Comment by mixologic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mixologic | Hacker News Reader

I didnt really see anything here of any real substance, other than OP strangely thinks that twitter is private, and that the CEO rightly advised him to link to their own product instead of their competitors. I cant really see how thats a "run in" with the CEO.

All the other cultural issues he seems to bemoaning are all consequences of growth in a startup. Information flow gets harder with more people.

As far as the CMO moving on to github, that certainly doesn't seem to be all that sinister of an indictment. If you have experience in marketing a developer tool to developers and software businesses, you're probably going to leverage that experience getting a job marketing a developer tool to developers and software businesses.

The one thing he's likely right about is that there probably isnt enough market to actually chase, github has a huge piece of it already and hasn't been able to liquidate, so its not obvious where their growth is going to come from besides eating away githubs marketshare. But thats probably why they seem to be pivoting more towards a holistic tool set that is bigger than version control (like the atlassian example). But only time, execution, and a whole lot of luck with show how it all pans out.

>As far as the CMO moving on to github

I think the implication was the CMO was fired and that was a poor decision, highlighted by her being snapped up by their competitor.

Either that or the CMO was obviously not happy at the company in some way.

I've been in a company that repeatedly snapped up employees from a competitor, including the CMO at one point. Often times, it's about the hiring company wanting to steal employees because they think it will bring success (despite not being in a good position for it). It leads to bringing on a lot of people that shouldn't have been, for more money than they are worth.

Would love to know the company :-) $$$

Well they eventually had two rounds of layoffs, 40% and 30% of entire company (respectively)

I think the run-in referred to something different than the tweet.

> After the run-in happened, I decided to lay low and focus on the job. I even stopped posting on Twitter, because the CEO already had questioned me about what I was writing.

From my reading of it, it was referring to OP's disagreement about the Service Engineer team taking on correcting the internet whenever someone is wrong about GitLab with a staff of five people.

I still think they should have just taken the options... the idea that with a current $100M valuation they won't end up being worth at least $5M doesn't seem justified based only on just these anecdotes. I assume the contract didn't allow resale of the options to a third party.

Investors would have liquidation preferences, so the stock would be worthless once value drops low enough (e.g. less than funding received).

It's not the final valuation though, there are other factors. Time value of money, dilution through failed attempts to raise more money, etc.

From OP's perspective, he could go to Japan with his wife now, or maybe get his money back years from now.

I know many people who have bought stock at companies valued higher than $100M, only to either lose their money or make 0% return during the recent S&P500 boom. Complete waste of time.

CEO rightly advised

I don't think it's right at all. What gives him that right? Why is it morally wrong to do otherwise? What kind of right are you talking about?

It was a fair request to have a key member link to GitLab. Employees can be told what to do. You don't have to comply, but when you get a fair request and you make a big deal of it - you have to be prepared for the consequences. Contractors - no you can't do that stuff; you can't tell them when or how to work... they have a lot of protections.

The CEO request to change the link wasn't unreasonable. Why would a CEO want employees that aren't going to be champions of their own company they work for? However, I do think the author made fair requests to the CEO (like hiring Community Managers) and he might have been booted for not "falling in line". That's messed up.

At the same time - he should probably disconnect himself from the emotions regarding the stock options and ask himself if it's a good deal financially. Seems like it to me.

> It was a fair request to have a key member link to GitLab.

This leads to situations like what Microsoft used to be (and perhaps still is) - that Everything Had To Be IE And Bing. There could be no acknowledgement of the other brand by name.

> Employees can be told what to do.

On company time, certainly. When representing the company, for sure. Even perhaps if it's sufficiently controversial where you're bringing the company into disrepute by association.

But when none of that applies, then no.

It was a fair request. If you're CEO you try to rally your people. It wasn't a demand. The author had no reason to be stubborn about it. There were obviously other areas to be concerned about as I sided with the author on, but this wasn't one of them and it derails from the other arguments.

I think this is a cultural misunderstanding. An employer might tell me what to do while I'm at work, working on something that creates value for the company. Communicating with third parties out of work, when I'm not speaking for the company - I don't agree, unless it's actually illegal or harassing etc.

OP said he was a contractor, not an employee.

Especially if that is his private account, as he claimed. The CEO just has no business messing with that.

If I was the CEO of Pepsi and saw my employee tweet how he likes Coke I would be pissed.

Morality is subjective so nobody can say what's truly "right" or "wrong", but it is true that what this guy did was not a cool thing to do. And I can imagine just reading through his post what other things he probably may have done to result in him getting fired.

Ahh so if you work for Dodge you can only buy a dodge?

no

My father worked for Chrysler and has only bought Chrysler cars. The lot at the HQ was filled with over 95%+ Chrysler cars.

It's not a requirement, but it hints at not believing in the company you work for. Imagine the drama if Uber's CEO preferred to use Lyft.

If you don't have confidence in the product, it implies that you are just there to collect a paycheck. The optics from an outsider is that you have no confidence in Gitlab and the work that you do. It looks especially bad considering Github is your direct competitor. Its like a member of the LA Lakers wearing a Boston Celtics jersey to warmups

i've worked on lots of things where the internals presented interesting technical challenges, but where the product itself was nothing i would personally use. there's nothing wrong with that. sports teams are not a fair analogy; they're about loyalty and tribal affiliation, whereas work is about getting stuff done.

> the internals presented interesting technical challenges

Most jobs are not like that and a lot of them are about loyalty and tribal affiliation, especially jobs with auto companies. It's a relic of the previous generation, but for a number of people the company they work for becomes a large part of their identity.

> If I was the CEO of Pepsi and saw my employee tweet how he likes Coke I would be pissed.

I would assume the CEO of Pepsi has more things to do than to track employees on social media. If Pepsi employed people to track other employees on social media, that would be more than a little creepy (and I would leave the company).

"Expressing opinions is not allowed here."

Not to mention that OP apparently posted the GitHub stats because the GitLab stats don't show the same information.

There is nothing illegal about giving a comment on someone's public tweet.

> The one thing he's likely right about is that there probably isnt enough market to actually chase ...

I agree completely with your last paragraph. Of course Atlassian's market is very lucrative and they execute poorly (Jira is simply awful), so this seems like a viable business strategy to me.

CEO stalking employees, nothing to see here...

When did this become ok?

It became ok when emotionally frail tech CEO's needed to cope with nagging existential fears of _not_ actually making the world a better place, while at the same time frantically trying to succeed so that they won't be left with the horrific ignominy of not being successful _and_ making the world worse.

Please don't use rant rhetoric here. It's bad for substantive discussion.

Stalk? The guy tagged gitlab.

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