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Comment by throwaway404 | Hacker News Reader

When Noah says, "everyone is replaceable", he really means it.

Yesterday, he fired half of AppSumo, despite the company is profitable and growing.

Here is Noah's m.o. with AppSumo:

1) Attract and hire people by paying them above market salary and promising equity.

2) New employees grow the company by building systems, automating inefficient processes, creating new lines of business, etc.

3) Once systems are built and operating efficiently; fire staff before equity vests.

4) Rinse, repeat, wash.

Entrepreneurs like this give startups a bad name. It's sad to see so many people celebrate him as a startup role model.

The reason he was fired from Facebook because he leaked internal features to the press and blogged about them. Yet he still seems unapologetic "I don’t think what I did was that wrong since the marketing team did not do anything to promote our new features."

Clearly this guy's moral compass points south.

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Could it be that he got fired from Facebook for the same reason as well? For founders, this seems like an easy way to guard themselves against dilution.

Nobody is perfect. Be it life or work, we all do mistakes. It is easy to disillusion ourselves or justify ourselves, that others were right. In this occasion, it is probably easy for Noah to relate to few things that didn't go well and assume them as reasons for getting fired.

If Mark Zuckerberg used this tactic so that he could have more value for his stocks at the end of the day, then it is quite a disgusting one. I have great respect for Mark. I hope it is not true.

If so many people were fired, then clearly there was a problem with hiring the right people.

> For founders, this seems like an easy way to guard themselves against dilution.

I think the most important property of a good leader is behave like an umbrella. Guard the shit and magnify the happiness. If someone takes the stance of firing employees to justify dilution then, in my not so humble opinion, they dont deserve to lead.

>Nobody is perfect. Be it life or work, we all do mistakes.

And be man enough to own up, learn from the mistake and don't repeat it again.

>If Mark Zuckerberg used this tactic so that he could have more value for his stocks at the end of the day, then it is quite a disgusting one. I have great respect for Mark. I hope it is not true.

"I'm a CEO, bitch". Does that sound familiar? The whole of Facebook works with the preamble of "Mark is always right". That sounds more like a dictator than a founder. And a dictator is only interested in his own interests.

>If so many people were fired, then clearly there was a problem with hiring the right people.

Or, the founder just wanted to get work by paying less. Ideally these people should have been hired as contractors. But the founder decided to create an illusion of a long term commitment to compromise on the Cost to the Company.

Disclaimer: I had worked for Facebook, got fed up with the idiocy and resigned after 3 months.

>> fire staff before equity vests

I seriously doubt this is the reason. Doesn't Noah own like 80-90% of that business, and any one superstar employee is maybe looking at 1% or less in equity.

So you're saying Noah would burn people to pick up rounding-error-level equity? I don't buy it.

There may be other untoward reasons for firing people, but hoarding equity is not one of them. More likely he realized the people he hired don't operate at the level he wanted or he decided he can't afford their above market salary. Salary is a FAR more likely reason, especially because AppSumo is so capital efficient.

Its a scummy thing to do regardless of how it affects the boss. Its how it affects the fire-ee that makes it scummy.

The whole point of the original comment was that Noah fires to stop people's equity from vesting. If he did, sure, there's a claim that it's unethical. But since that's unlikely, what do you have left???

That Noah fired some people who may or may not have deserved it. Happens every day. Anyone on HN who builds a company of any size will probably have employees mad at them for doing the same.

Employment is a MARKET. Both parties are "at will"...

If an employee quits without a good reason, is that scummy?

Should the scumminess of it depend on how it "affects" the COMPANY?

People quit every day to earn 10% more across the street, work with better technology, walk away from technical debt, shorten their commute, get away from a dreary office or smelly coworkers. Whatever.

There's no morality in it, good or bad. And employers should feel free to fire people who aren't fitting and/or cannot be kept for whatever reason.

As far as I can tell, that's the AppSumo situation. If you want to call that "scummy" feel free, but I don't see any logic in it.

...and they didn't deserve to get fired a month earlier? Or 3 days later (after vesting)? There is no such thing as a coincidence when money is involved.

In my experience, the deadline of something like that is merely a forcing function to act on a problem that you've let go too long. I have yet to meet an entrepreneur that moves too fast on firings.

That said, I learned early on in my career that you can't make mistakes or have bad optics with people's comp. There's no way to recover from a mistake like that, and people do not give you the benefit of the doubt.

...and "forcing function" is weasel words for "screw them before they vest". If you use the vesting date for any firing decision, that is a moral lapse.

> Yesterday, he fired half of AppSumo, despite the company is profitable and growing.

What's the real story here? Your comment comes off more like a bitter ex-employee than someone who's qualified to judge Noah's moral compass from a blog post and anonymous rumor about AppSumo.

Disclosure: I count Noah as a good friend.

Him being bitter about the fact and that it was a scummy thing to do are not mutually exclusive. I count myself as an impartial commenter.

I'm suggesting that:

1. the rumor is, until verified, a rumor.

2. Basing a judgement about one's moral compass on a rumor about firing half the company (even if it's true) and blog post is a classic example of a Fundamental attribution error.

1) Was the staff fire or not. That would be pretty easy to check. You instead of saying this is a rumor would have made a better argument by actually checking then coming back and posting "yeah well actually it was exactly 40% that was fired not 50% like he mentioned".

