This guy is totally irresponsible. The thought that he had the financial well being of other people in his hands makes me sick. There should be a law that prevents people like this from starting another company.
Mistakes You Should Never Make
171–180 of 348 posts
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#172Poor founders and your VC-funded pain.
How about some empathy for each of those employees you are firing, who have to go home and face families and lives that they've shared with you and you have essentially shat upon?
They are not "resources". They are people, humans, and their lives and loves are just as important as yours. They shared a piece of their humanity with you to help you in your dream. A dream which, make no mistake, isn't making the world a better place. It's you yourself getting rich. You used these people and now they have to deal with their lessons learned.
Which aren't "lying is a bad thing" and "not paying taxes is bad" and "I need to network more with rich people." They are- "I need to find a new job and/or draw unemployment, I need to cope with this shock to my system, and I need to figure out how I'm going to pay the bills".
All the "libertarians" in this business lose sight of social agreements and safety nets, until they get screwed by someone who shares that approach.
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#173It would be really interesting to hear Seth's former co-founders response to this well written piece.
Yes, but at the same time, this is not a trial or an execution. Let's not bee too harsh (some of the comments above clearly are).
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I asked him about his unwillingness to do what others have done (at the time it was drive faster than the speed limit on an empty road) " The above (parent comment) as well as your comment "I pulled all the money out super excited about my find. He explained it wasn't mine" ... well, I can't agree that it teaches the proper lesson, even to a child. Forgetting whether he is even right "it isn't yours" (I could argue…
"To me (and with all due respect to the parent commenters grandfather) when I hear things like this I think something is trying to prove honesty a bit to much and (once again not to imply the parent commenters grandfather is such a person) that is the type of person I actually watch out for sometimes." 99.9% of the time, that type of statement is more of a sign of your personality and less a sign of others'. In reali…
"In reality, though, the main point that you missed is that in a world made of shades of gray, the only person you can ever truly rely on is yourself. If you don't have scruples and you don't have honor, you don't have anything."
Well let me put it this way. I don't think you understand my point about nuances and that I (once again) don't feel any of this is black and white.
As an example the honor that I might display, and scruples I might display, for an individual are not the same that I might display for a corporation. If I hired someone, a hacker, to do programming, I would be much more lenient because of a person relationship and especially because of the knowing that my actions would have a large effect on that individual. Otoh if I had a project that was being done by "IBM Global services" I would absolutely angle things differently if things weren't done right. I wouldn't care about that company not getting it's $10,000 (arbitrary obviously).
If an individual were doing a project for me and made a mistake and under billed me I would point it out. If IBM did the same I wouldn't.
As it happens I have seen various behavior (on the other side, say vendors) of both individuals and corporations over a long long time that I have spent in business. And each situation really is different.
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting about your grandfather. Mine taught me a similar integrity lesson when I was a kid. Back when there were payphones I would always check them for spare quarters. One time when I was with my grandfather I checked a phone that has broken and dumped ~ $6 in change out. I pulled all the money out super excited about my find. He explained it wasn't mine and when we got home he mailed the local phone a check for…
"I asked him about his unwillingness to do what others have done (at the time it was drive faster than the speed limit on an empty road) " The above (parent comment) as well as your comment "I pulled all the money out super excited about my find. He explained it wasn't mine" ... well, I can't agree that it teaches the proper lesson, even to a child. Forgetting whether he is even right "it isn't yours" (I could argue…
I think you really missed the mark on what they were trying to illustrate.
It's not following societies rules for the sake of it. It's following your own internal compass, _and_sticking_to_it_ regardless of if it benefits you now or harms you. Theirs just aligned with certain things you obviously don't value in a person.
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#176That had to be a tough article to write, thanks Seth. The thing that really stuck with me is the 'technically true' aspects. Growing up in various places around the world I encountered a number of people for whom their motto was 'its only illegal if you get caught!' The advantages of this motto were very apparent as a teen, you could run a stop light at 11:30pm, there was hardly anyone around, and you could be home b…
This brings up an excellent side point that I taught my children... that stealing is not taking something that belongs to someone else, it is taking something that does not belong to you.
It is a subtle, but important, distiction that is often used as a rationalization.
Edit: This really belongs on the child comment.
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#177I often find myself saying the following: "We are the sum of our mistakes, though to re-offend is to not have learned".
So much is made of out and out success these days, it sets up society to be an incredibly unforgiving place and feeds a loop of setting unattainably high standards for ones self or for those around you, and from that comes a fear of mistakes, if you cannot make a mistake you are denying yourself an opportunity to learn.
Context: I was a manager of a software dev team dealing with high scale, and am now a technical non-management leader. Prior to that the founder of a few companies. Throughout all of that I've tried to fail a little less each day.
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#178This guy sounds like a complete sleaze. I appreciate that he wrote the article, as it did contribute a few moments of my day's HN entertainment, but I don't understand the praise being heaped on him. Simply "coming clean" is not commendable, in the absence of any discernible remorse. In the end you just feel like someone is still being played.
Yes, people can make mistakes. But for a pattern of mistakes, and for a person who seems to have such a casual relationship with the truth, you start to wonder if some of the mistakes were... not necessarily willful, but just plausibly-deniable enough.
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#179This is just awful. There's owning up to mistakes, which is very "trendy" right now, and then there's being a straight up terrible, unethical, incompetent person. It's a bit gross to reference Ben Horowitz, to try to make this seem like a "classic" startup moment that every startup goes through. E.g., "most companies go through at least two, and sometimes over a dozen WFIOs in their lifetime." 1. "And so I learned th…
I can't really agree with you - I have made many of these mistakes (taxes! Paperwork! Forms!) and it's not out of innate evil intentions.
This sort of article is important - if only to remind the next generation not to be so damn stupid.
And I can't blame him for his lack of remorse - He seems to have built a valid company employing real people - society has a net win. Did it cause pain on the way - yes. But the people he laid off had a job for the time they had a job. That's about how I measure work these days - it's no less stressful but at least it's fewer nasty surprises.
Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually as an S-Corp owner all the corporate income is taxed as REGULAR INCOME. It doesn't become a capital gains tax -- which is what I assume you mean by investment income. However the US government wants you to also pay Social Security and Medicare tax, which you only pay on employment income. Therefore they force you to take a "reasonable"[1] salary from the company. Everything else left in the company's account…
It's taxed as regular income, but the premise under which it's exempt from the payroll taxes every other worker has to pay is that it's not normal income, but rather the return from an investment in the company. For people in our industry, it's hard to see a definition of "reasonable" that would be financially beneficial. You start a tech company. You pull $100k out every year, putting you right smack in the middle o…
lol @ you forgetting that other businesses exist that operate in the margins of this kind of expense. That sorry scam may be the difference between a local hardware store, mechanic, coffee shop staying open and closing. Even owner/operators don't want to work for reduced wages.
It's even more sorry to sit around on HN and forget that there are many more businesses that are as important or more important than a mobile app service for checking on and generating QR codes for sales at local restaurants.
The IRS gets theirs, don't worry about that. It's just too bad that the spending side of the function is broke, not the revenue.