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The impetus for the post was a few critical threads on Lambda School on Twitter.

I highly doubt any of this would’ve happened if the CEO had not spent a year relentlessly boasting about his company in a way that you’d expect a used car salesman to do. It was (and continues to be) too fantastical in a way that anyone who has worked in startups knows is rarely the case behind the scenes.

When you invite scrutiny upon yourself by being shameless seller in chief it’s your own doing, not because people suddenly decided they wanted to come out of the woodworks and bash your work.

> When you invite scrutiny upon yourself by being shameless seller in chief it’s your own doing, not because people suddenly decided they wanted to come out of the woodworks and bash your work.

Lambda School hasn't been under criticism for literally years because Austen sells too hard. It's because they've done some shady, unethical and outright illegal things.

Their refusal to pay license fees while publicly claiming they did has jeopardized every dollar of revenue they're set to collect. If I were an investor, I'd be pretty mad about that.

Their decision to operate as a high pressure environment has created a string of negative stories on Twitter and Reddit about how pressured students felt.

Their wage disputes with their former educators meant they had to switch to relatively unknown and unverifiable teaching staff, which makes it a lot harder to take them seriously.

The idea that it's LS's presentation that has failed seems like it underestimates the problems at hand.

No one would be taking about Lambda School if the CEO didn’t court publicity through Twitter.

It’s literally the only reason most even know what Lambda School is. That’s my point.

Wage disputes? Do you mind sharing/linking please?

> I'm not a fanboy of pg

Predictably there are many fanboys of PG. Very generally a negative comment about PG that is not packaged correctly and with care will get a certain amount of backlash on HN vs. the same about an unknown or lesser known person. It's as if the 'fanboys' feel it is their duty to defend the person (PG or otherwise). And (per my comment elsewhere) it's that love that drives the haters. It feels (to the hater) undeserved.

The ironic part of all of this is survival wise the non fanboy (what PG would call 'hater' but don't agree with that wording but will go with it) is way more likely to engage and interact with others vs. the famous person. For example if someone were to write to you 'codingdave' most likely you would interact, engage or help (and if you didn't my guess is most others similar to you would). The fanboy who has defended the famous person won't get the time of day from that person (or a trivial interaction at best). The fanboy doesn't even exist in the eyes of the famous person.

I've had similar experiences with my own family. At a dinner with relatives they will totally get up in arms over some person who they don't know, that doesn't care about them, that doesn't know they even exist. They will get into a fight (with a person close to them) defending that person. And what they will do is burn a bridge with a person that is of direct relationship (and 'value') that survival wise would make more sense not to 'piss off' (for lack of a better way to put it).

If only we could somehow limit articles to anonymous authors, so we can focus on the substance of the piece versus who wrote it.

Or what would be also interesting is if PG replied to comments two ways and choose randomly his identity (by flip of a coin). He'd write a comment. Then flip a coin. One side he posts his comment (he doesn't comment anymore but let's say he got back to doing that) as 'PG'. Another with another stealth handle. Not about anything substantive where he has authority. Then see how people react (upvotes or argumentative) to what he says. At the end of a time period (call it months) write a blog post on the 'results' of that 'test'.

Further the replies could not be with the same handle (other than the PG handle). So nobody would upvote just for the reputation (positive or negative). (Or perhaps three handles PG, Anon same handle, Anon unique handle).

I would enjoy for any relatively high profile person to try this experiment, to broaden the chance of it actually occurring.

> I'm surprised at the harsh negativity in this article. Not that the inquiry into why people become 'haters' isn't intriguing, but to explore it so shallowly and to boil it down to "Well, they are losers", and call in the image of "basement dwellers" frankly, makes pg sound like he is falling into the same trap he is trying to write about - generic hating on others.

I think PG has a very specific audience in mind when he writes: founders. I don't think he's trying to create a holistic understanding of "haters." I think he's trying to tell founders not to think about them. It's a waste of their (founders') time.

Haters, and the accusation of being a "fraud," cut to the quick of the confidence founders need to be successful. They often already feel like frauds (or imposters) and acquiring haters only seems to confirm this for them.

I see this glib (and in my experience accurate) treatment of haters as a device founders can use to stay focused.

But I think the other side of your point is worth exploring. As a founder, how do you assess when you have gone (or are contemplating going) too far? Given the fine line between overconfidence and under-confidence, can founders even expect themselves to be able to make that self-assessment?

> I'm not a fanboy of pg, just a reader, so I'm not going to act like he has let us down by penning a weaker article.

I really appreciate this sentiment. A weaker article is just that, weaker, not indicative of anything else.

Not so sure given the current temporal context we are discussing about. Paul Graham has some interests in Lambda School (YC S17), has also personally promoted it (e.g. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1175434253741580289 ), and might be trying to deflect some criticism by implying through extremely weak generalized pseudo-philosophical considerations that they are not valid criticism, and even that who is emitting the criticisms might be "less than man." (weird, he knows about the Streisand effect, no?)

Or it might be just a curious coincidence, and not indicative of anything else.