It's actually dangerously obvious who some of the people mentioned in the story are, just from the descriptions. It might be a good idea to anonymize characters further by changing ethnicity/nationality and gender.
WrkRiot seems to be the company in question and their online presence is so laughable nobody here likely feels bad for making fun of them, especially because of the behaviour the author describes. But the story is not just about a company but also about individuals.
Consider WrkRiot's head of marketing, for example. The author portrays her very negatively (outright trying to take the author's credit, being generally incompetent and engaging in deceptive and hostile practices). Whether you personally find the author trustworthy or not, if you only go by the article this is essentially hearsay.
Whether the allegations are true or not, she might face problems because of them (e.g. when trying to apply to new jobs). The author OTOH can maintain plausible deniability because the article never explicitly named any names (just gave enough identifying information to allow HNers to deduct the identity of the company and the employees).
I'm not saying the author is lying. I'm not saying WrkRiot or its CEO is innocent. I'm just saying there's no way to know as an outside how much of the story is true and what details have been left out (knowingly or not).
This is why in criminal investigations "due process" is a thing. Otherwise you end up with mob rule and character assassination -- and accusations tend to stick even if they're proven wrong and malicious.
If you are a victim of medical malpractice, the district attorney will not find healing for you. If someone wrongfully injures you, a criminal case will not return even an inch of your wholesomeness. If someone cheats or robs you of $50k, the district attorney will not help you pay your bills.
Civil court is the provided forum for issues of individual justice, and there individuals will find themselves paying alone, and in a position of imbalance, only a stupid person would fight for themselves. In the game of civil justice, where one might seek healing or remedy, you must pay for the prerogative to play.
That said, of course there are safe conclusions to draw from this story (especially the ones that hold true in general) but all personal accusations should always be taken with a grain of salt, especially if you have no personal knowledge of any of the people involved.
This is not entirely true. While the general civil/criminal purpose distinction you make is broadly correct, there are provisions for "restitution" within the criminal court system that overlap substantially with the compensatory function of the civil court system, so its not accurate to say that the DA will not help you recover funds or that a criminal case will not restore your losses.
See, e.g., http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/victim_services/docs/restitution_guid...
Just because it's "hearsay" in the sense that it's only one person's account doesn't mean one should have to anonymize everything.
That said, Penny's account of life at the mystery startup sounds startlingly like that of my experience at Motionloft many years ago. The difference there is that the (ex-)CEO was convicted, and my experience was corroborated by another ex-employee and by one extremely pissed off vendor.
Domain Name: WRKRIOT.COM
Creation Date: 25-aug-2016
Registrant Name: ISAAC CHOI
Registrant Organization: 1FOR.ONE CORPORATION
Registrant Street: 2005 DE LA CRUZ BLVD
Registrant Street: SUITE 131
Registrant City: SANTA CLARA
Registrant State/Province: CA
Registrant Postal Code: 95050
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.4083447484
Registrant Email: MYSUBS@HALLFORONE.COM(not trolling, I'm serious)
Second thought: this is a company which can't even manage to register "workriot.com". Even if "WrkRiot" is the brand, I would expect them to grab the domain with the more obvious spelling and have it redirect to wrkriot, but it turns out "workriot.com" is registered to a Finnish hosting provider sitting on the domain. So to recap: the domain with the more obvious alternate spelling of the company is (very likely) up for sale but they still haven't managed to acquire it. That does not engender much confidence in their marketing or management.
Yes, I think I would pass on this venture.
> WrkRiot pulls signals from your resume and matches them to job posts. That's right, we do the searching for you. We'll be updating this section with videos, walk thru's and more.
"walk thru's"? This website looks like garbage
Guess employees are the target audience for this post.
Replace employees with robots and write a blog post: HOW WE WORK 24x7