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The OP is doing none of those things. He his both offering FREE highly thoughtful feedback to Rui (which I'm guessing is exactly what Rui was looking for by posting something publicly), and offering all of us who care about open source business models another perspective.
If you’re a manager, it most certainly is unethical to talk about someone you’ve managed publicly. I’m hardly the first person to say this. There’s tons of information out there coaching managers on how to talk about ex-employees. Maybe it doesn’t bother you, but I assure you a lot of people care about this and don’t want their ex-boss chiming in on their new projects.
From the HN guidelines -
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Please do better next time. Glad that your current thread has been flagged and disabled by the community.
Managers: Do not discuss your ex-employee’s work in public. It’s risking their reputation and unprofessional.
No, it is not.
> Managers: Do not discuss your ex-employee’s work in public. It’s risking their reputation and unprofessional.
Do not discuss your ex-employee’s work in public without consent. You missed the consent part. What if both the manager and ex-employee are ok discussing it in public?
You have your own value system and rules. But they apply to you. You do not decide for me as an employee what kind of relationship or interaction I should have with my boss.
I think you are right on both points: 1) It doesn't bother me 2) a lot of people care about this.
Everyone I know has part of their brain that rapidly recoils from criticism. That could be universal.
Training your mental muscles to instead be grateful for all feedback, no matter whether it is delivered kindly or poorly, is a good skill, IMO, if you care about the truth.
I think the word you should use is "impolite". I would never call someone who speaks a public truth "unethical". Impolite? Maybe (not in this case as I found their comments quite kind). But I prefer ethical people to polite people 10 times out of 10.
The post wasn't talking about his success, Rui was dissecting his company's _reason for failure_.
OP took that and shifted the needle to point the blame for that failure to a different sector. He's not bashing on Rui, but that might not be clear unless one actually reads Rui's post!
The only thing that might be questionable in OPs post is if there was any need to mention that he was Rui's director. The pros in favor of it is that it gave the post more credibility and attention (meaning it will help more people), and the con against it is that some folks might incorrectly interpret it as Rui-bashing and hurt OPs reputation.
Given that the only people who that con would apply to would have no idea who OP was before this post (and are likely to quickly forget about him the next day), perhaps the director didn't choose poorly.