Alcohol damages more than our brains.
I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
31–40 of 137 posts
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#32From pg:
“Whoah, I had no idea about any of this till now...”
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#33Twitter web UI is not loading tweets for me past the 18th message. Is anyone else facing this or knows how to read the rest?
Edit: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1449858706750033921.html
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd be surprised. Dictionary to the rescue: "Integrity: 1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles."
Yeah, exactly, honestly is just a part of it. He failed hard on the other part by saying his own team was worse then some other team. Integrity is standing up for the people you lead, it falls under the moral principles part.
If you always standup for the team you lead, then where is the moral principles and honesty? My (fill in the blanks) is always right means you have no integrity.
Integrity is having a set of moral principles and evaluating against them honestly. You will see your beauty, warts and all.
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#35Twitter web UI is not loading tweets for me past the 18th message. Is anyone else facing this or knows how to read the rest? Edit: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1449858706750033921.html
They've seemingly done some a/b on me so that many times it requires me to log in/sign up.
Also looking at you reddit, "this thread can be read in the app". Thank the kings and queens for 3rd party viewers (using Slide).
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telling the truth isn't throwing anyone under the bus. If "they" are better than "us", that's the truth. Personally, I'd have bought the guy's company just because that's the right sort of engineer I want. Having said that, he wasn't under any obligation to tell Jerry anything.
He compared engineers he's worked with to engineers he hasn't worked with (Viaweb) and said they were better. How did he know they were better? Is he just better at assessing engineering talent than the rest of us? You're assuming he knew they were better. Based on all of us (esp. here) not trusting technical interviews to determine engineer quality, I suspect he did not know they were better and was simply trying an…
Dude he didn’t literally mean they were better. He gave a sincere compliment to Viaweb (an exaggerated one) as a compelling counterpoint to shift the other’s view.
I dunno, the Yahoo guy seemed a little sociopathic for doing this. Reminds me of when Paul McCartney told Michael Jackson he wanted to buy The Beetles catalog, only to have MJ go ahead and buy it instead. Douchey to say the least.
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#37Integrity matters. Even if he hadn't gotten a big offer later on, he could still walk away with that. Yes, you can argue that he could have just kept his mouth shut and still honestly taken the Yahoo deal, but he said what he thought was right and gave Yahoo some good judgement about pg's team. I recently interviewed with a number of firms, and the ones that give off the best impression are the ones who ask to integr…
Sometimes this type of integrity is just being too honest as he said. Is like telling your customer there is a better restaurant down the road with cheaper prices, go there.
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#38I know pop culture references don't always go over well here, but this reminds me of the Kanye situation at the VMAs. He was likely drunk and attention-seeking, but he was also probably completely incensed when he saw Beyonce fail to win Best Music Video for "Single Ladies". He saw such a misunderstanding of a clearly superior talent and effort that resulted in a qualitatively better result, and he couldn't help but…
A big difference being that in your case Kanye had no specific stake either way. The parallel would be if Taylor Swift would've said: Beyonce's video is better, and the VMAs would've said: actually you're right, please hand back the award.
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not exactly. Having integrity means being whole, united, and indivisible. That certainly can involve telling the truth, but it's much broader than that. Someone who leads a double life, even if they don't make any commitments about their private behavior and even if they don't lie about it, lacks integrity. Integrity means the opposite of being two-faced. In this case, OP's behavior lacked integrity, even though it w…
> Not exactly. Having integrity means being whole, united, and indivisible. Not just any kind of whole. Somebody "whole, united, and indivisible" devoted to his own interests for example, doesn't have integrity (even if he's open about it and e.g. is equally and wholy bad to everybody). Let's stick to the dictionary: "1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles." The "whole, united, etc" thing i…
Someone devoted to his own interests lacks charity, but not integrity. And yes, being whole and undivided is also in reference to the moral quality, not just structural integrity.
Re: I once killed a $125M deal by being “too honest”
#40Why is everyone so sure Yahoo would not have reneged on the deal anyway? If they were ready to renege the way they did, which is extremely ruthless, what makes you all think Yahoo would divulge they were doing due diligence on Viaweb with an existing floating offer already in place for LinkExchange? Maybe another company was out for Viaweb, Yahoo secures LinkExchange, but continues to try for Viaweb, totally ready to drop LinkExchange if Viaweb comes through.
Look at what the company did (renege an offer) and you will understand what they were also doing behind the scenes.
A little bit of a hot take, but I don’t think $125 mil goes out the window because someone said something over drinks (especially something as benign as an exaggerated flattering compliment).
I often give similar compliments when others undermine someone I know well, but respect me. I always say ‘look, that person is a better person than me’, all I’m trying to convey is if ‘if you respect me, know that I respect them, so take that into consideration’. I don’t literally mean they are a better person, that’s not for me, or for you to judge, so let me flip this notion on its head for all of us.