2) see 1)

What's the rumor? That half the staff was fired or that Noah uses the particular M.O. that was presented?

Can't you easily verify either of these for us?

If you consider Noah as a good friend, then by definition you do not have an unbiased opinion.

> anonymous rumor about AppSumo.

Email him.

Clearly this guy's moral compass points south.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

A properly functioning compass points north.

Everything in this subthread is a demonstration of the fall in quality of discourse on Hacker News.

Because Cushman pointed out that a compass tends to have two points, he has received several downvotes. He's got, surprisingly, more than one person suggesting that he should be fired. Where does that even come from? Why is someone being a little pedantic on a web forum cause to tell them they shouldn't have a job?

Especially when he's right: compasses can point both directions. He didn't attack anyone and say they should be fired, he didn't accuse someone of being a "rhetoric astronaut". What's the value in being so hurtful? Most surprising of all is that so many people jumped in. Like they were just waiting to make fun of someone on the internet.

I'd love to see attacks at people stop happening here, because good discussions do still occur. But my remarks are just more reactionary bullshit, I guess. Maybe I should be fired too.

I appreciate the backup, though I'm not really hurt-- getting downvoted for that is pretty amusing.

It does seems like an interesting little pattern on HN, though. I've found I tend to get the most upvotes for expressing the strongest opinions, even "controversial" ones. Maybe it goes against the conventional wisdom, but usually, when I get downvoted, it's not because I've said something unpopular, but because I've said something mildly challenging, but otherwise completely blasé-- like pointing out that there's nothing privileged about the north pole of a dipole magnet. (It's the sort of thing liberal arts grads love to talk about, I'm not surprised it doesn't play well here.)

Normally, of course, there'll be a downvote or two and that's that. On the extreme end, you'll see this strange phenomenon where something is so insultingly boring that it necessitates a whole comment thread complaining about it. I actually find it really fascinating.

The compass remark was obviously a symbol, and the intent is clear from the allegations made previously.

He is being downvoted because obviously none of this has any to do with an actual compass and is merely adding noise to the discussion.

> Because Cushman pointed out that a compass tends to have two points, he has received several downvotes.

well, that's because his comment, though superficially relevant, was actually pure noise. there was no compass involved to have two points; the term was being used metaphorically, and everyone (cushman included) knew what it meant.

Every mechanical compass I've used has two points. Or none, I guess, on the spherical ones.

This comment reminded me of the "architecture astronaut" post by Joel Spolsky[1]:

"Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like "Napster is a peer-to-peer service for downloading music" and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it's interesting because it's peer to peer, completely missing the point that it's interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away."

Yes there might be two points on your compass but the "interesting" point is the one that's drawn to the magnetic pole of the planet. Cushman, you're a rhetoric astronaut.

1 http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html

I agree that cushman seems to be being thick, but there are two magnetic poles on all magnets including the Earth, dangit, not "the magnetic pole of the planet". In fact, the part that points north is the magnetic south pole of the compass.

(Now I suspect the bit about the level of discourse does apply; I was well-aware of magnetic polarity in 1st grade, and polarity itself defines there being two ends...)

I was more concerned with expressing a relevant thought I had than ensuring that the phrase I used to sum up the general concept of a compass was scientifically accurate. Because after all, the very thing this entire thread about is that the properties of magnetism and the nature of compasses are irrelevant to the meaning of the phrase, "moral compass."

Nerds, each of us. I say that affectionately but man I regret answering theorique's question.

Nobody is talking about spherical moral compasses.

It remains the case that a compass points both north and south by nature; which is a matter of convention.

Just out of curiosity, how do you manage to converse with other people in the real world?

It varies, but usually I compress my diaphragm to force air from my lungs past a set of vibrating membranes which produce a base tone, then modulate that tone using the various muscles in my mouth to produce a set of distinct acoustic patterns which my conversational partner can decode. If that's working well I'll also modulate the frequency and volume of the tone itself to encode additional semantic information, but that's not strictly necessary for communication to take place.

His conversations end in "yer fired!".

It's just an analogy, I'm sure everyone understands what he meant.

Ever been fired? ;)

You offering me a job?

>"Every mechanical compass I've used has two points."

And the pedantic-bs-to-save-some-face-of-the-day award, goes to...

Holy shit! Who gives a fuck about compasses. We get it. The guy in question is alleged to be a dick. This noise on HN about people debating types of compasses is like arguing over the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. Next to the hero worship of Kim Dotcom, this is exactly why HN is a pain in the ass sometimes. Yet, I'm still F'ing reading it. Sigh.

Magnetic north, not true north.

In China, a compass is called a 指南针 ("point south needle"). So... I guess it depends on who you're talking to.

The entire story about a startup is about money. I hear people saying stuff like "I add value by creating something wonderful", but I consider that a truckload of horseshit. It is always about money and firing people just before equity vesting bolsters that idea.

This is the precise reason I work as an independent contractor for companies and explicitly make an effort not to get into an employment.

The entire story about a startup is about money. VC-istan is banking, really, except instead of securities and loans you're dealing in ads.

Honestly, I think finance is better. The money's better, the work is about the same in quality, and if you stick to the quantitative stuff, the people are a lot more ethical in finance.

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