erdojo

I'm not sure what this story accomplished. Did it convince us that...

...Male VCs can act like jerks? Yes.

...Male VCs don't get the female market? This shouldn't surprise anyone. It's sad but this is why we need more female VCs.

...That the company is not getting funding because it's women-oriented and run by a woman? Unfortunately no. Because the story didn't prove the company deserved to be funded. It left me with BIG open questions instead.

There wasn't any mention of market data or past sales/momentum data to validate market size and demand. Especially for a company that has burned through $6.5M in 3-4 years.

If your go-to-market strategy is to launch at 3-4x the price of your biggest competitors, you've got to have a value prop that totally invalidates and obliterates price comparisons. Better comfort and "smart" features are nice-to-haves, not can't-live-withouts.

All of this means they have a product with an audience that quickly narrows down:

- Women

---In childbearing years

-----Who are are pregnant, or recently had a child

-------Who are nursing/planning to nurse

---------Who are committed to pumping vs supplementing with formula

-----------Who have enough disposable income to pay a 3-4x premium

-------------Who care about these specific features

Then, as another commenter mentioned, there are other premium pumps coming to market, so they will inevitably be splitting market share.

I'm a woman and I get this product and market (mostly, I have not had children). I hope they succeed, but my guess is this only works if it's a market-entry product that is quickly followed up by a broader line of "smart" products for moms and moms-to-be. To put my money in, I'd first need to be convinced that this is the right market-entry product (and can give you that high-end brand recognition), then I'd need to be convinced you've got other stuff in R&D that will deliver the big profits.

In all my 25+ years in the valley, I've seen office trends come and go. None have been more hated than the open floor plan. Especially when you don't have a wall behind you.

It's why I now work from home. Why many work from home. Open offices are not comfortable, collaborative, friendly, or enjoyable. They make people feel watched, interrupted, and stressed.

Want me to come back to work in the office? Give me walls.

I started off reading this with the expectation I'd be right in joining the fight with her. It is, after all, a pretty bad allegation, us ladies have to stick together, and I'm ready to take a side!

But oh my gosh THE FEELS. This is so emotionally written that it's almost impossible to derive any legitimate facts from the story. It's like a bad romance-gone-wrong novel written from the perspective of a perpetual victim.

Parts 1-3 are bad enough. Her follow-up is even worse. Oh yes, everyone is terrified of millennials. Haha. No. You're not qualified to scare us. You just think you are, and every stupid little setback sends you into a deluge of tears (how many times did she describe her crying in this story?).

She might have been entirely in the right with her allegation, I don't know. It's too hard to tell amidst her poor me inner dialogue of pain and suffering and tragedy.

One thing her college life didn't teach her was any semblance of resilience. That life isn't always fair. That some times you suck it up. I mean, no one died, her career wasn't over (unless she insisted it be over, which apparently she did), and she got her PhD.

And she got her PhD AND got to keep her integrity. So, why's she quitting again?

It is your fault if you go out to bars that serve $13 drinks instead of staying home and making 20 of them.

We all have choices.

I guess I'm too old. Have heard of Venmo but don't know of anyone who uses it. My friends and I trade off treating each other. It's fun, and no one is keeping score. I enjoy being generous.

I also suspect this author writes off anecdotal info, not actual data.

Take his comparison to libertarianism. Anyone who studies the actual political platform/ideology of libertarians know that describing it as "every man for himself" is a gross oversimplification. I'm not a libertarian myself but I know it doesn't discourage generosity or philanthropy.

Such lazy references make me think the author heard someone riffing about Venmo at a bar and decided to write rant.

Not everyone agrees that there was "no good reason". I'm sure the 160 people (on the flight the deadhead crew was headed for) who would have been without a flight crew would disagree.

In Japan the customers tend to behave far better as well. I'm sure that contributes.

He's claiming discrimination vs what his coworkers are being paid. What his agency bills his time at is a red herring that doesn't matter at all in his discrimination claim.

Talent and experience aren't the same thing, and they both affect compensation.

Talent can produce a better result than experience, but experience is almost always more consistent. There's added value in consistency for companies. That's not discrimination (ugh), it's a business reality.

Might be an ignorant question, but could individual websites do more to prevent an ISP from seeing your activity on the site?

I know HTTPS should be able to help (?), but ISPs can still see the domain you're visiting and get metadata on the encrypted traffic, which can be revealing.

Are there architectural or tech stack decisions a company could make that would basically lock an ISP from knowing anything except the root domains you visited?

I haven't seen any comment or quotes yet from Baidu (please correct me if I'm wring!). Amicable high profile departures like this are almost always coordinated between the person leaving and the company, with joint statements. Not saying it's not amicable, but I do find that, and the fact he's not sharing his next move, a little odd.

I also saw a FB thread that seemed to suggest this may have been a surprise to some of his colleagues. Take that with a grain of salt though - I don't know the people on the thread and they were vague. I just got the sense it was news to them.

Wholeheartedly agree - except with the start-p lottery/F-U money.

What most startup employees don't understand that even if their start-up wins the lottery, they're not going to have F-U money. That's reserved for co-founders and investors. Maaaaaybbeeee if you're employee 1-20 at the next Facebook or Google you'll end up with a substantial sum. But the rest of the pack? You're .1% (if you're lucky) might next you $500-100k. Not enough to brag about.

