The Poaching of a Talented Intern
argumentum.posterous.com
argumentum.posterous.com
First of all you guys seem to be very morally flexible in general. There needs to be a lot of trust in employer-employee relationships.
"I totally understand about not wanting to go back on your word. But remember, you aren't really doing that. When you signed the contract, you really believed that you wanted that job. Now you dont. Human being can change their mind, it's not ethically wrong to do so."
This is like saying you aren't responsible for any commitments you make and can change your mind whenever you want. What if you change your mind about paying your interns? I mean you totally intended to compensate them when you hired them, but you know, you are a human being so you can really just change your mind whenever. This combined with the massive cheap intern labor pool makes you guys seem pretty sketchy. Like you basically want employees but you don't want to pay them or share equity.
I don't know if those things are true, but that is the vibe I got. Also bragging about stealing an intern from another company kinda reinforces that image.
Also trying to develop the major parts of brand new systems with 8 interns and 3 full times sounds insane to me and kind of like you are just trying to get tons of super cheap labor as if you can replace 1 experienced developer with 5 interns and get the same results. I'm not entirely sure what you intend to do with a bunch of short term interns and like 3 fts to manage them while simultaneously running an entire company but it certainly raises red flags.
And you can see them popping up starting with the job ad itself: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d5ab5jowa58qci0/Screen%20Shot%2020...
I'm glad it worked out for Patrick in the end.
Tomorrow will be the end of my first 3 months in the Valley, and let me say the one aspect in which the Valley is vastly, 180 degrees, different from the rest of the country, is this "moral flexibility" business. I've worked over a decade in the east coast, and things are much more old fashioned back there in this aspect...people respect job contracts, put things down on paper, worry about hiring/firing and the impact it will have on the new hire, his family, healthcare etc. Not so in the valley. I got involved with a yc company too, and this is what transpired - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4567857
It wasn't remotely pleasant...and while it all worked out in the end ( in the sense I got a diff job at a diff non-yc company) , it did leave a horrible taste in the mouth. The folks running the show were ...I hate to use the word...scamsters. Literally. You try these sort of stunts in a big company, people will take you to the cleaners. Its just that out here, you have the weight of the VC's & their billions behind you, coupled with the fact that you can always claim you are "just a startup" and so this sort of behavior is on par.
Its an awesome thing for the startup community & the ecosystem at large - this moral flexibility - because it adds to the incredible speed at which you can iterate & pivot & all that jazz. But it does suck to be an employee at one of these gigs...you are at the receiving end of juvenile behavior & you have no recourse.
I have to disagree strongly with this statement. Yes, you put yourself at risk by working at a startup vs a big company... this is a risky business. I myself will end up with nearly nothing, after taking no salary for 5 months and leaving the company I founded for new ideas.
It does NOT suck.. in fact the summer experiences of the interns we laid off were on average way better than they would have received at big companies. For the short time they were with us, they brainstormed our product from the ground up, went along and participated in office hours, meeting YC partners and co-founders of other startups in my batch and attend parties and events. They've made valuable connections and now know what it's like to start a startup (the good and the bad). Every intern at my s12 batchmates' companies that I've talked to raves about the experience.
Our own interns all got new internships within a week or two (at mostly yc, but a couple 500startups cos as well) that paid equal or more than we did and had fruitful summer experiences (this was our #1 priority while pivoting, even more than our own startup). Yes, they took a risk, at first it seemed like it backfired, but in the end I am sure none of them would take it back.
Dude, you can disagree all day long. You have no locus standi - you were the employer, not the employee. One of these days, the shoe => other foot, and then you can tell me if it sucks or not. Especially when you are stuck in a new state with no healthcare & a family dependent on you, after leaving a 6 figure job at a bigco where chances of getting canned was like asymptotically close to nil. Anycase, I was not talking about you here...am sure you are an awesome guy & ran an awesome startup etc...just that there are other not-so-awesome startups & not-so-awesome founders out there.
There are not-so-awesome big companies, not-so-awesome politicians, bureaucrats. To live your life afraid of running across "not-so-awesome" people and opportunities would mean you guarantee you will never encounter the truly awesome people and opportunities.
