Hex, Lies and Startups | Hacker News Reader

Hex, Lies and Startups

codingjohnson.com

208 pointsgringofyx141 comments

> I started working my contracted 7.5 hours a day,

I am constantly surprised by bosses that do not realise the consequences of their words.

When someone is clearly making an effort you need to recognise that. Maybe it's just a "hey, thanks, I appreciate it" when you have no money.

Saying "I pay you a wage and you do the work" is a sure way to force people to do just enough.

The same exact thing happened to me a couple of years ago - except that I wasn't working at a startup, but at an established company. I even proposed to have a results-based salary (I was doing a lot of sales engineering, so that would have been fairly simple) but was refused.

So I started working just my contract hours, and building hashtagify.me on the side. In the end I gave my resignation notice, they went into a panic and offered me 5 months of half-time work - but with 85% pay; this cost them much more than what I would have expected as a bonus at the time, not to count the almost two years of not-really-enthusiastic work.

I really can't understand how managers/business people can be so stupid sometimes.

I can. When you're not doing an actual work that contributes directly to a product you sell, it's easy to be dumb. Because you are allowed to.

Most managers think of themselves as being the biggest and most important cog in the machine. However I've seen Directors and CEO's sat there playing solitaire not really knowing how they got to that position in life or what role some people have in their company.

If you're an introverted programmer growth-hacking for the company, try telling the CEO about the value you're adding to the company... typically (in my experience) this news is usually met with disbeleif, furrowed brows and denial.

You were right to do what you did, hopefully you both learned from the experience ;)

Well, ironically that manager was just sacked - and my resignation was one of the reasons alleged for this (it was just an excuse in my opinion). Even more ironically, his role will now be filled by a Director who is MUCH worse in that sense.

So, I'm pretty doubtful that any lesson will be learned from there, because it's most likely the owner who set up that compensation policy. He built the company on selling hardware, and I guess that he doesn't understand that with software the quality of your people is almost everything (unlike with hardware that you resell).

>I even proposed to have a results-based salary

Do you realize how insane such a suggestion is? I know it probably sounds totally reasonable from a "the harder you work the better you do" mindset, but companies abandoned that in the 1980s. There's a reason why even as technology has multiplied the productivity of employees by leaps and bounds average salaries have remained flat since 1980.

If you want to understand managers/business people, read their books. Seriously, read the books they have on their shelf. Books written for managers are like something produced in a bizarre sociopathic universe. And they very consciously divorce the idea of employee compensation from the value of the work an employee does.

Maybe you missed the point where I said I was heavily involved in sales (actually I was both a project manager and a sales engineer). When you work with sales, it's not unusual to have part of your salary tied to those.

> And they very consciously divorce the idea of employee compensation from the value of the work an employee does.

And that right there is my problem with management people. Most see people are "resources", and that too equal resources. What they fail to understand is that everyone is different and some people will be better than others.

I'm still in college but the mindset here seems like any company. All students are treated similarly and have same rules. These rules are designed to get an average output. People who are lower than average get a bit of benefit because of this but people who are above average get dragged down in the process!

Employee compensation is absolutely not associated with the value of the work the employee does.

Instead, it's associated with the best replacement that the company could find.

If Joe makes $2M a year for a company and gets paid $150k but Steve can do the same work at the same level for $100k, Joe's out and Steve's in. The initial $2M of value doesn't matter, except to lower the chance that a replacement could outperform you.

Cynical and unfair? Sure. That's how it works, though. Start your own company if you don't like it.

That's an interesting calculation.

Using that formula, how would management like to compensate Joe given the following:

* Steve is hired for $100k

* A year passes

* The company starts to lose money, let's say down to $1.5M a year.

* It is decided that Joe's industry knowledge - and only Joe's knowledge - had been making extra money for the company. It was some non-transferrable knowledge.

* Aside from the previous caveat, Steve and Joe had precisely the same skillset

* Joe is happily employed somewhere else for $150k

And now your company is full of bottom-dollar workers who just nominally fulfill management's probably quite flawed idea of what the work requires.

That's a broken model for many reasons. For one is that it replacement omits or undervalues the cost to acquire and retrain a replacement to being a) competent in the context of the position, and longer term b) being truly integrated into the company and able to bring deeper value to the business.

Time to a) can be short, particularly if the candidate is a good fit, but time to b) is typically three years. Early in my career, I took a little offense when a manager once told me that it would take three years to become useful. After some discussion, that wasn't a comment about my technical ability or level of work (they were actually very happy about that), but it was just a realistic timeline to get to b), the point that they could throw about anything at me and I could reliably pull resources and people together to get things done for the company in an independent and cost-effective manner. Depending on the work, time to (b) could be shorter or longer, but it's surprisingly long - longer than many want to admit to themselves. Over the years, I've looked at people in companies through this lens, and three years is typical.

Companies with an employee "replacement cost" model often have churn rates so employees stay with the company well below (b).

The "replacement cost" model also leads unwillingness to invest in employees, either by explicit training, or on the job training anticipating increased responsibilities. After all, they might be gone soon and we just have to go shopping for a replacement.

Longer term employees (typically the mid-level management) are then stuck because they're managing details that they really wouldn't otherwise need to, masking time to take care of problems that they would otherwise should be the sole owners of.

They're both subtle outgrowths of undervaluing people, leading to company underperformance.

Note that the corrections you propose still have nothing to do with the value that the employee produces. They just adjust the replacement cost to something more realistic.

