141–150 of 211 posts
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If I was the CEO of Pepsi and saw my employee tweet how he likes Coke I would be pissed. Morality is subjective so nobody can say what's truly "right" or "wrong", but it is true that what this guy did was not a cool thing to do. And I can imagine just reading through his post what other things he probably may have done to result in him getting fired.
Ahh so if you work for Dodge you can only buy a dodge?
One of the major takeaways for me from this article was about how sincere feedback and contributions to the company can be so quickly brushed aside. Making improvements aren't always easy, but espousing a "two-way street" then acting very "top down" is dishonest. A cultural issue. Then I saw the communication about performance and then the firing, and I don't feel a reason to doubt the author. It's not a new story or…
>One of the major takeaways for me from this article was about how sincere feedback and contributions to the company can be so quickly brushed aside. I didn't see that from the gitlab comments. It just looks like a technical discussion where his colleagues disagreed with his analysis.
>I was in charge of hiring them, so I went to great lengths to make sure my team consisted of the best possible people, with great engineering skills. You would imagine my concern and indignation when the CEO decided that the Service Engineers were to handle not just our increasingly demanding enterprise customers, but also every single GitLab related question posted on the internet, not just Twitter and/or Facebook, the entire internet!
I, of course, opposed this measure and went on to make my point as to why that was the case. I also suggested hiring specialized people, like Community Managers, to handle this task, which to me sounded reasonable, but management saw this as me going against the company’s best interests. To me, this clearly meant that it was no longer OK to voice your opinions, like it was in the past. In hindsight, this should have been the second clue.
That is the point I was getting at in I can see the value being added in multiple sectors! First, trying to cultivate talent and feeling responsible for that. Second, recognizing out-of-scope "Mission Creep" and speaking up. Third, not just complaining but offering a viable solution to the dispute. Fourth, being able to reflect that when good ideas are shot down without clarity and respect for the person and responsibilities being brought forward, is very important to the soul.
That's what I was referencing and I hope to have brought more context to my reasoning.
Off topic but I hope this medium.com trend starts to fade. I can't read the damn thing on my mobile when there are social sharing icons AND green open in app icon floating, taking room on my small screen. Why would I want your app or open it on app? It's s damn simple blog not some kind of webapp. Svbtl.com was also a thing here time ago, why did that platform become uncool?
Continuing the off topic nature....I am still at a loss as to why people want to read websites on a mobile device, even if you have a 10in tablet is terrible experience IMO...
I will take my 3 27in monitors over tiny phone display all day long... Medium looks fine for me...
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CEO rightly advised I don't think it's right at all. What gives him that right? Why is it morally wrong to do otherwise? What kind of right are you talking about?
If I was the CEO of Pepsi and saw my employee tweet how he likes Coke I would be pissed. Morality is subjective so nobody can say what's truly "right" or "wrong", but it is true that what this guy did was not a cool thing to do. And I can imagine just reading through his post what other things he probably may have done to result in him getting fired.
I would assume the CEO of Pepsi has more things to do than to track employees on social media. If Pepsi employed people to track other employees on social media, that would be more than a little creepy (and I would leave the company).
"Expressing opinions is not allowed here."
Not to mention that OP apparently posted the GitHub stats because the GitLab stats don't show the same information.
Anyone who just cares about the numbers: he was given options of 45,000 shares, of which 15,000 had vested. These 15,000, or 0.0833% of the company, were available to him at $0.27/share, or $4,050 total. So he had the opportunity to buy 0.0833% of the company at a $4.8MM valuation. Given that they recently raised $20MM at an undefined valuation it really says something that he chose not to exercise the options. I rea…
> These 15,000, or 0.0833% of the company, were available to him at $0.27/share, or $4,050 total. So he had the opportunity to buy 0.0833% of the company at a $4.8MM valuation. Given that they recently raised $20MM at an undefined valuation it really says something that he chose not to exercise the options. I normally don't comment on HN without having read TFA, but this one is way too long and I just skimmed over it…
Being publicly critical of a former employer like this, unless you're talking about major ethical issues, seems like a bad move. There's just no way to do it without it coming across as sour grapes. If you have constructive criticism because you believe in a company and want them to do better, give it directly to the people involved. Otherwise I just have to wonder what the real motive is behind making a public state…
What is the motivation for blogging about anything? I am extremely disappointed that we are still stuck culturally in this situation where we can't have healthy public discourse about these things, where private businesses can get away with whatever they want and then proceed to threaten people for even trying to talk about it. Maybe it is sour grapes, so what? The emotional highs and lows are part of the package when it comes to startups, and hiding them doesn't do any good.
Being publicly critical of a former employer like this, unless you're talking about major ethical issues, seems like a bad move. There's just no way to do it without it coming across as sour grapes. If you have constructive criticism because you believe in a company and want them to do better, give it directly to the people involved. Otherwise I just have to wonder what the real motive is behind making a public state…
- criticize them publicly - "give feedback directly" - whistleblowing
There's a bad ending to all those cases ranging from them blowing you off as a guy who got fired to lawsuits. I've always politely declined exit interviews as they offer me zero value and while I may have complained about a company over a beer, I've not blogged about it.
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Backup.
Doesn't inspire confidence in the platform...
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> Damn, that email from the CEO about his private Twitter. That's completely out of line. It regarded his professional work on GitLab: https://twitter.com/suprnova32/status/720396175954698240 I think it's completely appropriate that he link instead to GitLab for such a thing, and I think it's remarkable that he didn't think the same. This isn't like the ad world, where if your customer is Coke you can't be seen drink…
There doesn't appear to be a GitLab equivalent. And that still doesn't change that it was his personal Twitter with 146 followers. The Tweet got one single like. "Undermining the GitLab position" with a Tweet that has one like seems ridiculous.
CEO ask to link to GitLab was completely legitimate. CEO could have phrased it more politely but even as it is it's ok and nothing to complain about.