I don't say it's the right decision for everyone, perhaps for someone with a dependent family the right decision is to stay with the big company. But to take away the FREEDOM to take a risk, that is simply wrong... let me quote James Madison from the 10th Federalist Paper.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy (destroying libery), that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
At the same time, abusing someone's trust implies intent to harm. If you actually read the emails, you can see that no where I deny the risk involved. I didn't hide anything about the company (or myself) hardly having an idea of what we were doing.
But where there is risk, there is opportunity. That was the dream I sold to Patrick, not to fool him, but because it was my dream as well. I hardly see that as abusing trust.
Like how could you in good faith hire 8 people and then fire all of them in days. I mean honestly you only were hiring them for 3 months anyway. Did you hire them without having enough money to pay them for 2 months and no method of earning revenue? It seems like you made contracts in bad faith, and then did exactly what you told Patrick to do with his real internship offer.
"When you signed the contract, you really believed that you wanted that job. Now you dont. Human being can change their mind, it's not ethically wrong to do so."
This isn't right. That is not a reasonable or ethical way to treat employees, and from your emails it sounded pretty clear that you thought it was.
This is why I thought you guys sounded sketch and that there was not enough trust to work for you. If that is your outlook on agreements/commitments then nothing would stop you from screwing over your employees, and employer's have many many opportunities to do so.
I was on the side of keeping everyone and involving them in coming up with a new idea. But that, my co-founders convinced me, and I actually now believe to be true, would be the worse ethical decision than simply being honest about the situation and helping the interns move on to opportunities where they could actually help build something and feel good about their summer.
No, it wouldn't be ethical if we abandoned them, but that was far from the case. We made personal phone calls, emails and used our own networks to ensure everyone was taken care of with a better opportunity than we could offer at the time. During the transition of 2 weeks or so, all the interns continued to stay in our house, and a few stayed for free the whole summer. It was my pleasure to host the ones that stayed, and (they are well aware of this) when the day comes for them to do their own startup I will be the first person to offer social, emotional and (if capable) financial support form them to take their own risks and start their own adventures.
For you to consider someone like Patrick, a brilliant kid in one of the most prestigious undergraduate programs in this country, to be incapable of making his own decisions is the real unethical position here. It's patronizing, it's demeaning.. and you ought to really think about what message you are sending. If the brightest kids (legally adults actually) in this country are not encouraged to look at the options that are available to them... to take risks because you really only get one chance at youth and at life.. that would be a real tragedy.
Choose which world you want to live in, then make your argument to get there,
No one is a perfect ethical person, and making ethical decisions is non-trivial. There are ethical problems with your approach as well... in the sense that if I were NOT to try an incite Patrick to leave I would not be giving him the free choice to listen to my argument and make his own decision. To say that Patrick is not capable of a reasoned decision would be patronizing, though I am not accusing you of that in any way.
The root of all ethics can only be free choice. In that sense, I had the free choice to try and convince Patrick, and he had the free choice to try and be convinced.
I think it was fine to attempt to convince Patrick to join, but it is not ok to tell him he can just bail on previous commitments because his employer will not sue him for it. Either you said that because you believe it, or you only said it to convince him, which is even worse because it means you are willing to say whatever you need to to get the results you want.
And it seems like I was right before. You in fact did decide not to pay him the agreed upon salary immediately after he arrived.
Though it didn't work out with us, Patrick had a fruitful summer with PlanGrid (according to his own article). We remain good friends, and I hope to one day work with him again.
In response to the compensation, I think Patrick would confirm that his original internship was paying him so little that he would be losing money each month in NYC.
We are not faultless here.. we had to make a decision on how to save the company (after realizing how stupid our original plan was). We tried our best to be fair, and most of the interns were satisfied with some combination of pro-rated stipend and housing/living expenses. Admittedly, some were not as satisfied.
Stealing implies property. The point I made to Patrick was that human beings are not property.
Loyalty goes both ways, or someone is being taken advantage of.
Poaching - Illegally hunt or catch (game or fish) on land that is not one's own or is under official protection.
