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OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

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Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#171

Post by latch »

rictic wrote: post #165
latch wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is pedantic but the subject is a quote, so your parent is correct. It really should have either used square brackets around the name, or been written differently. Personally, I feel that once you open a double-quote there's a certain responsibility.

The adjacent tweet from the CEO mentions Shay by name. I'm usually a stickler for this kind of thing as well, but this one reads as entirely unambiguous to me.

But it isn't about ambiguity. If someone said:

Our window for reaching its peak was gone. I sat in our tent, unable to do anything, while my dream of climbing Mount Everest faded

It's wrong to quote them as saying

"Our window for reaching Mount Everest's peak was gone"

Even though the "its" is clearly referring to Mount Everest. There are a couple options, the simplest being:

"Our window for reaching [Mount Everest's] peak was gone"

What worries me is that people don't know this. That you can just substitute/fill in a quote because it's obvious that's what the person meant. Rather, it should be thought of as a recording device that can only play back exactly what the person said.

Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#172

Post by michaelochurch »

jpdoctor wrote: post #168
michaelochurch wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have clarified: personal reputation vs. organization reputation. Wall Street's a big industry and has a lot of unethical people in it, but corporations are good at distancing themselves from bad actors (even if they supported them while they were being scummy). People have a hard time recovering from a bad reputation; companies reinvent themselves more easily.

> People have a hard time recovering from a bad reputation Lloyd Blankfein hired a criminal defense lawyer in order to prepare for charges. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/goldman-financial-c... ) After how many years should we expect his ouster by the board?

Ok, that's upper class, which is a different culture from Wall Street.

If you're a VP or a middling MD and you get a reputation for being scummy, it hurts you. Not to say there aren't lots of scummy people at middle ranks of banks; it's just that getting caught doesn't help you.

Corporate executives, on the other hand, are a different breed and live in a world that's much more tolerant of scumbaggery (like the world of politicians and well-connected people in general).

The upper class is the same whether you're in finance or non-profits or regular corporate America. They like scumminess. Or, at least, they're more invested in the mob-like tendency to always protect their own than any other ethical principle.

Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#173

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

jsavimbi wrote: post #61
sgentle wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for everyone else, but it wasn't the honesty I had an issue with, it was the reckless disloyalty and willingness to publicly burn people who've worked for you. For sure, this guy called Zynga evil and said he didn't want to work for them, and that's the last thing you want showing up in Mark Pincus's news feed when he's just bought your company. But to shoot back in public and call him a parasite and th…

You're right. When you fire someone, experience layoffs or people quit in disgust, the best thing to do is to let it go and if some negative publicity comes back at you, the best thing to do is to kill them with kindness, especially when you were actually trying to retain said employee. Which I assume was part of the buyout deal. Yes, the employees, especially the engineers, are company assets. "Shay is a great engin…

Ok I get it now. I think being a closed up shy introverted recluse has taken its toll on my ability to understand what's socially acceptable and what isn't.

I grew up around a father that would talk shit but do good things so to me I've always discarded what people say and paid attention more to what their actions are.

Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#174

Post by knieveltech »

michaelochurch wrote: post #166
haberman wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your dig at Google here is astonishingly out of place. Even if what you say is true, you're comparing fraud and serious ethical violations with... being bureaucratic and having bad legacy systems? I don't even know what to say. Also, what you say isn't true. Google has the shallowest management structure and the most aggressive attitude towards refactoring (both in the large and small) of any company I've ever worked…

Google has a lot of really stupid policies that are unethical and hurt peoples' careers. For example, Perf. Five percent of employees end up on PIPs for no other reason than getting shat on in Neutron-Jack-style stack-ranking. People on PIPs can't transfer. They rarely actually get fired (most quit, most PIPs on people who stay are inconclusive; rare is for a person to get fired and even rarer is for a person to actu…

"unethical to promote and retain, in management positions, sometimes with global impact, severe and obvious incompetents in the same way that it's unethical to let a 4-year-old fly a plane."

I...I think I love you.

Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#175

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

caidan wrote: post #72
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. It is indeed very unprofessional. But how come people like him are held up to such high standards? When you're not anyone important you can be brutally honest and say what you want like everyone else does. But as soon as you're in the public eye you're put on this pedestal. This is what scares the hell out of me. I'm a very uncensored person who says what he means and means what he says (and am an asshole somet…

Just to be clear, you are comparing two hip hop artists, two comedians, two actors, and an avante garde pop artist to the CEO of a mobile games company? In fact you are comparing a group of individuals who are all famous or infamous in their own way for being edgy and/or a mess, to a company that makes family friendly games. There is a very large difference between the responsibilities of an entertainer and a CEO. Th…

Very well explained thank you.

Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#176

Post by jpdoctor »

michaelochurch wrote: post #172
jpdoctor wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have a hard time recovering from a bad reputation Lloyd Blankfein hired a criminal defense lawyer in order to prepare for charges. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/goldman-financial-c... ) After how many years should we expect his ouster by the board?

Ok, that's upper class, which is a different culture from Wall Street. If you're a VP or a middling MD and you get a reputation for being scummy, it hurts you. Not to say there aren't lots of scummy people at middle ranks of banks; it's just that getting caught doesn't help you. Corporate executives, on the other hand, are a different breed and live in a world that's much more tolerant of scumbaggery (like the world…

> If you're a VP or a middling MD and you get a reputation for being scummy, it hurts you.

So Goldman managing director, Scott L. Lebovitz sat on the BoD of a company which hosted of the biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls. Village Voice Media had 70% of prostitution ads.

Is this what hurt him that he had to step down after many years?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/kristof-fin...

BTW, we can play this game all day. If you think that there is an iota less scumminess on Wall Street, then you haven't worked there or looked too carefully.

Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#178

Post by michaelochurch »

jpdoctor wrote: post #176
michaelochurch wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, that's upper class, which is a different culture from Wall Street. If you're a VP or a middling MD and you get a reputation for being scummy, it hurts you. Not to say there aren't lots of scummy people at middle ranks of banks; it's just that getting caught doesn't help you. Corporate executives, on the other hand, are a different breed and live in a world that's much more tolerant of scumbaggery (like the world…

> If you're a VP or a middling MD and you get a reputation for being scummy, it hurts you. So Goldman managing director, Scott L. Lebovitz sat on the BoD of a company which hosted of the biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls. Village Voice Media had 70% of prostitution ads. Is this what hurt him that he had to step down after many years? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/opinion/sunday/kristof-fin... B…

I think there's less scumminess among average people on Wall Street than among average non-engineers in VCistan, which is only a small percentage of startups, much less technology.

I think there's way more scumminess on Wall Street than in technology as a whole, or than in the private-sector in general, but I think the current crop of darling-at-the-ball social-games/network-coupon VC-funded startups have some really scummy executives. This is something I've observed through experience, and it surprised me a lot, to tell the truth.

Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#179

Post by kamaal »

michaelochurch wrote: post #166
haberman wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your dig at Google here is astonishingly out of place. Even if what you say is true, you're comparing fraud and serious ethical violations with... being bureaucratic and having bad legacy systems? I don't even know what to say. Also, what you say isn't true. Google has the shallowest management structure and the most aggressive attitude towards refactoring (both in the large and small) of any company I've ever worked…

Google has a lot of really stupid policies that are unethical and hurt peoples' careers. For example, Perf. Five percent of employees end up on PIPs for no other reason than getting shat on in Neutron-Jack-style stack-ranking. People on PIPs can't transfer. They rarely actually get fired (most quit, most PIPs on people who stay are inconclusive; rare is for a person to get fired and even rarer is for a person to actu…

To me what you described looks like classic description of any big company not any one company in general.

The founders ideals are torn to shreds the moment the management layers begin to take control. Management by leadership either works only on paper or there are very few people who follow it.

Most managers rank only by following methods. The most competent guy is always seen as a threat. Promotions and rewards are given to guys who can polish their boots and offer a degree of allegiance to them. And a guy who is capable of growing and doing something on himself gets kicked in the teeth. Nepotism, partiality and biased behavior are extremely common in management layers.

This is not restricted to one company alone.

Re: OMGPOP CEO tweets: "Shay Pierce was the weakest employee on the team"

#180

Post by kamaal »

Confusion wrote: post #133
moe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they just got lucky Can't stress this enough. I liked OMGPOP from the start, when they were still that obscure flash-site for 6-12yr olds. But that was before the CEO announced that he's an asshole... "DrawSomething" most likely got popular mainly because the implementation is much better than the other Pictionary clones (which have been around forever). And that's an aspect that Mr. CEO probably wasn't involved with…

A professor of mine once said that becoming a professor requires equal parts intelligence, hard work and luck. Usually I cite him to stress the importance of luck: being talented and working hard often isn't enough. However when someone says that someone else just got lucky, I cite it to make another point: without talent and hard work, luck is often useless. You need vast amounts of luck to get somewhere if you're t…

According to me if a person is lazy and unproductive, even luck gives up on him.

You need to work hard anyway. And you need need luck on top of it. Things work in that order.

But a lot of people first expect to get lucky and then work hard. IMO that never happens, because the person tries to reverse cause-effect scenarios. The person expects reward before work, whereas rewards always come after work, never before it.

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