It's still about minimizing expenditure to bring in a certain amount of profit.

If, because of the replacement cost model, you don't spend time and some effort to get and keep well integrated employees, the business misses out on deeper value the employees could bring. Further, those deep-value employees can handle more issues, freeing higher level management to focus on bigger, higher value issues. I think that has a lot of relevance, but then I think a lot of companies miss out on expanding value when they're focused on squeezing costs.

>Cynical and unfair? Sure. That's how it works, though.

That's how it doesn't work. Except if you sell bricks or something.

In the IT industry it's a surefire way to replace loyal and precious employess with talentless slobs, while you're thinking you're getting a better deal for your company.

This sounds more like you're a terrible negotiator. You left a lot of money on the table during those 2 years.

That. Or maybe they realized that with the downturn, a newborn child, a newbought home, a mortgage, and a wife that had been fired when pregnant I wouldn't have had much room to leave anytime soon...

When someone is clearly making an effort you need to recognise that.

A common symptom of management insanity is that if you're working like 14hrs a day, it's because you are inefficient and should be thankful that they're putting up with your incompetence.

A litany of red flags.

- "he'd stolen a few clients, some data"

- "he took on his former girlfriends brother"

- "within a year me and Ian moved to Bulgaria...John wanted to keep costs down"

- "Ians sister, had an abortion at Johns request." (I'm pro-choice, but this is still messed up)

- "I want you to fire Ian"

- "I think John wanted it all swept under the carpet."

- "Then how about my shares?" - if you ever find yourself saying this, you are sunk.

John sounds like the worst guy ever.

I'm about as trusting and naive as they come. I probably would have fallen for John's smarminess initially as well - some people are excellent manipulators - and probably kept going for a long time. But you were working for somebody who does not have a conscience. John is a classic sociopath. Be glad you got out of there - being rich under his command is not worth it.

Is that enough information to really label him a sociopath? Not the best person maybe, but a sociopath?

Either he has no feelings of guilt whatever, or he's not sleeping much at night. Also he's highly manipulative. I'd give him the sociopath handle.

Not really a black and white issue - he's definitely on the spectrum, though.

I am pretty sure the company here is Applied Language Solutions, which was ran by Gavin Wheeldon and was featured in the UK version of Dragon's Den.

ALS had a Sofia office, a free translation tool that was mentioned on Dragon's Den and sold for 67.5 million pounds.

"Wheeldon as a businessman (and a moral specimen) is truly riveting, albeit in sort of the same way that Hannibal Lecter is fascinating as a gourmet."

(http://traductor-financiero.blogspot.com/2012/03/alss-gavin-...)

Why are there so many sketch companies in the language space? L+H is the ultimate I think.

Welcome to the world of business.

I'm glad that when I was 15 years old and my first employer tried to pull that "we'll get rich together" horseshit I just said 'I'll kick myself later. Pay me my rate.'

An honest person, whether in business or elsewhere, will base what they pay you on the value of the work you can do. As soon as they decide they want more value than they're paying for, they've become a con artist. There are tons of con artists at work today, taking advantage of the fact that a lot of employees are still under the impression that working for an employer grants them security and predictability - even though they get laid off the first time the company doesn't meet quarterly projections.

Especially once John could quantify the amount of business he was bringing to the company, he should have set an ultimatum that he be paid based on that or he walks. Sure the con artist boss might think 'I'll just get rid of him and find another rube' and he even might (but probably not, employers always vastly underestimate the value of experience and domain-specific knowledge), but at least he wouldn't just keep feeding into the con himself.

Here's the tip: If the person is not honest at the beginning, it is not going to be honest later

The company already started dishonestly, with stolen data. What do you expect from that?

> I should have smelled a rat, but at age 20 I didn't even know rats could smell.

Exactly what I was thinking. Once you see significantly unethical behavior, sirens should go off in your head. Get the hell out of there.

I wish I could upvote this more than once: As soon as you see the first signs of unethical behaviour, get the hell out of there. You'll thank yourself later.

Years ago, a local pizza restaurant named Sweet Tomatoes opened to rave reviews. The owner hired a recent college grad named Josh, and over the new few months, she mentored Josh, introduced him to her business contacts, and shared her plans for expansion.

Josh took the recipes, the business contacts, and even the expansion plans, and started a rival pizza chain. Within a short time he had 21 locations that were doing quite well.

But it all started with a big red flag. How do you think the story goes?

The restaurant began hiring illegal immigrants from the small town of Marilac in Brazil. These employees worked up to 80 hours a week, while the restaurant violated minimum wage laws and failed to pay overtime. Employees risked deportation if they spoke out. In less than a two year period, the owners failed to pay employees $425,000 in wages.

When the owners were ordered to pay these wages, they devised a scheme to recoup the money by slashing wages, resulting in a class-action lawsuit and a follow-up labor investigation.

Meanwhile, Josh bought himself a yacht, a vacation home, and a small airplane, allegedly purchased illegally with company funds.

The company eventually went bankrupt and last year its locations were sold at auction (though the original owner, with the help of some financiers, was able to buy back four locations).

When you see huge red flags, tread very carefully.

Along the same lines, when somebody starts cheating on their significant other to be with you, don't be surprised when they cheat on you to be with someone else. You're not special. You won't get special treatment.

Now I want pizza.

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/12/05/a_driven_...

