Failing the startup game at Unbabel • Hacker News Board

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#101

Post by bellerocky » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 2:47 PM UTC

BSousa wrote: post #96

jprince wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy is a symptom of an alarming trend I've seen in the field. We're all riding high, spending every $ we make because we think the end will never come. I think it will, and a lot of us are going to be bankrupt. I don't care what financial disasters may occur - I very much doubt they'd occur in such frequency that over 20 years of working in a high income job this guy wouldn't have 15,000$ handy for something lik…

The thing you have to understand, 80k USD is a very very very high salary for most people (even developers) in Europe. And the ones that make that can most likely see 1/2 of that go away in taxes/social security. Cost of living will probably be higher than the equivalent salary in the USA. On the other hand, people should get unemployment benefits when situations like this occur, unfortunately for him, the moving cou…

$80K is not so much at it might seem when you're living in the Bay Area. Rent for a small apartment $24K a year living outside of San Francisco, and up to $30K+ inside the city. Everything is very expensive. When I lived in another city I could get by at $500 a month for a similar apartment.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#102

Post by rtpg » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 2:49 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #49

prawn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Legal. You are going to sue a former employer? What a great way of ruining your future." Could say the same thing to Unbabel if this story is as OP has written it up. Not going to pay out the contract? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employees will avoid you like the plague.

> Could say the same thing to Unbabel if this story is as OP has written it up. Not going to pay out the contract? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employees will avoid you like the plague. Yup. Neither party comes out looking good from this.

I have a hard time conjuring up much sympathy for Unbabel in this situation. Work is work, and this person has come to one of the only recourses.

Also, informing the community that a company doesn't seem to value the work of its employees should be valued.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#103

Post by FollowSteph3 » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 2:49 PM UTC

andrewljohnson wrote: post #67

If the contract says 3 months, he should be paid for 3 months, end of story. I think the blog needs to include the contract to really know if anything illegal is going on.

The thing is we're only seeing one side of the story. It assumes both parties agree.

That being said generally all contracts have an early termination clause. He doesn't comment on what that is. Generally with 3 month contracts, it can be pretty short. It doesn't necessarily mean finish the 3 months.

To give you an analogy if you hire a general contractor to renovate your home for a 3 month contract, you can terminate the contract early if it's not working out for you. Maybe the contractor is amazing but you just ran out of funds. In any case the issue is that there is always an early termination clause in contracts. I would be curious what his is...

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#104

Post by blauwbilgorgel » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #32

homakov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe he wants his story to sound more dramatic >So here I am, back where I started with barely enough money to eat. Come on, you're 37 years old Java professional from Sweden (which is not Nigeria or something). Even unemployed people there get more money which I used to make being programmer. > When I informed my landlord that I wouldn't be able to stay as long as planned she kicked me out of the apartment What,…

Yes, we should all toughen up and so on. But shit still does happen and it does not always happen to the right people. I've seen people be treated in a very coarse manner by their employers and this story does not read 'off the scale' in any way to me, it could very easily have happened as described. I've seen far worse than this. Yes, the poster has a partial responsibility in how this all happened and turned out, I…

I read a lot of burning bridges. Quite unnecessary.

Author calls his former job a mind-numbingly boring Java consulting gig.

Then calls his new job at Unbabel insane and abusive.

As the author does not explain how working for 30 days at Unbabel was abusive, this only reflects poorly on the author. He seems impossible to satisfy.

That code at start-ups is messy is the norm, not the exception. Highlighting this as: "a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-implemented features and misleading comments" again reflect poorly only on the author. What did he expect as an experienced coder? Why air this "dirty" laundry? How do the people (your former and future colleagues) writing that code feel now?

Then continues to describe the horrible experience: "The team lead was the only one who knew anything about the system". Then seems surprised at that Friday afternoon meeting with the founders.

