The Talented Ms. Hornstein: How Shirls Fooled The Valley | Hacker News Reader

The Talented Ms. Hornstein: How Shirls Fooled The Valley

techcrunch.com

99 pointskine49 comments

Pretty reasonable photoshops. The sad thing is so many people like this exist and more and more are starting to exist, the internet makes it very easy to pretend you're someone you're not and manipulating people that want to get something and think you have it (connections) is even easier.

I'm surprised she hasn't done the customary purchasing of Twitter followers, that seems to be an oh-so common way to artificially inflate your supposed value to the world.

What I don't understand about people like this is if you have the skills to manipulate people into thinking you're connected to important people and get jobs because of it then you can use those skills "legitimately" (in the sense that you're not lying to the people you work with).

oh and also the headline seems pretty sensationalist, it seems she tricked a few no-name startups (ones without a reputation of being important) and got caught making claims of associations with others, although I think what would be most interesting would be "Zaarly" to explain whether she was a good "consultant" or not, not that it ultimately matters at all.

I actually met her at a YC backed startup where she was doing something with marketing.

She struck me as incessantly annoying with name dropping and...how should I put this? Valley fangirl-ism? It was obviously that something was a little off, but wow, did this article strike me by surprise.

I also met Shirley at the Zaarly crawl when they stopped at our startup. Had pretty much the exact same experience, tons of name dropping, ridiculously overenthusiastic and yeah, valley fangirlism is a great term for it. I knew exactly who they were talking about when I read the title. The valley is a weird place.

> the internet makes it very easy to pretend you're someone you're not

Not really. If anything, it is much easier to fact-check such claims today -- it's just that people are generally lazy.

Watch "catch me if you can" (or read the book it is based on) - the internet hasn't made anything about "faking it" easier. It just made hearing about it easier.

This is a proper use of Quora: http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Is-Shirley-Hornstein-a-g...

This is all kinda sad really. The tech media is pathetic and the same publication "exposing" this unfortunate waste of space (who wouldn't have been able to pull the wool over the eyes of any company that had the self confidence to reference check instead of jumping on every potential hire who can name drop) is largely responsible for the phony tech-celeb culture that's invaded the valley in recent years.

It's a serious business what we do here in Silicon Valley. Sure we can enjoy our work, but most of us are committing our lives and livelihoods to working hard at what we do. The trivial nature of the media covering the tech industry right now, the desperate need for people to feel they have some sort of celebrity cachet because of what we do, and the fact that too many people watched the Social Network and want to pretend that's their life, is just a sorry state of affairs.

Word gets around about people like this. It's really not necessary to post an article on TechCrunch like you're exposing some mastermind criminal. Well I suppose it is if the generation of journalists currently staffing the tech press is really just taking umbrage that someone else with scant qualifications wants to run around the valley acting like they are somebody when they've not created anything themselves.

Yeah, this article just reminds me of the sorry state of media coverage of our industry.

This is a throw-away account. I've meet Shirley a handful of times, through mutual friends and founders here in SF.

Every time we hungout, she would tell elaborate stories of meeting so and so, or being friends with Sean Parker, or Justin Timberlake. Almost immediately, the first time I meet her, I was super skeptical; always felt like something was really off with her.

She mentioned she knew the founders at Dropbox, and even said that she had stock in Dropbox and sold it, and made quite a nice sum of money. Again, all the while I was super skeptical.

It is kind of sad that this information had to be released in such a public way on TechCrunch. In fact, I am not sure it is TechCrunch worthy.

At any rate, the valley, and SF are a much smaller place then people think, word get's around, so be yourself, stay honest, and be humble.

I am not sure it is TechCrunch worthy.

It is very much TC worthy. TC is no holy land. They themselves have used the medium to wash their dirty laundry in public, more than once.

"One of my sources told me: 'If nothing else, I’ve learned a valuable life lesson — don’t trust anyone until they deliver.'"

But of course. And this is why hiring procedures should generally be based on work-sample tests rather than on reviews of resumes (which may just be a tissue of lies) or impressions after personal interviews (which may also be full of lies). Research shows that neither biographical data about job applicants (e.g., resumes) nor the performance of job applicants in interviews does as well as work-sample tests in finding workers who do good work.