I will never forget the morning I walked by the Waltham Upper Crust location on my way to the commuter rail and watched as workers stripped the place clean. It felt like a victory for everyone who has ever been screwed by an employer and I couldn't help but linger even as I could hear the bells in the distance signaling the inbound train arriving at the station.

Trying to take some of your customers with you when you leave is ... often a grey area.

If they genuinely have more faith in you than in your former employer sans you, then it seems much harder to criticise. The problem, I think, is that anybody in that situation rationalises their point of view to that being true, even if it isn't.

I don't have a good answer here, other than "I don't intend to ever end up in a situation where I have to make a personal choice about it, because generally I don't consider even grey areas worth while."

Yes, it's not really "stealing" customers, it's a more nuanced thing and depends on how it was done, that's why I didn't mention it.

And of course the customer has a choice, he's not forced to go to the new company.

Everybody always thinks they're a special case. "Oh sure, he lied to THEM, but he'd NEVER lie to ME!"

That's why one of my lessons is "Expect the best of everyone, but always believe the evidence."

http://unicornfree.com/2011/lessons-learned-from-16-years-of...

Talking to people in SV, it's actually pretty common that the business people try to dump the techies right before they vest or a good deal comes in. Sometimes the person dumped has even been CTO or the only technical person and built the entire technical solution.

Sorry to be blunt, but I am always amazed by what this kind of stories have in common: trusting people without a contract (or at least a signed agreement). Even if it's your best friend who's going to hire you, don't accept promises such as "you'll get rich once we hit it big". Sign a contract stating how much of the company you own, what the vesting schedule is, acceleration upon change of control etc.

There are some assholes out there, so stop being naïve. This is a very good cautionary tale about what happens if you do.

Don't let somebody off the hook for "naïvete" if they enter into a business with somebody who got their assets through theft, and his job is to disguise the theft.

That's collusion.

Signed agreements are contracts.

Question: You say "he'd stolen a few clients, some data, rented an office and hadn't really thought about the rest. It was my job to reshape the stolen data beyond recognition" - did you not consider that such a person might be somewhat untrustworthy?

Follow-up, it bothers me that you took a job knowing that you were disguising stolen data, what was your rationale for this?

I didn't know this straight off, I found out in my first week that he had this data and I didn't know where it had come from. In the next few weeks he got a bit panicky, and told me the data was going to be "audited" by the company he'd just left (and stolen the data from).

Only then did I realise it was stolen data, that was like a month or two into the job.

He also lied about his name to me, I found out a month later he'd done this so that if he fired me (or his name appeared in the press) - then no one could track him down. I think the company was even registered (initially) under his false name.

I should have smelled a rat, but at age 20 I didn't even know rats could smell.

Thanks for replying, I assumed from the matter-of-fact way you presented this information that there was more to the story.

I'd love to write more about the experience, but the post was already a bit long. Thanks for taking the time to read it ;)

If it's interesting and well written, nobody will balk at the length of your posts. Just go check out patio11's blog. The average post there is huge, but I (and I think many with me) read it all the way through anyway because there is so much value in it.

Anyway, interesting article!

Really, don't blame it on your age. I knew better at 15. The first employer I had was a guy doing MLM who wanted me to accept a lower wage now for big riches later. He talked a great game, but if he was so sure my work would make him rich later, as the boss it's his job to make the call and make an investment by paying me reasonably from the start. If I miss out on 'big riches' later on, no big whoop. Of course he never made any money because MLM is a scam.

A year later I was 16 and working for his brothers company, a remailing company that actually provided a valuable service and had a solid business model. Guess what, they didn't try to get me to work for almost nothing! Like any real business, they realized the value I would bring and paid me accordingly. I designed their newsletter, wrote an application to track serial numbers on their postage metering machines when the government started requiring that (which was fun because they gave me 24 hours notice that they needed it to comply with federal law, but I think it surprised them too). When they wanted me to make a web-based application for their sales people to work up price quotes for prospective clients I met with the owner and told him this was above and beyond my part-time after-school job duties as 'anything with a computer guy' and proposed doing it as a separate contract, he went for it and I made what was (to teenaged me) a buttload of money on it.

Real businesses understand that salaries are not charity. They're not even something reluctantly handed over in order to get work out of people. They're investments. Of course it requires you to find the right people, and doesn't eliminate any of the challenge or risk out of running a business, but no employer worth a squirt of piss is going to expect their employees to take those risks for the company. Protection from that kind of thing is why people work for companies and aren't just self-employed!

At 15 I was writing business-plans, I attended a young-entrepeneur event held by the BBC and was selected as a finalist (nothing came of it). I also worked for my parents.

So, there wasn't much opportunity to learn the lesson that scumbags are out there and how they might abuse you as an employee. Also, I wasn't very street smart and a bit of an introvert.

It took time to learn lessons like this, it took time to learn how to be an extrovert. I could explain all of these thing but sometimes it's just easier to say "I was 20 and stupid".

By the way, I'm pretty sure we will all carry on learning throughout life, up until each of us dies hopefully.

That's what bothers you?

He even fucking stayed after the horrible discussion with the boss (a reasonable person would have quit then and there), and he agreed to fuck up the other (Ian) guy for a measly five thousand quids!

I've been trying to find a way to respond to this, but the posts keep turning into very long very confusing rambles.

I think that this sums up the disconnect best, however:

£5000 would be a genuinely life-changing amount for me.

A great read and a good warning story for pretty much any 20-something hacker lurking on this site trying to start their own career.