If being free means anything, it must be the freedom of those who chose the path least worn. Those who take the most risk, in opposition to the dictates of society. The Wright Brothers, for example, who chose to turn down Harvad and MIT and instead spent years upon years in their bicycle until the y finally took us to the skies.
Where would we be without people like these... who gave up a family life because there are greater things to reach for in this world?
I'm Patrick from this thread. I agreed to having this thread published because I thought it might do good for interns out there. Not everyone works for very established tech companies, and there's inherently more risk in that. However, there's a lot of potential to learn from the experience as well.
Some things that I hope people take away form this thread:
- The dream is out there, but don't let anyone sell it to you easily. Do the research, check your facts, and be aware. However, people in Silicon Valley are generally good people, and they remember and understand what it is like to be young and not know what to do. I always will.
- Do what you think is the right thing: I would never have left my prior engagement if my would-be boss had not okayed it (we had a very long conversation at the time). This is a small world, and your word holds a lot of weight. It's probably best not to throw your word around when you can't keep your promises.
- Take a risk, once you feel you're ready for it. By venturing into the unknown, a lot could have happened to me, but I felt prepared to take on any challenges. I am under the impression that not taking a conscious, calculated risk (with positive expected value) is the biggest risk of all
Cheers, Patrick
Once you broached the subject, did he really have any choice? At that point, he has to question whether your heart would be in it if you came to work for him, and whether you might bring down the rest of the team. At this point, you are likely getting the OK regardless of whether it is just a minor inconvenience to him or a major blow.
But, you make a valid point. The discussion itself makes it very hard to say "no." I made serious errors in my judgement of the situation, and I wanted this post to inform people about those errors so that they don't make them as well.
I hope people (including myself) can learn both from what I did right and what I did wrong.
Also, on an entirely unrelated-to-the-industry note, young people rarely get the chance to meet and get to know (much less live with!) people significantly different from themselves. It's a very rewarding experience, and I'd expect you'll see benefits of it for decades to come. Many people today come out of college without ever having dealt on a personal basis with anyone but their peer group and a few dozen adults who were all in positions of authority over them. That's not very conducive to understanding the commonalities and compatibilities amongst all people.
I flew across from the UK for it, having never been West of Yellowstone, and by god did it pay off.
They even let me take three weeks of (unpaid) time off during my internship to get married and go on my honeymoon.
Reading the currently linked story implies that everything was rosy after accepting the internship. But after reading his own account of being laid-off shortly after taking the position, I would think that a humble founder would be slightly embarrassed that they just recruited someone and had to lay them off just days later. Why even publish this email chain?
I was a student my whole life until this startup, and I admit to naiveté, but not maliciousness. And though I didn't intend to, I made terrible mistakes that affected the lives of others, especially the interns. At the same time, I saw an opportunity to meet and work with on equal terms with young and talented hackers and undergrads (which was my comfort zone as a graduate student).
I was lucky to get into YC (who isn't) and saw an chance to share this luck with others. I was told time and time again by my co-founders that productivity would suffer, especially since we didn't have a solid idea yet, but I thought that the extra energy would help us get to that state in spite of slowed productivity. For purely selfish reasons, I also anticipated that this would make my own summer more enjoyable.
That leaves the waiter to just be someone to carry food to the table.
I'd expect people would tip such waiters less, or even not at all. This would probably annoy the waiters. Would that be enough to sink it, or are waiters low enough on the restaurant totem pole that the restaurant owners would still be interested?
Or, it could give them more time to talk to and engage with customers on a more equal level.
Patrick, it's never easy and the real world is complicated. As much as "YOLO" has become overplayed, I do believe that time is our greatest asset.
As for hiring interns based on emails... well... :)
You convinced a guy to reneg on a contract he had signed to join your company.
You convinced him by telling him what a great opportunity your company could offer him.
A few days later you let him go because you couldn't sustain him with work.
Am I missing something?
That is life. That is risk. That is startups.
If you want to do something great, risk is a necessary condition, because everything ordinary could be done by just hard work and no risk..