Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

mobile.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 445 posts

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#4

Post by hartator »

> She was 35, had been with the company for four years, and was told without explanation by her 28-year-old manager that she had two weeks to get out.

I think that's a bit funny that the author implies you can't be good as a manager at 28. Specially when you are writing an article about bias.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#5

Post by ianstormtaylor »

Does anyone have more context on Dan Lyons?

After reading this article, and the one from Fortune[0], and his post on LinkedIn[1], it feels like he's out there scraping together blatant PR for his new book. And it makes me honestly wonder whether he went to work for HubSpot looking for a story to write in the first place... and being a writer for the "Silicon Valley" TV series doesn't really help his credibility in that sense.

Disclaimer: I really don't know anything about this story. Something just feels off. Maybe HubSpot really is that bad, who knows.

[0]: http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyo...

[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-comes-age-bias-tech-comp...

---

Edit:

After listening to the interview from @CPLX's response[2] I have to agree, he doesn't seem outlandish or anything. And all of the points he makes about HubSpot's content model being complete spam I agree with. I've definitely never liked interacting with HubSpot as a consumer, that much I know.

I feel like in these scenarios he's incentivized to get outlandish PR for his book, so some of the things I'd take with a grain of salt--sentences like, "The offices bear a striking resemblance to the Montessori preschool that my kids attended: lots of bright basic colors, plenty of toys, and a nap room with a hammock and soothing palm tree murals on the wall." But there is probably a lot truth to his story as well.

@ghaff also summed it up well: "That said, I find it's a cogent perspective even if it probably shouldn't be taken as literally accurate reportage."

[2]: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473097951/laid-off-tech-journa...

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#6

Post by skennedy »

> Imagine a frat house mixed with a kindergarten mixed with Scientology, and you have an idea of what it’s like [working at a startup].

Is this an accurate description? I feel this might be more of the well funded ones but would not know.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#8

Post by dataker »

The philosopher Slavoj Žižek explains this with the ‘postmodern’ boss:

>Not a master but just a coordinator of our joint creative efforts; the first among equals. There should be no formalities among us, we should address him by his nickname, he shares a dirty joke with us… but in all this, HE REMAINS OUR MASTER.

Re: Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

#9

Post by CPLX »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #5

Does anyone have more context on Dan Lyons? After reading this article, and the one from Fortune[0], and his post on LinkedIn[1], it feels like he's out there scraping together blatant PR for his new book. And it makes me honestly wonder whether he went to work for HubSpot looking for a story to write in the first place... and being a writer for the "Silicon Valley" TV series doesn't really help his credibility in th…

Yes he's doing PR for a book by telling bits and pieces of the same story in other media. That's what writers do for a living.

If you genuinely want to get a read on the guy listen to this long form interview on Fresh Air from a couple days ago:

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/05/473097951/laid-off-tech-journa...

He comes across as quite lucid and nuanced in my opinion, and also credible, as he has been covering the tech industry for decades and has a sense of context (he was also fake Steve Jobs by the way) rather than a "look at these crazy start up kids" point of view.

Post reply on HN