One of the most sad and most important lessons of business is that you should never trust anyone with financial matters without a hard contract. Even if it's a good friend - those cases are usually worse since they also mostly mean end of the friendship.

One of the most sad and most important lessons of business is that you should never trust anyone with financial matters without a hard contract.

Yes. This is correct. People will do some crazy shit when there's a lot of money on the line.

If there is one thing I have learned is to 1)Be careful with non engineers are involved as management 2) Never ever ever go with anyone who is in a rush.

They always seem to be in a fucking rush, do this, do that, fly here, fly there, contract later, sign off later and etc.

Fuck them.

True, engineers don't tend to be manipulative bastards, we just care for the end completion and reward for it.

But, do keep in mind that this won't always be the case. Tools are making it ever-easier for people who know practically nothing to break into the product space without the filters that you'd normally get from someone going through hard sciences in school.

Since there are so many new makers with engineer-like skills, it means you'll have more sociopaths in sheep's clothing in the future.

Still, there are ways to interview for meritocratic behavior.

Good story, with the moral that in business there's no such thing as friends, but I have a minor quibble - there's no mention of "hex." I guess it's there for the cool title and standing in for programming.

That's right, on HN - gotta have an eye-catching title.

Maybe it was supposed to be "sex", in reference to the owner's girlfriend who had the abortion?

I'm curious to know if people think it was in bad taste to add that detail?

I don't. It explains why he wanted to fire Ian out of the blue.

Your story is good enough that it will be read even without a linkbait title. Maybe you could add a short teaser at the beginning of the article? The current one doesn't do it justice.

I thought it was irrelevant to the story, and needlessly personal, especially since the story contained enough information to identify the company and CEO. In particular, you say "had an abortion at John's request" as if he forced her, when that's just your interpretation. I can imagine that a lot of women have abortions after the parteners talk about it (sometimes they agree and sometimes they don't, but who's to say who's at fault).

Also, with easy libel laws in the UK, you could be opening yourself up to a lawsuit.

As for whether it explains the firing, not really. You already said the gf was an ex when hiring Ian, so it's hard to really know the sequence of events without adding more sordid details. Plus it's just your speculation about why he wanted Ian gone, and it wouldn't totally explain it anyway (what difference did it make at that point, after the abortion apparently, whether Ian worked for the company or not?).

It was at his request, I met her sometime later and she was geniunely still distraught about it. I also had the chance to hear her side of the story.

You still have a point, I'm opening myself up to libel and I'm not sure it adds much value to the story.

I think John wanted Ian gone because Ian may have just found about it all around that time. I have to speculate because neither John or Ian would tell me much detail about it at the time.

There are some more sordid details to it that I think anyone would be ashamed of. It makes the rest of the story seem tame by comparison, but I left it out because it wasn't really important to the story and would only serve to attack John.

I think it's a play of word on the famous "Sex, Lies and Videotape" movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098724/

As I said, cool title. I just expected an actual tie-in to hex.

Yes! I hereby call on the author to at least mention weighing the strengths of various hex colors while designing the web layout.

> The things we did included organic link-building, link-wheels, comment-spamming, forum-spamming, link-baiting

So was the moral of the story that if someone is willing to employ immoral spammers, like you and Ian, he might be a con man?

All SEO is immoral.

Back then, it wasn't widely regarded as being immoral - I knew it wasn't right, but there was a lot of pressure for results. Basically, if we couldn't make an impact on Google, we'd have been fired.

I agree it's immoral.

Sadly things haven't changed all that much, there are plenty of people who still view this kind of stuff as normal 'industry best practice':

YCombinator funds companies in the spyware spam downloads 'industry'[1].

Path, a well funded startup whose CEO is well connected and has invested in YC startups, was caught stealing users address books and declared it was 'industry best practice'[2]. Twitter [3] and Facebook have done similar things.

AirBnB, another large well funded YC startup were caught spamming Craigslist and nobody that mattered (investors, employees, industry leaders etc) seemed to care. The founder also has previous convictions for spamming and again nobody seemed to care [4]

SocialCam, another YC startup was spamming Facebook [5].

Spamming is endemic in the SaaS industry, there are hundreds of other recent examples. Even if you are a serial spammer who has been caught multiple times that won't stop you being well respected in the industry and getting masses of funding. Spamming is rewarded by the community. They like to use euphemisms like 'growth hack', but we all know what it really means: SPAM.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5059806

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5095974

[3] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/14/business/la-fi-tn-tw...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5061140

[5] http://www.pcmike.com/what-im-thinkin/beware-of-socialcam

I can't draw an exact comparison between myself of some of those things. And I agree, things haven't changed they've just evolved.

I have this big issue at the moment, that too many companies are focusing on profits to satisfy investors. I suppose they have to get their ROI.

In most cases the guy at the top with biggest spending habits (whether that's an investor or a manager) will be pressuring the rest of company to increase profits at any expense.

If I've put the details together correctly, I remember the outrage that government translation contract created. Whether you made a lot of money out of your time with the company or not, you're ultimately better off not toiling for a badly-run enterprise that was built on lies.

I grew up close to where the company was based. Nice part of the world – sort of :) – but full of slippery "self-made man" characters.

I have many good memories of the surrounding towns, countryside and people. You're right, lots of "Arthur Daly" type characters.

I've been through this. The deceit people who can't build to those who can. They lie and trick and rush things. That's always the common factor, how they always are in a rush.

