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Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't he have taken on the lead role of R&D? Of an experimental dev arm etc...

There are lots of opps he could have taken.

Sure, It might not have been a good role, but sounds like there were relationship issues as well. I wouldn't imagine his cut and run solely on "I cant program enough" -- He had to be either under performing or frustrated with the others' lack of leadership/performance/flexibility/ability to listen/you-name-it

There are too many reasons to leave a company, but who knows the truth....

Haven't looked at simple since we speculated over their biz model ~12 months ago on HN... and frankly, as i still perceive them as a simple proxy to Big Evil banks (TM) - I'll still never trust them....

Though that is not related to the story... I still have nothing to convince me to think they are not just trying to find a way to cash in on the most despicable industry in existence... banking.

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So, Alex writes something, but you, Sam Stave, you can tell he's not telling the whole truth. He speaks warmly of everyone he worked with there... but to you, it "sounds like there were relationship issues". He writes that he's stepping down as CTO, but you can tell: he's "cut and run". He HAD TO BE either "under performing" or "frustrated with the others'".

And you can tell all of this because of your superior insight and the feel you've gained from participating in places like HN for how engineering teams really work.

Youre very snide. This is the Internet, I am posting an opinion, and further I stated it could be for any number of reasons.

This is a forum for discussion, and as such, speculation happens.

You appear to be more personally offended by whatever I said in a speculative comment than maybe you should be?

Whatever.

You are posting nonsense about real people that you don't know and then getting indignant when people call you on it.

If you don't like being called out, consider starting future comments with the words "I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, but just for shits, here's a theory:".

It was a speculative comment, I'm happy to be wrong and free to admit it, thistle you no less snide, which is something I've seen from you in the past.

Do you know Alex?

Do you know anyone who works at Simple?

Do you have any other sources for what's going on at Simple?

Alex is a real person. He is not an Xbox game. Internet or not: he is not up for your review. If you're going to "speculate" about his "performance" or "relationships", you should be ready to go to bat for what you said.

If he doesn't want people to discuss his actions and motivations, he shouldn't write them up on a blog.

That is about as convincing an argument as Stave's "it's the Internet, I'm allowed to speculate about anything" argument.

If he hadn't written a blog post, HN would be all abuzz about his name vanishing from their web pages.

There's no way to win this.

All I speculated in my post was that there could have been more reasons that were stated on the blog post.

You're attacking me for not necessarily taking it for face value. Your language is belittling and confrontational and I'll just take it to mean you're probably an asshole, which, honestly is the only personality judgement I have made in this whole thread.

You've acted like I made some sort of character attack on Alex...

I've seen you do this before on HN, as I stated.

No, you speculated that Alex's post was dishonest, since your "speculations" directly contradicted numerous things he actually said.

I concluded a few months ago that writing like yours (not yours in particular; it's an annoying HN trope) is actually more rude than a similar comment that outright called the author a liar. You not only did that, but in such a way as to imply that he lies so often it's a casual affair. "Of course", the sentiment you're expressing goes, "there's more to the story than he's telling us. Why would he tell us anything but what makes him look good?" That's what you've communicated.

Alex, I am 1000% sure, does not give a shit about what you (or I) think about his most recent career move. But comments like yours, as you can see, drive me up a fucking wall.

Then for that, I apologize. I was not trying to say he was dishonest - but in my experience - I tend not to take every thing I read in the valley for face value (yes, I know they are in NYC).

I am happy to be wrong, but given that I do not, as you pointed out, know Alex - or anyone at Simple, I have no option but to speculate on motives and things going on in the spaces I follow.

What I was upset about is the level at which you attempted to censor me, call me indignant and berate me discussing this online.

If we were in a room face to face and i disagreed with you in person would you have conducted yourself in the same manner? I doubt it, you probably would have been more polite in telling me how you disagreed with me.

You're welcome to come over for dinner any time, BTW.

Also - I'll teach you how to throw knives.

Have a good night. (the dinner offer is still open)

I have no snide response to this comment.

We would not have gone this many rounds on this in person. I'm pretty sure (as everyone who works with me will tell you) that I'd have used the same words as my first response, but regardless of how you took that, it would have blown over. Conversations don't hover on a screen in front of you after they're concluding, begging you to push them forward.

You added more here since I replied...

Again - I think you're a little emotionally touchy. And thats totally ok, but let me address a point you are making:

you are equating my belief that there could be more to the story than what i am reading in a blog post with accusing the poster of lying and that you find this really annoying.

Further you are using quotations around phrases that I never typed to imply that these quotes were my true meaning. This is a pretty low debate tactic. Why not mention that I also implied he was gay, or racist, or stomped on kittens for sexual pleasure.

I meant nothing of the things that you "quoted" -- I simply said, and I'll quote:

"Sure, It might not have been a good role, but sounds like there were relationship issues as well. I wouldn't imagine his cut and run solely on "I cant program enough" -- He had to be either under performing or frustrated with the others' lack of leadership/performance/flexibility/ability to listen/you-name-it

There are too many reasons to leave a company, but who knows the truth...."

