If you have constructive criticism because you believe in a company and want them to do better, give it directly to the people involved. Otherwise I just have to wonder what the real motive is behind making a public statement like this.
As a CEO you'll know if your company has been a less-than-great manager to a member of staff. (If don't have lots of written evidence that you've been managing them well ... you've probably been managing them badly.)
This guy is pained he wasn't able to contribute as Gitlab grew. You can't always bring someone round as a company changes shape, but you can be kind & generous if you need to fire them.
In a world where everyone is reasonable, that's good advice. There are some people you can't reason with. What I'd look for here, if I were working at Gitlab (I'm not): is there a pattern? If not, then don't worry about it. If there is, then worry.
I've seen bad exits that were the fault of the company, and ones that weren't.
This doesn't look like a company that takes direct criticism seriously enough.
I can't imagine anyone having run a company say they'll hire this person. Whether this guy was right or wrong is subjective, and people have opinions, but this type of attitude is so obviously toxic that this is almost a pattern.
There's a huge difference in someone who tell the truth to the one who needs to hear, and someone who posts it on one of these medium posts hoping that they can hurt them somehow.
What is the motivation for blogging about anything? I am extremely disappointed that we are still stuck culturally in this situation where we can't have healthy public discourse about these things, where private businesses can get away with whatever they want and then proceed to threaten people for even trying to talk about it. Maybe it is sour grapes, so what? The emotional highs and lows are part of the package when it comes to startups, and hiding them doesn't do any good.
It sounds like he worked his butt off, what more do you expect? I don't scale mountains for my employer, I do what is reasonably asked of me - and it sounds like he did just that. Sounds like a typical chaotic startup culture growing too fast for its own good, not paying attention or supporting its employees' needs.
And where did you learn that? From this blog post? You use awful lot of "sounds like" in your comment. "Sounds like" is not enough of certainty to criticize someone.
- criticize them publicly - "give feedback directly" - whistleblowing
There's a bad ending to all those cases ranging from them blowing you off as a guy who got fired to lawsuits. I've always politely declined exit interviews as they offer me zero value and while I may have complained about a company over a beer, I've not blogged about it.