I'd say you did the right thing in not saying what the startup was — it isn't wise to look like a bridge-burner when you're looking for work.
Today I learned that its considered "bridge burning" to communicate a company's terrible ethics in public.
Not at all. If I hire someone, I'm making a commitment. If I made a mistake, its out of my pocket to make them whole.
Disclaimer: I have made mistakes hiring people, and have paid them for their troubles, even going so far as to be a reference for the other opportunities they had available and telling them it was our mistake.
I really respect this.
If an employee makes a claim that puts you in a bad light, you can then honestly relate what happened. If there's nothing to be ashamed about, you'll come out of the experience fine.
Buffet has a fine definition of ethics:
The priority is that all of us continue to zealously guard Berkshire's
reputation. We can’t be perfect but we can try to be. As I’ve said in these
memos for more than 25 years: We can afford to lose money – even a lot of
money. But we can’t afford to lose reputation – even a shred of reputation."
We must continue to measure every act against not only what is legal but
also what we would be happy to have written about on the front page of a
national newspaper in an article written by an unfriendly but intelligent
reporter.In other relationships, 'Shut up and know your place' is the textbook definition of victim shaming in abusive situations.
That said, there are various things involved with the decision.
stop short-changing yourself and technology professionals, you do us all a disservice and it's embarrassing. i am literally embarassed for you by this comment. it doesn't matter where you're from - we're talking about someone who was hired as a chief-level executive with a name brand startup in the first world, funded by billionaires or at least hundred-millionaires, or at the VERY least a bunch of millionaires that manage money for pension funds and endowments i.e. venture capitalists.
a shitty CPA (or lawyer) makes that in a few days of work. a good one can make that in literally 1 minute by signing a few documents. they can do that because they have professional respect, something technology workers sorely lack right now.
a CPA also could not get hired, and let go for no reason, within 2 weeks, without having several avenues of recourse through his professional governing body. a lawyer would file suit immediately, something i would do also even though i lack a law degree.
i would literally not stop reading/learning law except to eat, shit and piss until i learned how to get compensatory damages out of them. then again, i make it my mission in life to not be a bitch. but as it turns out, some people are fine with being a bitch, go figure.
What's his professional governing body going to do?
a professional board is basically a labor union dressed up for white collar people. they'll argue until the end of the earth that they aren't, but let's be real, that's what it is.
also, if you're a vp-level or above, and not a significant owner, negotiate a severence package. ever wonder why they have severence packages? this is why. because if you don't, you're highly likely to become a bitch. in fact it's pretty much guaranteed because the cost of losing you is nothing.
Conversely, if you're a consultant, you can get constructively fired like this two weeks into an engagement. Happens all the time. It doesn't even require an awkward conversation where they say "Hey, startup life yo, plans have changed." They neglect to schedule you for more work, you follow up, they continue to neglect to schedule you for more work, you take the hint, and then you get paid $50k+ because that is what COO-level consultants cost for two weeks.
The company has a much rosier picture of themselves than you do (and who is to say which one is right?). Think of possible mitigating circumstances, first duty to investors, what's right for the company, we made a mistake, etc etc and who knows what else.
You don't want to make enemies, have them hit back in public, etc. This is not about what is "just" but what is efficient to get on with finding a job, and telling everyone about it.
So I do think it would be a mistake to make it a public fight and bring up the name of the company.
I have found a new appreciation for things I used to consider bureaucratic at a large company (I am looking at you - HR department at a large company).
Because the individual has more to lose. Which is more likely, the public boycott the company or the companies boycott the individual? Especially in the world of tech, even if you're right about a company's bad practice just going off and posting a rant about them online reflects badly on you. It means you probably should have just left the company before you got so angry about them. I personally have some very deeply negative feelings about my time in at&t but now I realize it's my own fault for staying 6 years when I was already fed up in my first 18 months. It just made me bitter.
At the absolute minimum, when they see your name on a resume and immediately associate it with recent memory of a rant on HN or some complex ordeal described in a techcrunch article, they'll think twice about you. Maybe they'll still go forward with you; but their will be a double-think. If someone really wants to post something that's less than positive about a previous employer, that person should do it as objectively as possible. Remove all emotion, only state facts with no sensationalism or leading-questions or anything suggestive and be sure to state the whole thing as just "their very humble opinion". It would also show a sense of responsibility/maturity to state the issues that concerned in in a form of a question. "Who you the reader have done things this way?" And especially to suggest a solution. "The way I would have done it is..."