I'm sorry for what you had to go through, I've gone through similar crap. They don't understand how a person who's vested into a company not just through shares but through passion and vision can suddenly come to a halt when told that they are "just paid a wage"

Fuck that.

I have a similar story. The gentleman I worked with (not FOR) promised me a share in his company. During the time I did work, I started my own sole trader business, quit my job at a very well known firm who make virtualisation software, and spent time helping him grow his business.

He managed to get a few leads, but he relied on me to pull him out of problems. I recall the first time I helped him, it was only as a friend. Basically a large Australian government department had been screwed by a company who printed their paperwork. Their system couldn't handle umlauts... Yet they had told that company they handled Unicode. They were telling them that they handled a "subset of Unicode", which was sneaky because it was actually ISO-8859.1 that they could handle.

Later I did some reporting work, which I now see that he entirely left in my hands to sort out with the consultancy company. The state government department didn't even entirely know what they wanted. It took me about 3 months to sort out what should have been a 2 week project. It was only when I threatened to quit the reporting project that I was paid.

I still believed in the guy, so I helped him sort out an absolute disaster project for him for free with a mining company. I didn't ask for any money, as I was doing it as a favour. I managed to make him look awesome and turn it around.

Somehow through his existing work for another company, he stole a contract for an important Federal Government department - one that dealt with national security - and I implemented an ITSM solution for them. I fixed up a variety of things that I was never paid for (I fixed an upgrade that had gone terribly wrong and was threatening the project - which I was never involvc I till the last second).

Due to my success, I had learned some things about ITIL from my cousin, who is a genius about systems. So I explained to this agencies head of department what I thought about ITIL and where I thought it should go and the importance of the Service Catlog to their organisation. Not only did they get what I was saying, but they asked me in to implement their catalog! At the same time, somehow this guy had managed to get some systems integration work. The catch was the only communications channel, they could use was - wait for it - email!

Somehow I made it work.

I did a bunch of other work, and I started to help him win big contracts.

The final bit of work was with yet another very large, and highly political Federal government department. At this point I had been paid for very little and never offered any share of the company he founded.

It all came to a head one night when I stressed out as I was getting into serious debt, hadn't seen my kids or wife for some time, and phoned him to tell him I wasn't sure I could keep going.

His reaction was to cut me off all his IT systems, and then guilted me about not being loyal or reasonable.

Eventually he told me, after I had completed a large project to success, that his WIFE wouldn't let me be a part of his business. He then tried to tie me into a bunch of contracts, which I declined to sign after he put high pressure on me.

I did agree to finish off work for a company I was implementing a solution for, mainly because I didn't want to leave him in the lurch, and also because I didn't want to let my client down. I had gotten a new part time job so i could do a computer science defree, which I warned him about so he would know when my end date for wrap up would be so he could finish up that project phase so he could implement testing, for which he would employ someone who finalize the project.

I then billed him...and waited a few months (I figured he was busy). In fact, I waited 6 months before I sent him an email... To which he told me that he wasn't happy with the work, that there had been problems and he had had to redo the work. When I asked for specifics, he refused to tell me. He did say he'd work out how much he believed he wanted to pay me.

I never heard from him again.

I have now taken him to a debt collector. He has gone bankrupt and is no longer a director of his company. Instead his father is. His father refuses to pay me. In fact, he claimed he had no statement of work and that I should provide evidence before he would consider payment. What he didn't realise was that his son had caused problems for a former business partner, a very very honourable guy who quickly worked out that the son was despicable, and he provided evidence of the work I had done.

The father then offered me a fifth of the money owed as a "goodwill gesture ex gratia" payment. The debt collector is less than impressed.

The gentleman doesn't know it, but I'm about to wind up his company.

In my opinion, the man has no scruples and no conscience. I feel like a fool to have trusted him.

Such is my tale of woe... Quite cathartic to get it out there!

Reading the original post and now this, I am making up my mind about NEVER doing anything as a favor.

I am kind of involved in a college project. It's not about money but after working on their website for a month or so, these guys had trouble even giving a link back to my portfolio.

Some people really don't have conscience. I hope you get the payments.

My experience - even with close friends and family - is that if the favour involves money, -expect- to get fucked over.

I wouldn't say that you should expect to get fucked over.

You should treat the favor as a gift, and not expect a quid pro quo. You shouldn't do more than you can afford as a gift for them; you shouldn't spend years of your life, or a large fraction of your salary, or anything of the sort. It's just a gift for a friend or family member.

That way, you aren't left hanging, expecting something from them, and having that poison your relationship. Be very careful about letting some kind of debt or obligation hang over the head of a relationship that you care about.

Exactly.

Favors are favors, and business is business.

I have no problems doing people favors, but those are done for free with no expectation of payment. If I'm expecting to be paid, I want it in writing.

">Reading the original post and now this, I am making up my mind about NEVER doing anything as a favor."

In my experience, good people don't ask for such favors.

Everyone who has asked or expected that from me has let me down. My relationship with the first and only person who talks compensation as a first course remains friendly and lucrative.

No, that's entirely the wrong meaning to take. Favours are just fine, I've given and received many myself. Nothing wrong with doing someone a favour. The problem is not knowing when you should be doing favours, and when you should be doing business.

If you help a friend with a coding problem he's having with his startup, that's a favour. If you give up other paid employment to help him found a startup, that's business, and you need contracts and payment and all the things that go with business.

One constant piece of advice I give to people starting out in IT and software development, never work for free.

