Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

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I'm calling this comment out. I think you made that up. Show me I'm wrong.

I won't, if only because:

(a) some of these people I like, even if I find private equity (and, thus, the company they kept in their career-building years) distasteful. Associating innocent people (by name) with a problem just to make a point is something I'd rather not do.

(b) the ones I hate I know well and identifying them would give information about my career history that I've chosen not to share. For example, I worked for a truly evil (management-wise; the engineers were fine) startup in 2011-12 and I've thus far kept the world from knowing which one. I have strategic reasons for keeping that way. I could probably destroy that company if I wanted to, but I'd prefer not to do so. If they succeed, it makes me rich. (I don't have equity, but I have dirt.) However, anyone who is considering working for an NYC startup can ping me and I'll do a yes/no on whether it's That One. (I have convinced a lot of people not to work for them.)

You can believe me, or conclude that I'm drawing a conclusion based on limited experience and not believe me. I'm not making it up, but I don't have longitudinal data, just a large set of observations because I talk to a lot of people. I'll admit to that.

Now, I will admit that all of my direct experience comes from New York VC-istan. I haven't been to California in almost 5 years. For all I know, it could be totally different out there but, based on the people I talk to on a regular basis, it seems to be same shit, slightly different stink.

> "I could probably destroy that company if I wanted to, but I'd prefer not to do so. If they succeed, it makes me rich. (I don't have equity, but I have dirt.)"

This is not the right move long term. If they've wronged you move on, maybe blow the whistle if its complete BS. Resorting to extortion is not going to make you any friends who take pride in their ethics and who therefore won't screw you over in the long term.

When I blew this whistle on Google, I pissed off a lot of engineers even though I never had a problem with them. And, in that case, it didn't really hurt them at all because a single whistleblower can't take out Google. The worst it has to fear is mild embarrassment.

The lesson I learned is that whistleblowing often angers the wrong people. In a better world, only wrongdoers would suffer, but that doesn't seem to be the world that exists. Google's horrible management is still horrible; its otherwise disinterested engineers (who I'd be inclined to like) seem to be the ones upset about it. Which might suggest that it wasn't the right course of action, since the wrong people feel attacked while the deserving targets don't seem to have changed.

If I blew a whistle on this startup, I'd probably end it (unlike Google, on which I had no real effect). Unfortunately, it'd be engineers who'd suffer (losing jobs, when the company folds) but management would be OK. That's the problem. The good guys are more vulnerable to that sort of thing than the genuine malefactors. The CEO's independently wealthy and has flat-out said he doesn't care if that startup fails (since the investors took it away from his original vision-- to something much better than what he started with). If I blew a whistle on him, I'd just take that firm off his books and he'd move on to some other project.

Now, if they have a huge success, then that changes. In that case, engineers get their payoff no matter what I do, but managers risk personal embarrassment (as they deserve, because that company's whole management team is unethical). So, then it might make sense to divulge. Right now, though, I'm just nervous that it would hurt the wrong people.

Oh man. It seems like every company you wind up working for is totally evil. Sorry to hear.

More non-evil ones than evil ones. My last company (financial firm) wasn't evil. Just had two evil ones (following a failed startup) in a row.

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