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.
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...
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.
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.