If you have .1% and your company sells for $100 million, you don't get .1% of $100M. You get .1% of whatever's left over after the investors have gotten their 2-3x preferences, all debts have been settled etc.

All people who write code are programmers.

But some programmers are also engineers. Most notably, those who architect systems and invent new technologies.

private office > cubicles > open office layouts.

Right person, wrong time, wrong approach.

Kalanick was off the clock, clearly on his way home and in a social setting. The driver could have really capitalized on the moment. He could have opened a productive and respectful conversation by saying he was a very early driver and had some feedback - good and bad - asking to sit down at a more appropriate time. That had far more likelihood of achieving any progress.

But maybe he didn't want progress. Maybe he just wanted the satisfaction of venting to the CEO.

Got it. I'm usually in San Francisco, LA or Reno, so that makes sense.

I used to use Lyft and Uber interchangebly depending on where I was, but since the Susan Fowler allegations I've defaulted to Lyft. And I love the in-app tipping :), so much less awkward and more convenient.

However, I've had more borderline experiences with Lyft than Uber, mostly related to basic cleanliness of the car. Drivers have always been great though.

Unless Uber has that in its terms of service, that may be open to interpretation. Even if an Uber is considered a public space, that's not the sole determining factor in two-party consent cases.

http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-recording-law

Are you sure they still do this? I haven't gotten a Black Car for an X fare in several years. Used to be fairly common, now never. Before the Susan Fowler allegations, I was a 2-3x per day rider (I'm now mostly using Lyft).

I believe the driver was itching for a confrontation (he stopped Kalanick as he was getting out of the car to start the conversation).

It was only after being berated for a minute or two and interrupted that Kalanick's composure started to crack. Before then, I don't think anything Kalanick could have said would have mollified this driver. He had an axe and he was going to grind it. Kalanick could have handled it better, but he didn't totally melt down either.

And I think the guy is pretty terrible in general.

Yes!

If you sit a MBP on a pillow, the fan circulation is significantly reduced, causing overheating. It also depends on your CPU usage...running with a few dozen tabs open while editing videos? Yikes, hot.

One other thing: if you smoke, residue can also reduce the effectiveness of cooling systems and affect system performance.

EDIT: Not suggesting this was the OP's fault, just suggesting there are logical ways to reduce this risk.

Investors don't lose their right to an opinion. If anything, their opinion matters more because they've put their money on the line. Since it appears Uber only made token attempts to hear their feedback through past crises, it is entirely appropriate to take concerns public now.

Founders don't get unconditional support from investors. They aren't therapists or doctors or lawyers. When you take money from someone, you're giving them a promise in return. Yes financial gains are part of that promise, but so is conducting yourself ethically and ensuring that the "business" is just as successful as the "product". Treating your people right is part of the contract.

There's value in the blog above and beyond outing the occasional cheater. It makes people think twice. It prevents cheating from being normalized, like what happened in professional cycling.

It also reminds society that a great number of us still value honesty and integrity, and believe that hard work should be rewarded justly. Too many people today say/do something bad and think a "heartfelt" apology will wash it all away.

I'm not in favor of mass internet shaming for kicks. But in cases like this where it's clear it was premeditated and the individual tried to scam their way out of trouble, and there was financial/other gain involved that robbed a more deserving recipient, I'm not bothered.

The truth will only come out if a lawsuit is filed and it goes to trial and it's not settled before a verdict.

Otherwise we'll get her side of the story as written and a statement from Uber that's been rubber stamped by lawyers.

One other important point: who knows what they might install during those brief minutes. Encryption backdoor?

DO NOT BE COMPLACENT.

If a company hires you at SF HQ and you live in SF, then a year later you announce you're moving to Seattle, it is entirely unfair to ask an employer to float your travel expenses back to HQ.

Your choice to leave, your financial burden. Sure, you can negotiate this as if it were a raise, but be advised that most companies will then simply deny your request to move.

These trends are either evolutionary or entirely predictable. Several so predictable that they first made their debut in movies long before most of us were born.

I think this is what he means. Working on any of these ideas doesn't make you an innovator. You might do something in a slightly better or more novel way, but we aren't inventing crap.

And if you don't execute on your slightly better path, you'll still be beat by someone with a slightly worse idea who buckled down and delivered.

Silicon Valley is littered with companies with better ideas and better base products that lost.

This is only true if a large % of your employees are remote. Making exceptions for a few has no upside to hard costs.

EDIT: And from my experience, 30% of people work more productively remote, 40% about the same, 30% are less productive. That said, there are also productivity losses to in-office people when a smaller percentage work remote, especially if their jobs require frequent team interactions.

For developers it is certainly doable. For other teams it takes a lot of effort for everything to even out. Some companies have figured it out, some have not.

If you work in City A at HQ, and then decide to work remote in City B (and the company approves it), the company is NOT on the hook to pay your travel expenses to City A.

You chose to move, it's your responsibility to cover your travel expenses when you need to be in the office.

Now, if you already live in City B when the company hires you, or the company asked you to relocate to City B, then they should cover your travel expenses when you need to travel to City A.