Read that a few time, whilst leaving your emotional attachements behind and tell me where I am calling him a liar.

When i say "who knows the truth" I mean the empirical truth - as in the truth that takes into accounts absolutely all factors.

Not "this guy is lying and so I don't have the truth"

Anyway, I'm done with this thread, hopefully you'll cool off on the things that drive you up the wall and I'll be more specific in my language :)

Right on. Thanks for being so patient about this.

Dude - I think you're awesome... and I am here to learn as much as I can!

There's an easy way, actually: Don't do publically visible things in the first place. Certainly, this limits your options in life, but if you simply can't tolerate other people speculating about you, reasonably or otherwise, you don't give yourself much choice.

I believe the motivation for the scorn is because you have no evidence for your speculation, and that speculation is tarnishing a person that we respect.

I speculated on reasons for leaving, I was not talking about his character as a person.

but sounds like there were relationship issues as well. I wouldn't imagine his cut and run solely on "I cant program enough" -- He had to be either under performing or frustrated with the others' lack of leadership/performance/flexibility/ability to listen/you-name-it

That's personal, and you have no basis for it.

Stop doing that.

Companies at this stage--startups hitting stride--don't need "experimental R&D dev arms." The need laser focus on their main product, no distractions.

I think it's completely plausible that he doesn't get enough time programming and he's leaving because of it. Simple is growing. At this stage, he's a manager, not a programmer. Sounds like he isn't too interested in managing.

They have a lot to ship, still. It seems that being a CTO and moving down the chain to program more is a precarious road to traverse.

Most people seem to leave their respective companies and hang on as advisors. Maybe it's just too awkward?

I think it would be tough to go from CTO to a lower role in the same company. Strange dynamics would follow. He is staying on as an advisor though :)

Too awkward? He wrote explicitly about why he was leaving: Simple has challenging problems, but they are not the challenging problems that light Alex up. Alex is interested in programming languages and dev tools, not tracking and routing money.

I don't have to speculate about that or wonder if there's "awkwardness" behind it. Alex said so. Just read the post.

You wonder whether people write posts like this because they anticipate speculation about why they're leaving or how the company is doing. Of course, there's no win to be had in being honest and direct, because people are just going to invent their own stories. The narrative that eventually sticks is the one that is most fun to bounce around, or has the most resonance to people, or is most congenial to people's ideology.

Sometimes you need to spend a bit of time with your head not quite so high above the parapet, just learning, not being the Great White Hope for lots of dependants.

I left a well paying job where I was expected to be the exciting bright young thing who will change everything, for a job I greatly prefer, earning half as much, where I can learn from two or three really bright people, where I am the bottom peg, and have the time to mess around with things, sometimes highly speculatively, and get a few wins under my belt.

I would analogise this as being a bit like the difference between becoming a pop singer via a TV talent show and becoming a pop singer via years of gigs from pub to pub in a van with your band.

Also, '....' is not the dramatic rhetorical flourish that you seem to think it is. It just looks silly....

> Couldn't he have taken on the lead role of R&D? Of an experimental dev arm etc...

A startup generally is an experimental dev company. Startups execute their roadmap. If they don't have focus, especially when they're tackling something as big as banking, they die.

> There are lots of opps he could have taken.

Sure. But it's hard/impossible to move down the food chain once you've been at the top.

> Sure, It might not have been a good role, but sounds like there were relationship issues as well.

I didn't get that from Alex's post. I got "not doing enough programming, wife and I miss San Francisco"

> I wouldn't imagine his cut and run solely on "I cant program enough" -- He had to be either under performing or frustrated with the others' lack of leadership/performance/flexibility/ability to listen/you-name-it

You got all that from "personal reasons"? :)

consider also that in the last month, their director of security also "moved on": http://www.linkedin.com/in/s7ephen?_mSplash=1

Stephen Ridley is a friend and a former teammate. He "moved on" from Matasano as well, to BankSimple. He "moved on" from Simple to full-time security research. Because he's a security researcher. Since he left Simple, he's been doing research and teaching classes on ARM exploitation. Because that's what he likes doing. How much opportunity do you think there was for developing ARM exploitation classes at Simple?

This happens all the time with very senior security roles at startups. People take them because they fit a career arc, but then realize that the day-to-day of those very senior roles just isn't as fun as research work. Since security research work pays like f'ing crazy right now, people bounce out of demanding corp roles pretty quickly: even in a very strong outcome at a startup, you might not give up too much money opting for "funemployment".

(Alex and Stephen are also good friends, from long before Simple).

No. He got that from thin air. Unfortunately for HN, most of the time, when people leave companies after 2 years, it's for boring reasons. So just making shit up helps enliven things.

He probably wants new challenges that don't mesh with what Simple is doing. It makes sense.

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