book doesn't mean anything what company wouldn't try to kill a book like this?

Could you expand on that more? From my perspective, there are a lot of ethical concerns with silencing opposing viewpoints. In fact, one of the execs was publicly admonished and fired because he tried to do so:

http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/07/30/hubspot-ceo-and-ct...

> what company wouldn't try to kill a book like this?

Perhaps you mean what company wouldn't kill for a book like this.

All publicity is good publicity, yada, yada, yada. I'd never heard of HubSpot before all this fuss, and I'm sure there are plenty of others like me.

I'd be surprised if the whole thing didn't generate new customers for them.

Sounds like the book was just sour grapes because the author didn't receive a J.E.D.I. award despite having so much H.E.A.R.T.

Using a 128-slide PowerPoint presentation to convey their culture is ironic at best.

How so?

Overly verbose. Good culture isn't compromised of four-letter acronyms, or photos that suggest conflating professional and personal relationships is a good idea.

I thought you were joking but the J.E.D.I. award is legit [1]. That slide deck is serious comedy gold.

[1] http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/the-hubspot-culture-code-c...

"Delightion" - apparently it should be a word.

He should've been more G.S.D and have more one-plus-one-equals-three-y results.

I read the book on Sunday. I think there was a lot of selection bias -- a company which would hire a random journalist at a high salary to write blogspam, badly, and not fire him for underperformance, is the kind of company which will have asshats in various management roles, too. You end up with the bozo explosion.

Imagine that book if he had gotten hired into a meaningful role at a company like SpaceX. I suppose that is ultimately what happened -- joined a great writing team at HBO and performed as well as the team.

Well, yes, that's the point of the book - war stories from an awful workplace.

Really impressive response - they took the high road here and the data was nice. The whole time I was reading the book, I just felt like something was off. Like he was sort of out of touch and hypocritical in a lot of his arguments (like accusing the company of ageism, right after complaining that his manager was 28). It seemed like Dan may have wanted to write this book before even taking a job at the company. Too many low-ball shots and unsubstantiated stories of hearsay. Glad to see the other side of this.

> It seemed like Dan may have wanted to write this book before even taking a job at the company.

This seems pretty likely to me.

He worked at the company for 20 months. That's almost two years. If this was an undercover stunt, then he was pretty committed to this.

I'd say 28 is still pretty young - when you look at the workforce ages between 20 and 60 odds are that individual is probably not even a quarter through their working life.

And your point? Companies like this realize that promoting / rewarding on results and competency, rather than age and tenure, is much more effective. But this is honestly nothing new.

It was surprising to me that the author just couldn't wrap his mind around it, despite going to such lengths to convince the audience that he was some amazing and prestigious tech journalist. With stuff like this, I think he was intentionally ignorant ("What?? A young manager?? He would be an assistant at my beloved, ironically extinct and thus irrelevant Newsweek"), so as to appeal to an audience that just isn't familiar with the tech scene beyond what they see on TV.

Uh, he was right unless you missed the part where the 28 year old was replaced by someone even older than the author.

There's something the vast majority of millennials seem to lack and that is respect for the wisdom that comes with age. This doesn't say anything else that necessitates a defensive posture or taking a chip on one's shoulders - though another character flaw of applying and seeing everything in the light of themselves generally causes this. This is the naivete of youth and unfortunately most don't even realize as much until they are way past their youth

They are pleased that, to their knowledge, they employ over 100 parents. First of all, it's fricking telling that a company isn't even aware whether or not its own employees have kids, and has to resort to eyeballing insurance numbers. That kind of screams "doesn't give a crap," especially for a company which otherwise seems to feel a need to invade every aspect of its employees' lives.

Google says HubSpot has 785 employees. i.e. 12.7% of their workforce has children. 75% of U.S. adults have children and only 5% do not want children. Granted that number might be lower in Singapore, but it's higher in Ireland.

So this is basically a definitive admission that HubSpot is a workforce that is incompatible with having children, hostile to them, and in all likelihood actively discriminating against parents. And it doesn't take much probing to see why.

Mr. Shah editorializes on the "over 40" statistic that it "needs work," but apparently not the fact that only 12% of its workforce is managing to raise a family (at least for the time being).

As my mom says, class never goes out of style.

"We were pulled into the process". Yeah, kicking and screaming, I'll bet!

The book is the "Liar's poker" for startups. Biased, cynical take, but worth a read if you are into startups / > 30 / work for an unicorn startup.

I am disappointed with the post above, they did not address the FBI part of the question. What did Cranium do to get fired? How badly did they mess up Dan Lyons' life?

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