Including "friends and family". (Except for OSS and local user group training...)

Family? Yes, family. I only do free computer work for my spouse and her mom. No one else. Any siblings, aunt's, uncles, neighbors, etc... get the standard look of stupidity and are referred to my cousin who will charge them, but does good work.

This is for designers, but does it feel familar? http://vimeo.com/22053820

Ha! The gentleman who never paid me because he was full of excuses, once bemoaned a client not paying him. And he posted this to his Facebook profile. The irony was not lost on me.

Good story, my opinion is that if you hadn't been personally invested in this whole thing, chances are you would just have done a mediocre job like 99.5% of office workers and the company would never taken off.

Basically you are a well experienced growth hacker now while the owner is clueless. So in the end, you got more out of it than him.

That's what I'd like to tell myself, but he now has quite a high profile in the UK startup industry. It's one thing to know how to grow a company from the very beginning, but to run and sustain a company that has tens of millions in revenue may be a more valuable lesson.

Well what you know benefits established firms as well, and is actually more valuable to them on average than it is to blank paper startups that noone knows for certain if there's a demand for. While growth hacking helps launching startups off the ground, it also helps prevent established firms from sinking.

I totally agree, it's one of those skills that's hard to prove, I'm not sure I'd put it on my CV.

It's always sad to see young people get messed up because they're socially naive. Honestly, I think this sort of thing should be part of a set of basic business/life skills taught in school.

Somewhere in the book written by the founders of 37signals they allude to the premise that we should all remember that the term "start-up" is interchangeable with the term "business". As such, you have to protect your interests as if you are running a business, and not get lost in the idea of a start-up. Getting things in writing can be tricky prior to launch and proof of persistency, but at the point where you are hiring additional staff and opening satellite offices, the topic has to be addressed.

I feel bad for you dude, but considering you never signed any paperwork for your stake in the company, and that you knew he was a very, very shady character to begin with, you were just asking for trouble. I once started a preliminary business idea with a friend, and we signed paperwork as soon as we had worked on it for a month or so.

So who was writing the translation software?

This appears to be the product the author was spamming to generate leads for, and from comments in the story and elsewhere it seems like it wasn't very good. But it seemed a bit weird it didn't feature more prominently in the narrative. Was this the stolen "data"?

There was no translation software, only project management and sales software and that was all written by me and my team. The free translation software was written by another company.

The stolen data was mostly taxonomical lists and some setup data for a project management system.

The actual translation was given to real people to do for absolute bottom dollar prices

I'm not sure if it was a "show" versus "tell", but the biggest insight came at the start. Someone who steals from his last company to create a new one isn't going to treat people well. They're appropriators (or looters) rather than creators. They see value as a zero sum game and try to keep it all to themselves. People rarely sell only half their soul, and one sign of an ethics violation is usually a sign of many.

So while one moral of the story is "Get your equity in writing", another more important one is "Don't do busy with shady people."

All that said, it sounds like the author got good experience and wisdom out of it. Building a foreign technical subsidiary is great for the resume. Learning the pitfalls of dealing with unethical people is great for the next one.

The company started with stolen data and stolen clients. Salesmen wanted to steal clients and data again. It was life on a pirate ship. I'm tempted to say it had to end badly, but I suppose there are some companies which do rise above bad beginnings ...

"Hey Matt, let's setup a company of our own and ditch this place - you can own 50%"

With regards to the salesmen and their business propositions, it doesn't sound like stolen data. Sounds like he played the role of company-man and threw people under the bus for the good of the company, believing that he would benefit in the long-run.

One of the first things I learned from the old engineers at Lockheed was to identify and actively avoid the company man. You interacted with the company man at your peril. It was basically like this: in dealing with a company man, anything you say can be used against you, but nothing you say can help you.

I agree about his actions. He was shocked that the company would ever screw him the way he screwed others. He was supposed to be different!

Unethical behavior is a funny thing. He would have been better off in pretty much every way had he taken one of those "bad" salespeople up on their offer to start a new venture.

"John" has a Wikipedia page which mentions the government contract that was awarded. The government was unhappy about work performed under the contract.

It also was trivial to find that page.

There were judges that wanted to drag him up in front of court. In cases where the interpreter was of too poor quality the case might have been thrown out of court. They made themselves infamous throughout the UK for all the wrong reasons.

But then it got sold off and rebranded beyond recognition.

I had to attend court the other week and on my way in I was reading a noticeboard, I had to do a double-take when I saw a familiar email address up there on a memo regarding interpreters

It's quite straightforward to identify the company and founder you're talking about on the basis of the profiles you link to on your site.

Of course, there's nothing too controversial in the piece but it perhaps makes it a little redundant to use a pseudonym for the founder? Just a thought really (I also enjoyed reading the tale by the way).

Firstly, thanks for reading ;)

Secondly, I'm making a subtle point - when I started with the company he lied about his name and called himself "John Snow". I only found out it was a lie months later.

I also want to protect the anonymity of my friend Ian.

I also want to protect myself (legally) if he ever read it

I absolutely understand anonymising however my point was that providing links in your profile risks undermining the purpose behind this anonymisation.

Further from a legal perspective using a pseudonym to refer to a person doesn't necessarily protect you if it would be clear to some readers who the person is that you're referring to. Having links in the profile would increase this risk.

Hmm, OK I'll remove them. But, I am still proud of the work I did during my time there.

Friendly FYI that your linkedin is linked on your site, and given the dates/nature of the work it's easy to figure out the name of the company.

