Comment by banjo_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by banjo_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

banjo_throwaway

I know two people who took jobs at Banjo. Both of them quit within months because the place was so incredibly toxic. Second hand info, so take with a grain of salt:

The CEO tries to run the company like a personality cult. Everyone was expected to be available 24/7 to respond to his demands. He liked to demand things on Friday night, weekends, or holidays to test people's loyalty. My friend was told he had to schedule his weekend activities with the company because everyone was on call all the time (he wasn't devops).People who didn't drink the kool-aid were filtered out quickly.

Banjo is also extremely aggressive with NDAs and threatening legal action against employees who speak out. Their Glassdoor page has been flooded with extremely dubious glowing reviews and I've watched many of the negative reviews slowly disappear over time for some reason.

The CEO recruited both of my friends with some grandiose stories, including the same story about being close friends with Zuckerberg. I don't know if he's actually close to Zuckerberg, but the Banjo CEO has been telling many people in Utah that he and Mark Zuckerberg are close friends, at least as a recruiting hook.

Banjo was already unpopular in Utah because they were awarded some very questionable state surveillance contracts. The state of Utah has already paused the contracts. As a Utah resident, I really hope this is the end of Banjo's involvement with Utah's surveillance.

i'm a reporter on the team that broke this story, if you don't mind passing along my email to those people: dave@medium.com. much appreciated, and sorry to barge in on your comment.

Check this out dave https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14783521

You're absolutely correct about the info both of your friends shared.

I know because I was a Banjo employee myself (3+ years), before Damien step foot in Utah (during a company party, he told us while casually chatting that he gave his wife a budget of $3m to find a new house - they lived in Vegas at the time).

During my time there, Banjo was building a team in Vegas, NV and Redwood City, CA.

He is a workaholic. This would not be a problem, if he did not identify with Banjo (literally) and expect everyone else to work on his schedule (most weekends included, since he has no life).

If you are a high performer and take pride in your work, be sure that you'll be asked to put your life on hold, work weekends (a lot of weekends), and work toward the "greater good": Saving lives and reducing human suffering - what a joke! I wish I can say that during my tenure there we actually saved lives. But that would be a lie. A lie that everyone I worked with knows too well.

I've read several of his statements that the "life saving" technology was born in Utah. This is not true. We worked on the algorithms long before, and we did not remove users info for a long time. Only after the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal emerged in 2018, he mandated the engineers to remove all user identifiable information before posting it on our platform.

> He is a workaholic. This would not be a problem, if he did not identify with Banjo (literally) and expect everyone else to work on his schedule (most weekends included, since he has no life).

Yes, this is exactly what I was told.

Strangely, one of my friends was recruited with promises of work/life balance and plenty of vacation time. Then they were asked to work non-stop, weekdays and weekends, as soon as they started.

I'll pass it along, but I don't think they're interested in going on the record against their former employer given the circumstances.

I'm sure you're already on top of it, but it's not hard to find similar stories on social media:

Former employee on Damien's excessive labor tactics: https://twitter.com/LAtweets22/status/1255225658298507265?s=...

Another former employee with who is gathering e-mails and texts from her time at the company: https://twitter.com/djlilelle/status/1255156543017762816?s=2...

Wow, an abusive, toxic person both then and now. It's funny how such people often rise to the top through bluster, despite being objectively bad at their jobs.

I've thought a lot about this. I think there is actually a form of manipulation / abuse that makes a leader objectively GOOD at their job. They become successful, wealthy, etc. That said, that form of leadership has costs. I think there are other modes of leadership that can be even better (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teal_organisation) and that's what many company cultures are trying to cultivate.

> I think there is actually a form of manipulation / abuse that makes a leader objectively GOOD at their job.

Based on my experience, I'm more inclined to think the inverse it true. Those types of leaders are actually pretty bad at their jobs but appear subjectively good through manipulation and abuse.

Some people are motivated better by reward. Some people are motivates better by fear of punishment.

OK. Do most of us want to get wrapped up in the latter group's pathologies?

> Some people are motivated better by reward. Some people are motivates better by fear of punishment.

Some people just want a fair trade of labor provided in exchange for money. All sane people, actually. Save the motivation bs for the army.

I'll be honest. I like working in companies where the top executives are good at making money. Sometimes that coincides with working for people who treat others terribly, but are good at extracting money out of situations. I often wonder if certain people I've worked for are actually bad at their job. You've got survivor bias, so the fact that the company is successful is not necessarily due to the actions of the management. However I have to say that I've seen a really impressive number of situations where I think management has made the most incredible cock-ups and yet end up with considerably more money than they started with. I'm left with the impression that I'm actually a poor judge of what makes a good senior executive.

I think you're right, but like politicians (or anyone entrusted with handling large amounts of power), the real test is how you fare over the long run.

Quoting Buffett, recessions like we're heading into now are where the tide goes out and you can see who's swimming naked.

Like you, I've also thought about this a lot, but if anything, it's changed my opinion toward "career politicians", a category people love to dish on. It takes real talent to deal with conflicting interests over years/decades and not self-destruct.

>I think there is actually a form of manipulation / abuse that makes a leader objectively GOOD at their job

You don't even have to get into cutting-edge management theory, the entire USA was built for the first half of its life by slaves of one kind or another.

When I was a kid they told me anyone could be president. Now as an adult, I'm afraid they were right.

Times like this are when they wash out.

NDAs don’t really stop bad reviews online in my experience. Good luck tying them to any real person with some foresight.

If the stuff about the banjo ceo still being a bad person is true, then he deserves all that’s coming, but if it’s not and it’s just competitors or people with a personal bone to pick pilling on with fake stories then I actually feel sorry for the guy.

People deserve second chances. Particularly for the stuff they do before their brain fully develops at 25 or so.

If he ran away from a highly traumatic home at 15 and ended up with the wrong crowd until he matured, then broke all contact with them, reformed and never showed antisocial behavior again, for the next 20+ years. Instead become a contributing member of society to the point of managing a seemingly successful startup launch. If that’s the guy’s actual story then he truly deserves a second chance from society.

> People deserve second chances. Particularly for the stuff they do before their brain fully develops at 25 or so.

I agree about second chances, but with limits.

This guy is the CEO of a surveillance company with government contracts to collect people's data, including relationships with police departments and other sensitive sources. If he has a hidden past with the KKK, including being part of an attempted murder (they shot into a synagogue, hard to believe that wouldn't be considered terrorism these days), then how many other people have photos of him with the KKK? His situation is the definition of being compromised.

When someone has this much compromising info combined with government-related positions and access to people's sensitive data, that compromising history is a massive risk for extortion. It would be one thing if he had previously admitted his actions and publicly apologized, but instead he waited until the information surfaced.

Does he deserve a second chance for actions committed when he was young? Sure. Does he deserve lucrative government contracts that give him privileged access to people's sensitive data? No, I don't think so.

> I don't know if he's actually close to Zuckerberg, but the Banjo CEO has been telling many people in Utah that he and Mark Zuckerberg are close friends, at least as a recruiting hook.

...does that work for some people?

This would have been a worse allegation than whatever he did 30 years ago. We all change from the past, but should also be judged by present.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com