What happened to the OP here is regrettable and doesn't sound like it's his/her fault. This person handled it professionally by just asking for advice and not mentioning names.
It has nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the situation. It is about presenting yourself to the rest of the world. Being a bridge-burner doesn't look good to potential employers.
C'mon, man.
HN has a time delay for nested comments. That's why angersock's comment didn't have a reply link.
All we'll see is bickering and unverifiable (by us) claims, and without the ability to discover who is in the right, it just looks bad to observers.
It's like having a shouting match in the middle of the parking lot. One of you might be entirely in the right and completely justified, but to the rest of us it just looks like a situation to avoid.
Just as most companies are too incompetent or uninterested to search out your dirty laundry, most companies are too incompetent or uninterested to sort it. If they see it, they'll just acknowledge its existence, and probably think twice about you because of it. They won't dig deeper, or spend any effort sussing out who was right and who was wrong. They'll just note it as a red flag.
This is why people advise against "bridge burning," even when you have no reason to believe you'll ever cross that bridge again. It's all about perceptions. "Optics," as they say in corporate parlance. Being seen as a malcontent is never good for your employment prospects, even when you're completely justified.
I think the circumstance is like @jheriko said, as a filter. If an employer sees treating employees bad as dirty laundry, well maybe it isn't the place you want to work, and you're better off not getting an offer.
Think about it from their perspective. They don't know you too well. All they know, at a quick glance, is that you have had problems with a previous employer. They get your side of the story, perhaps, but how are they to know if you're telling the full story, or if you're just the kind of person who complains about things and causes morale issues? They don't have the time or the process to sort that out, so they'll default to the conservative position of assuming you are more trouble than you're worth.
I've seen this torpedo people in job interviews. I've seen it sink the candidacies of people who were otherwise in very strong contention. Is that fair? Of course not. But it's something to keep in mind.
In a perfect world, sure, this would serve as a nice filter to determine if employers are worth working for. In the world we actually live in, this filter will, more often than not, filter you out of a lot of job opportunities. Meanwhile, there are more effective and less risky filters you can apply when vetting an employer.
they might already know and its in your best interest to be honest. getting found out after the fact is bad, regardless as to your employer's intentions.
its really quite different from airing the concerns that led to the situation.
in this specific case the problem is that he worked for a short period and was let go very rapidly. having a 2 week blip as your last role on a CV is worth explaining - but not complaining about.
YCombinator people talk to one another. they go to meetups. San Francisco is an incestuous little town. It's hard to break into and having bad blood with people on the inside can make it harder.
They should talk to each other about why this was bad behavior. If the OP mentions the name, the company can respond with their reasons in an adult and professional manner, explain why they needed someone else, and how they are going to make this right. Then they look like smart, grounded pros willing to admit a mistake and will get some free marketing.
Sounds like they do, in fact, need something, and it's a different person.
"Meanwhile potentially having them as a resource who will say 'oh yeah Ex Employee was a really great guy, we regret losing him, definitely hire him if you can' "
He was there 2 weeks, if that. You can't tell if someone was good in that time period. If I got a reference like that about someone who worked at a place for a grab total of 6 days... I'd think something was fishy.
Trust me, I am going to google you before I hire you and if I see you being a mess online that means you could be a huge mess in my company. As a startup, when every hiring decision matters, I am going to pass on you.
Anyway, there is a solution to this - it's to develop a personal set of red flags and heuristics that you use to weed out bad founders when you talk to them. I have one, and it disqualifies probably 95% of startups that I talk to. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's any way to build this reliably short of bitter experience. The problem with a general "post your grievances" board is that you don't get both sides of the story. I know at least one person who has posted their grievances publicly on HN where I personally witnessed what actually went down, and their account is nowhere close to what I witnessed.
We need transparency both in government and the corporate world. If a company isn't willing to stand by their actions in public, they shouldn't be doing it. And paying the OP severance, admitting a mistake, and moving on is fine by me.
He probably didn't have the right domain expertise, and an advisor/investor told the founders to switch. As green young kid's they didn't do it properly. They need to learn that you can't fire the whole PM team because you want to. These are other people's lives, people who may have mortages, kids, etc.
So true.
I abhor this, but I certainly understand it.
I think the real danger in bridge burning isn't from the people you leave behind, it's everyone who might see the smoke and flames.
It's the label you'll get.
No matter the actual facts, moving forward in the back of many minds you're a liability, a vigilante arsonist ready to torch a company when things don't work out in your favor.