I worked it out after about 10 minutes. The guy won a Queens Award for service and appeared on a popular TV show? Seems like a total pratt!

It sounds like you should be proud. From a risk perspective, I can't say that simply removing the links removes all risk, it only reduces the risk. Anyone reading the account and knowing the guy in question may be able to identify that you are referring to him.

It is obviously a sad state of affairs where the merest risk of someone objecting to the content of a post could have a stifling effect on publication (edit - especially where the contents are on the face of it completely truthful). However, the unfortunate reality is that even becoming embroiled in legal action (even where the person taking action is on flimsy grounds) can be costly and time-consuming. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of the possible consequences.

Secondly, I'm making a subtle point - when I started with the company he lied about his name and called himself "John Snow".

Bastard.

I think it was a reference to John Snow from a Game of Thrones. I'm undecided how I feel about that.

... and said character was, indeed, a bastard.

I think you may just have had a <whoosh /> moment :)

You sir, are a genius

No, he just had his own personal whoosh moment :-)

Have met and been on the receiving end of a few of these types myself. Unfortunately, doing whatever it takes to get ahead and stepping on others to do so seems to work. On the other hand, there are good people in the tech industry as well.

Apologies about it being so long

It was a great read and a friendly reminder to all.

Out of interest, what do you do these days?

I'm on a very quiet marathon to build twelve startups in twelve months, I'm in my third month and everything is on track so far. I will blog about it all when I hit six months in. My day job is a Technical Architect for a PLC in the UK. I also run between 5km and 10km everyday to train for an actual marathon (running). Add to that being a husband and a father... and a blogger now ;) I really wanted to tell that story, and for it not appear arrogant on my part.

Please share your scheduling tips! How do you fit all of that in?

First Hack: Live close to work (I run home) - this will give you more time in the mornings and evenings

Second Hack: Have an understanding wife (she's either running her own business or catching up on soaps in the evening)

Third Hack: Send children to bed at a strict time (7pm - it's good for them and you because it establishes a routine)

Fourth Hack: Be focussed, if you're doing something - just do that one thing and do it well at any one time - monotask!

Fifth Hack: Know your stuff - eleven years programming has given me a plethora of skills to draw on

Sixth Hack: Know when to stop - you're going to get burned out, you need to smell when this is going to happen and give yourself a break - remind yourself what life is about.

A typical day goes like this: Wake up, go to work, home for dinner, back to work, run home, shower, play with son, work hard (and eat), sleep - rinse and repeat. I pepper that day with talking to my wife.

Routine is helpful - I'll find that I have sprints of three weeks being incredibly productive, then I'll burn out - recharge - and throw myself back in.

Regarding your fourth hack, how do you keep yourself on the task at hand? I tell myself that if I don't know it now, I'll have to do it later anyway, but I still find myself "wandering through the Internet".

If I'm wandering through the internet, it means I'm being unproductive and my body doesn't want to work. Whether I'm willing to accept it or not, I'm burned out or about to be burned out if I am in that situation. So take the night off.

Also, I'd recommend just having one news source, I can spend hours trolling The Register, SomethingAwful, HN, FunnyJunk, Reddit - but at the end of the day the only news that matters (to me) is HN.

Additionally, reading HN (constantly) has helped me refine my writing style to the tastes of HN.

I think it's called mono-tasking, do one thing and do it well at any one time.

Don't forget to take note when your body/mind gets tired, running & excercise will help you get more energy. But there will be times where you might just want to play XBOX, or eat, or troll the internet - all are signs of burnout. Mono-task to recovery.

I say this because I've done it before, I've told myself "Hey I'm not burned out, I'll just read this thread and at the same postulate that SQL query"... you just burn out faster.

You've re invigorated my desire to work on my startup, get myself and my life into shape and work on everything. Thank you so much for your advice, I appreciate it.

Remembering my childhood, the Third Hack seems challenging.

They're all challenging hacks. I have this quote by Randy Pausch visible all the time on my computer:

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people."

You have to try, and you have to be persistent

At what time do you come home/start working? I'm living next to work, but with 8 hours to work I don't have much time to do anything else.. start around 9, work until around 6pm (8hours + 1hour lunch) that doesn't leave much time

Request a shorter lunch - there's research out there to say that taking a long lunch makes you less productive in the afternoon.

Also, do something physical for your lunch - even if it's just walking to a shop and back.

Your evenings matter, yes you'll be more productive in the mornings but you have to go to work. The sooner you finish work, the more time you have to relax before you start work again.

I'd also ask about starting earlier or working from home or flexitime.

If you can afford the time on weekends try and work in the mornings.

I'd also force yourself to have a night or two off every week.

Build a routine, your body-clock will change and it may start to exhaust you if you change too many things too fast. So expect to work at a slower pace until you've refined your routine.

> Fourth Hack: Be focussed, if you're doing something - just do that one thing and do it well at any one time - monotask!

Monotask. I've never heard that before. I like it.

That's how my brain works.

Great post. Really enjoyed and empathized with you. Btw, 12 start-ups in 12 months? That's pretty impressive. However how about building one start-up per month, then if one takes off focusing on the project that as the most momentum? That may be a better winning formula, don't you think so? I'd also like to know how you fit the running, parenting, etc. in your schedule! You must be scarily efficient...

That's what I'm doing, one startup per month - over 12 months. I should have ellaborated really but I don't want to share much at this stag. After six-months I should have proved whether I can do it or not

There's no need to apologise. I found to be a great read!

