Groupon manager attacks “slavedriver” CEO Daniel Glasner with two leaked emails | Hacker News Reader

Groupon manager attacks “slavedriver” CEO Daniel Glasner with two leaked emails

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52 pointsmdariani23 comments

Third place is "you're fired".

At least Alec Baldwin offered a reward of a car and a set of steak knives for first and second place. Using only threats to motivate and not offering anything for success is usually the sign of an organization circling the drain in my experience.

Granted I do have some reservations about the source here.

Yes, the visual I imagined went along with that article was something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI

I'm not sure how this article made the front page. The swathes of awkwardly (machine?) translated German and the fact there appears to be several "CEO"s mentioned makes it very difficult to understand.

Plus the spoon-fed excerpts of the emails makes it look like a tabloid article. Show the full content of the emails, so the reader can make up her/his own opinion.

maybe it's better to comment below the article that they should show the whole email and not just excerpts. don't think the author of the article will read the comments here ;)

Any company that allows this:

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-31/entertainment...

...But getting humor writer/editor Daniel Kibblesmith onto the fifth season of The Millionaire Matchmaker demonstrates the group-buying site is as unceasingly resilient in using its savvy to generate interest in its company.

"It came from a really honest place," said Groupon's PR guru Julie Mossler who suggested Kibblesmith for the show. "We knew it would come with some free publicity, but this was about getting him on the show and getting him a girlfriend."

...

"I assumed I was [picked] because I was the strongest person at Groupon, but we haven't actually confirmed that yet." he joked. "They didn't want anyone too intimidating, but I know they were looking at stuff like height."

I've always imagined a sweatshop, boiler-room operation when I think of a Groupon office.

I'm pretty sure that's an accurate picture of the kind of sales operation that's required to make the magic work...

The key difference, though, is that a stockbroker Boiler-Room is usually operating at (or around) a threshold of legality since making markets in stocks is a highly regulated industry (at the very least there's the threat of sanctions if a salesperson goes too far).

OTOH, the Groupon sales team will have no such restrictions on how they sell the dream of increased customer awareness through the magic of the internet, and their vast mailing list.

If Groupon is breeching contractually agreed bonuses with it's employees, why wouldn't they challenge that in the legal system?

On the other hand, "Director of Sales" is already one of the most meaningless job titles that exist.

you're forgeting something. We're not talking about a Director of sales here. We're talking about a Herr Direktor of sales

sorry i wasn't clear: titles like this mean a lot more in germany, where it's much harder to find or lose a job; they also have a record that follows them around, much like your college transcript. being a director isn't like being one in america.

There's a lot of mention in the article about "McKinsey"; looks like that's a management consulting firm. The impression I get is that they have a bad reputation, but I have no idea why. Anyone have any insight on this?

On the contrary, McKinsey is very well respected within the management consulting industry. It is part of the big 3 consulting firms: namely McKinsey, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group. The Mckinsey brand is probably the best known out of the 3.

McKinsey is certainly one of the best-known management consulting firms. As such there's plenty, positive and negative, that's been said about them (1). To cite but the best-known instance of the negative, there's their heavy involvement with Enron. Jeffrey Skilling, who used to work for McKinsey, is now in jail for his actions as CEO of Enron (2), and McKinsey consultants were heavily involved in running the company (3).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_%26_Company, especially http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_%26_Company#Criticism [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skilling [3] http://faculty.msb.edu/bodurthj/teaching/ENRON/McKinsey%27s%...

I didn't take that they had a bad reputation; quite the reverse, that people have left their relatively prestigious job there which would look great on a CV, and now that's going to be slightly tarnished by an apparent failure at Groupon.

Aha, gotcha; I didn't get that part. Thanks for the clarification!

I think consulting firms have a bad rep with tech people because the demand for consulting firms is due to political problems in an organisation. my experience is that someone brings in consultants into an organisation because they want to carry out a plan but another group in the organisation is blocking them so they bring in consultants to bless the plan. consultants are glorified yes men.

Don't work at Groupon.

There is a history of this kind of complaint from Groupon employees, including a class action lawsuit here in the U.s.

http://www.betabeat.com/2011/09/09/groupon-through-the-glass...

Thats the typical Oliver Samwer / Rocket Internet style, and thats the culture where those assholes come from. Sad, really, but somehow, this feels very german to me.

I ve worked in IT companies like this in Berlin and people coming from the Samwer school. They have very high ideals, which their skills and resources cannot meet, and their goals can be met early as they are clones piggy backing of the original american company.

When they hit a point like i assume now, where they cannot freeload of the original, and real problems that need real new solutions emerge, that can be solved only with brains, and not brutish force, they implode.

Using the old Platonic concepts of the IDEAL " A copy cannot ever be as good as its original". The Samwers exploited that most of the innovative work could be cloned from Groupon hard early but risky phase, and in Berlin you can hire very cheaply and there is a lophole in the German Intern law.

Dont forget most operations are done in Berlin, this is vital for the whole company.

Mason please fix this .. I love your restaurant coupons

This is sales. Correct? Aren't all sales jobs like this?

Can someone revive Wall Street so it absorbs these kinds of assholes again and we can have only nice people in tech? It was nicer before the likes of Glasner and Pincus got in this game.

Also, threatening to revoke a title is just idiotic. It provides nothing to the organization. (If you need to fire people, just fire them.) Titles only matter when people are leaving, and so the only effect of reducing a title is to (theoretically) make it harder to leave, but people who want to leave will use their old titles and sue the fucking shit out of their employer (libel, blackballing) if contradicted (and win).

A certain large company (name withheld) had a practice of hiring people in between levels and "downslotting" about 75% of new hires to title the level below what they were promised in hiring. It didn't save any money but it flew a fucking plane into morale. That company abolished the slotting idiocy, but far too late, and it's probably a contributor to the cultural mediocrity and general decline of that company over the past 3-4 years.

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