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Why I left

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51–60 of 105 posts

Re: Why I left

#51

I don't understand why he didn't nail down his equity situation before doing any work. Yeah, it's pretty shifty of the 'founders' but then it's pretty basic for techies, especially early startup engineers.

Because of "don't worry - it'll be fine" thinking.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15155068

Re: Why I left

#52

I'm not sure why the negative reaction to this post. I found it completely plausible and have no reason to doubt the author. It sucks that there are crappy people like this but unfortunately that's the real world. People will exploit you if you allow them to. That said, threatening to sell exploits on the black market is a terrible way to fight back. Everything up to that point suggested the author had a case he coul…

threatening to sell exploits on the black market is a terrible way to fight back My guess is that this is a clever way of destroying confidence in the coin and subverting the organization. He need not exploit the vulnerabilities; hell, they need not even exist. If he was really going to sell 0-days, it's not in his interest to announce it. As someone who once had the experience of being forced out of an organization…

> It won't make you rich, but sometimes it's nice to just watch something burn.

Cheers to this. :)

Re: Why I left

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be ironic, however it's not unethical to engage in unethical behavior specifically against unethical actors.

Depends on your ethics. In mine that is absolutely unethical.

Sounds like they broke, or tried to break, his leg. Seems reasonable to me to want to fight back.

Re: Why I left

#54
It’s amazing how we, geeks, fail to negotiate and secure our equity before delivering our work and lose all leverage.

After countless examples where tech people have been exploited by business people, Tesla pops into mind as the most famous one, we still haven’t learned our lesson!

Re: Why I left

#55
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And instead of getting a lawyer to resolve this, he says he'll just 0-day exploits for it. Seems like a poor negotiation strategy to me.

How does a lawyer resolve anything if there's no contract? And by extension, why should he refrain from publishing zero days if there's no contract? It's his software.

[deleted]

Re: Why I left

#56

Particularly alarming section: > August 17- Aeternity finally makes an offer to hire me that I am comfortable with. In the process of negotiating my employment, the owner of Aeternity was asking me technical questions, and the honest answers I gave made him angry. He wished that universe worked differently, and he blamed me, the messenger of bad news. The owner of Aeternity was so upset by the technical limitation, t…

When I read this I though a violent struggle didn't happen but that he wanted to imply that it did. The reason is that it reminds me of similar techniques that my more drama-loving acquaintances use,and based on the way this is written, this guy has a flair for drama. My guess is that something happened where the author got scared and as a side effect hurt himself. Meaning he can garner sympathy and still not technically lie about what happened, but make you fill in the blanks with stuff that didn't happen. I would love to stand corrected on this, though.

Re: Why I left

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your ethics. In mine that is absolutely unethical.

Sounds like they broke, or tried to break, his leg. Seems reasonable to me to want to fight back.

Honestly to me, it sounds like a junior (or at least, a non-business-savvy) person tried to extort somewhere in the area of $3.5 million from the owner of their company.

In this instance, "trying to break his leg" may have been more like "got shoved and fell over" (Which to be fair, could be a reaction someone might have if their employee came into their office demanding several million dollars - who knows).

I don't know, I'd like to hear the other side of the story.

Re: Why I left

#58
post #27

Isn't the code open source? Can he fork and start his own company?

He already started a new company. Amoveo

A scalable blockchain for financial derivatives. Optimized for scalability via smart contracts inside state-channels. Has a build-in oracle for integration with real-world data. Written in Erlang.

https://github.com/zack-bitcoin/amoveo

Re: Why I left

#59
post #24

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it is written by someone who is highly immature and/or unstable. I mostly feel sorry for their investors who purchased yet another block chain hoping to make a quick buck with likely little to no diligence on what they buy. The more I hear about blockchains, the murkier it looks to me.

The author is effectively ousted from the "company", physically assaulted, signs nothing, then spends '5 days' with 'the Aeternity lawyer' mulling over a contract? All of this after not being paid while their colleagues are being 'paid regularly.'

My question is what/where is the legal void that this company existed in?!

Re: Why I left

#60

I don't understand why he didn't nail down his equity situation before doing any work. Yeah, it's pretty shifty of the 'founders' but then it's pretty basic for techies, especially early startup engineers.

Yeah this is very ugly on both sides. A basic contract would've saved everyone a lot of grief.
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