Thankyou, that means a lot ;)

Is there any reason as to why you didn't share the company name?

If you read the comment by @grabeh you'll see that it's probably quite easy to research. In my reply to @grabeh are the reasons why I didn't give more details (such as the founders name).

I would have no problems if anyone else posted the real details here, but I wouldn't comfirm or deny it - unless there's a legal expert on here who could reassure me it's OK to post those details.

After reading it again, it suggests he stole data to start a company:

   The founder (let's call him John) had already worked in the
   translation industry, he'd stolen a few clients, some data, 
   rented an office and hadn't really thought about the rest.

I personally couldn't find the company, but if @grabeh could then maybe you should protect yourself from one of those nasty UK libel cases:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/no...

The story was great by the way. Well written. Nice to see another .NET dev on HN btw.

Also, beware that Google cache has a previous prevsion of this article stored: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RMaGY0-...

Thanks for reading (and the tips)

I think .Net gets a lot of (undeserved) bad press. Beleive it or not I started out as a SmallTalk, Javascript & C++ developer but there wasn't a lot of love for that skillset back in 2002.

I think that a large number of people go into "startups" thinking they're some kind of antidote to the politics and flat-out unethical behavior seen in "the corporate world". That's not really true. These startups (i.e. companies designed to become, or be bought by, corporate behemoths) are often like junior gangsters-- that is, more violent, more unpredictable, because they're trying to prove themselves.

There's a gigantic survivor bias in startups at the upper end: to build a $200B company like Google or Facebook, you have to do a lot of things very right (and more than you do wrong). This makes it seem like "startups" are better than they are, because the ones with dogshit MBA culture crash and burn. Superiority is not intrinsic to startups, and there are plenty of shady players who still get exits and credibility.

I've seen far more unethical behavior in the startup world than in finance. Large tech companies are somewhere in between. Why? It's not that finance people are intrinsically better, but that even junior bankers know how to fight for themselves. Junior tech workers, in general, haven't a clue, which is why a lot of these dodgy startups will fire people without severance for completely bogus reasons.

On the founder's statement to the effect of "I pay you a wage and you do the work": the lesson is that loyalty has to be earned. Don't just give that away.

I feel like a lot of us, when we start our careers, are like that socially inept guy who'll go out of his way to help some girl who isn't really interested but is basically nice to him, and he overvalues the interaction (and, in some cases, fabricates an emotional relationship in his mind). Just because the boss is basically nice to you, and may pretend to want to be your friend, doesn't mean you should trust him blindly. Con artists are nice, until they screw you over. Loyalty has to go both ways.

That's a really good analogy, made me laugh out loud about the inept guy helping the girl. It was more or less just like that.

These days I have a more dubious attitude, I tend not to beleive something someone says until I've confirmed it with my own eyes. I mean, I'll pay it lip-service and make all the right noises, but then I'll go sneak off and investigate for myself.

@gringofyx: it looks like you took a passive-aggressive approach, and sabotaged the company from the inside once you returned to Bulgaria. You know what I think, to some extent, you are the younger version of John, as ruthless as him. This is why you accepted to work for him, since you felt the attraction of the same. I would really love to see how your next ventures unfold, especially from the human side of things. I am sure financially you'll do well.

You consider doing the job you are paid for to be sabotage? He was contracted for 7.5 hours, he was paid for that and nothing more. In what universe does the company deserve more than what they pay for?

I hope we both know that there are more ways than one to do your contracted job well. I might choose plan B that does the task but needs replaced intwo months, than job A which takes longer to implement but might be efficient over the long run. In this case, would you dock my pay?

I'd expect you to present both and I'd make the decision since it deals with costs. If I expected you to make decisions like that that directly affect the businesses future expenses, you'd be making a lot more money and wouldn't be contracted for 7.5 hours.

Then pretty soon you will be micromanaging me, essentially doubling your cost. At some point you have to trust me with some decisions if you want to be able to operate somewhat efficiently.

If you want someone to show independence and to work more than what they are contracted to, then don't tell them they are just an employee and nothing more, pay them what they are worth, and don't renege on earlier verbal promises.

It's a bit of cynical remark, but I'll attempt to answer.

So when I started the job, I had this idea in my head of what the company was going to be, and what my role should be. It is that idealistic vision that I was attracted to - and when reality didn't fit the idealistic vision that's when I became upset.

Did I sabotage the company from the inside? Possibly - if you could call it that - for only a month or so. I didn't want my friends to see me like that, that's not my nature. So I quit. It was his choice to then force me to stay for three months - but you have to consider that I went looking for my own replacement, I trained him, I trained thrity staff, I learnt the language, I made friends, I improved the company, I was proud of what I had built.

I could not, in all good faith, put the things I care about at risk.

I must confess though, that initially I did want to learn about the magic and courage involved in starting your own company. And I learnt very quickly that John was not the best mentor.

As a final note, eight year have now passed, and during that time I have, in my career, become well known for taking on other peoples problems, championing their ideas. I think being treated unfairly makes a person more ethical and empathic towards the struggles of others.

So my point is, you couldn't be further from the truth.

I have to admit to have been cynical in my comment. The point being that it always take two to tango. You were in that professional relationship looking for something, not necessarily money. He must have been offering something, but definitely not money. Maybe you were looking for a father figure or a way to get yourself bootstrapped professionally. I am glad to see that it didn't knock you down. Cool.

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