Full references can be found for these facts in my FAQ post on hiring procedures,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768

last posted in complete form about a month ago here on HN.

There are ways to do biographical interviews which DO produce worthwhile results. Topgrading has examples of how to do this, and Aaron Patzer (the Mint guy) spoke about it -- basically you go through someone's resume and job/life history and ask why they made decisions at each step, which exposes most lies (due to inconsistency) and does reveal novel predictive information (even if a resume is relatively polished-for-application-purposes.). It's similar to the Israeli airport interview technique. http://fi.co/posts/599?target=Guadalajara is an apatzer video about the topic.

I'd argue you want both work sample (for technical competence) and the biographical interview (to determine provenance, likely future behavior, etc.), and then combine with some "see how the person works in real time" situational/performance/behavioral interview.

The interviews which are worthless are: technical interviews conducted by non-technical people, meandering style unplanned interviews, and "language trivia" interviews conducted by the marginally competent.

Essentially, interviews should be formal, measurable, and then tracked against performance.

I'd put some basic pre-screening at the top of the funnel if you have too many candidates. My personal first stage filter right now is "referred by someone I know and trust", which is a very selective filter, but at a larger company you can use a less selective filter.

I know some studies that showed work sample tests to be effective, also showed general intelligence tests to be effective in positions where the employee would be trained in new skills.

It's difficult to pull off because of possible discrimination claims, e.g., IQ tests are racially biased, but it can be done if you can demonstrate a business need.

I wonder if there are any examples of businesses that only hire people over a certain score on a general intelligence test?

McKinsey has a basic problem solving test as a screen before the structured interviews. I found it very easy, but it screens out a surprisingly high number of people.

I know that several other strategy consulting companies do use intelligence screen based on progressive matrix tests as part of their interview process, but my only experience there is European (but with American companies) and I don't know if they use it in the US as well.

I've worked next to Shirley for a couple of months in NextSpace last year. She was a nice girl who was doing some marketing work for Zaarly back then. She actually was one of the first organizers of the successful Zaarly Startup Crawls. To accomplish such a thing, you have to be connected. So there may be some fluff to it, but it's certainly not all air.

I'm actually astonished by how low TechCrunch has sunk by calling her out like that and ruining her future career.

I don't think TechCrunch ruined anyone's career.

I'll bet it shows up pretty high in Google search results given that it's been linked from HN.

Worked out pretty well for some people in the past.

I for one am shocked that someone lied and then someone else had the gall to correct the lies.

Also, as one of the people who were on the Zaarly crawl, she literally emailed our all@ account and then we said, sure that sounds cool, come on by. Hypothesizing that she must have been a good marketing person because she got people interested in something that would be beneficial to them and then hypothesizing that Techcrunch is unfair and ruined her career makes me feel like you're REALLY letting your biases get in the way here.

After reading the BetaBeat article [1], which is much more informative and less biased than the TechCrunch one, I stand corrected. Guess she really lives up to her name. Oh well.

[1] http://betabeat.com/2012/08/shirley-hornstein-shirls-credit-...

So you condone spreading around fake photos of fake connections?

>>To accomplish such a thing, you have to be connected

By any chance, did you happen to mean "connected via Photoshop"?

In reality, I think people like her are less dangerous/harmful than the amoral snakes who do know how to lie and manipulate convincingly, and cover their tracks. Ms. Hornstein made herself a relatively easy target of suspicion, what with the photoshops and outsize claims; it almost sounds like she had delusions of grandeur. Compare that to sociopaths who deceive intelligently and play dirty games to climb up - they're much harder to catch or stop.

(Not defending her, I just find her actions a little too transparent to worry about)

Who is this, and why should I care?

There are dozens of unimportant people lying on their resumes. Why is this one newsworthy?

Exactly. My only thought is, why her only? I admire what the author wants to put forth, but why only expose a single person? Doesn't it almost seem like a vendetta? If this is a common practice, then there will be many more examples. A better way to approach this IMO would have been to have different examples and not focus exclusively on one single person.

Maybe because it landed her in Forbes?

Slight tangent: Forbes now takes contributor submissions which are (frequently) worthless fluff pieces, as is the one she is in. It's not by a Forbes staff member, I think they're really killing their branding with the contributor idea. Every time I see a forbes link now I have to make sure to check if it's just someone that applied to submit articles or actual Forbes staff.

That's good to know...and also very disturbing at the same time. Thanks.

If you think it is particularly about her and nothing more then yes, this article is pants. But maybe it has some value as an example+warning of a general phenomenon.

Does anyone know what she actually did at these companies? By which I mean, it appears that she misrepresented herself in order to gain consulting work (which Zaarly appear to have confirmed), but I'm interested to know the nature of this consulting work.

Was it to secure further funding? It would be pretty hilarious if she was in fact successful at her job on the back of the same lies that got her hired in the first place. The Photoshops are definitely a little weird, though.

> Was it to secure further funding?

Lulz.

IIRC she planned a few events for us around SF. As soon as we figured out she was a fraud, she was gone. As far as I could tell, her role at Zaarly served her more than it served us.

When I met her, she told me that her role was some sort of community manager/office manager hybrid fwiw.

So tech crunch is now officially the new ValleyWag? As one outside the valley circle-jerk I can't work out whether I'm laughing at this article or moderately disgusted by it.

jm2c. Guess you laughed at the article first and then felt disgusted about it (the laugh I mean).

This is a symptom of a very common problem in the startup world that even I am guilty of...not checking references!

This woman isn't a college graduate. She should have references.

This is how I use linked in: before hiring someone pull up their linked in profile and see if you have any mutual connections. Then reach out to those mutual connections privately and ask their opinion of the person. If its a sensitive hire you can say something like "Hey, I met XXX at a dinner party, couldn't really get a read on them, what do you think about them?"

"What impressed my most was their ability to think on their feet and their integrity. Why, I'm pretty sure they'd almost never work for a liar, or someone who cares much about gossip one way or the other. Though it surprises me you met them at a dinner party; X usually doesn't have much time or love for sniffing butts. Anyway, why do you ask?"

Reference: a person to whom inquiries as to character or ability can be made

Key being character AND ability.

There's a difference between gossip and a reference check.

The photoshop stuff is very "funny" but I don't know how different it is to other kind of initial traction tricks. For example sites creating fake users and conversations to gain traction. Here she tried to gain traction from a personal perspective.

Gaming the system is what many startups do everyday.

(Coming from a nobody reading HN at night this might be ironic, but) She seems to be a nobody++ type person that is all too common in circles where people are loosely coupled and you can fake/social-engineer your way in. BTW, I totally understand inflating your impact on projects and even a little bit getting creative with titles on LinkedIn to make oneself more important. But Photoshopping yourself? To Timberlake? If it were pg I'd understand, but this is just sad.

> If it were pg I'd understand, bit this is just sad.

Wat. pg photoshopping himself onto a photo with JT is less sad how?

I think Jun8 meant that photoshopping yourself onto a photo with pg is less pathetic than photoshopping yourself onto a photo with JT. pg = actually relevant to startups, and it's highly plausible for someone (especially someone working for YC companies) to meet him and potentially take a photo with him. I'd sort of assume some slight endorsement if a consultant 1) knew who pg was 2) met him and got a photo, whereas a photo with JT is just Hollywood celebrity namedropping. (Ashton Kutcher, who is a legitimate tech investor in his own right, is different)

(unless you were jokingly misunderstanding this for comedic effect)

JT did invest in myspace. Does it count?

Because people here love the guy, regardless of his conspiracies about McDonalds franchises.

Found this on pg's Facebook profile: http://i.minus.com/joiEdx6W3YHcZ.png

Compare to the original (easily found with Google): http://i.minus.com/jGgj22Vnipvhc.jpg

someday maybe PG will use Facebook, til then meme on

You're right, that would be more sad!

Here's another interesting Silicon Valley case... http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-deal-with-Larry-Chiang

I'm guessing this was her mantra "Fake it till you make it".

lol, what a pathetic person.

I laughed when I saw the photoshops.

I pity the fool, her career in technology is most certainly over at this point now that the cat is out of the bag.

http://gawker.com/5938904/notorious-silicon-valley-fraud-shi...

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