This may negatively influence hiring practices of YC companies. Want to avoid such culture fit disasters? Do no hire anyone over 30. Do not want fire and brimstone blog posts when you fire someone? Hire someone local or remotely outsource. Taking a chance on someone works both ways.

Yes, I imagine it sucks for the author and I wish such an experience on no one. But I also wouldn't want to be the startup to read this on the frontpage of HN, see yourself be misrepresented and having to consult with legal before you can even think of replying. A bad hire is unfortunate for the employee, but very expensive for the startup too: Too many of these and the company will go down. EU labour laws are far more protective of employees than US labour laws. If this was within the law, it may not have been too nice, but remember: This is (a) serious business.

There is probably a grain of truth in this story, and perhaps Unbabel made a poor business decision, but these stories can never be taken at face value, they are closer to hit pieces. Drama-bait.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#105

Post by qxmat » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 2:58 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #57

qxmat wrote: post #39

I feel for you. I made a similar leap from an OK-paying regional job at an established niche cashcow to a London start-up. The perks: a coffee machine, senior pay cheque. The reality: a shit coffee machine, low moral, no realistic prospect of a profit and no willingness to pivot. 80% of costs have been sunk on a Facebook clone 'with a spin' while the owners try to sell snake oil to investors. We operate like the bad…

... the last lead dev couldn't understand the immeasurable benefits of model binding So if the benefits can't be measured, you're suggesting that the front-end should be rewritten as a matter of pure faith in model binding? (Honestly, that's my impression of how most people decide to adopt a JavaScript framework. "Yeah, we don't really understand the whole, and there are all these edge cases where you have to work ag…

I think, in this instance, the 'immeasurable benefits' should probably read as 'measurable benefits so great they break the scale (but measurably better than the mess imperative JS creates)'.

Recently, especially at a startup I've felt the need to use libraries and frameworks more and more just to hit deadlines and meet the desired user experience.

Model binding is a prime example of this: on the web today everything has to be dynamic and reactive. Rather than do something (i.e. animate) and tightly couple the onComplete handler to N other things to do afterwards (via callbacks/promises etc) I prefer to compose my code around n-event subscriptions and react to changes.

Thanks to things like model binding (and their frameworks/libraries that offer this) the 'immeasurable benefits' of decoupled and composable functions trump the spaghetti soup reactive Javascript requires.

(P.S. one designer is a step up from none!)

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#106

Post by BSousa » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

bellerocky wrote: post #101

BSousa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you have to understand, 80k USD is a very very very high salary for most people (even developers) in Europe. And the ones that make that can most likely see 1/2 of that go away in taxes/social security. Cost of living will probably be higher than the equivalent salary in the USA. On the other hand, people should get unemployment benefits when situations like this occur, unfortunately for him, the moving cou…

$80K is not so much at it might seem when you're living in the Bay Area. Rent for a small apartment $24K a year living outside of San Francisco, and up to $30K+ inside the city. Everything is very expensive. When I lived in another city I could get by at $500 a month for a similar apartment.

That is an excellent point, and very fitting. If you take in account 80k is current salary, and most likely started at 40k and over 20 years raised it (lets say linearly), making an average of 60k over those 20 years, and paying high taxes, I doubt many would be able to save much as well unless your partner also worked. Also, Stockholm has quite high rents, looking at [1], studios start at around 1000 usd and small apartments at 1600 or so (not in central Stockholm, but suburbs)

[1] http://www.bostaddirekt.com/Private/default.aspx?custType=0&...

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#107

Post by hanspeter » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 3:01 PM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #61

jprince wrote: post #52

As terrible as this experience was, what's most alarming is that you're 37, have been working for nearly 20 years in this field, and don't have enough savings to tide you over even two months without work. You really need to learn to save your income and cut your lifestyle. I hope that if it turns out your story is true, that these guys are in some way brought to justice, karmic or otherwise. Best of luck.

Did you read yourself? What do you know about his life? Could he have lost all his savings due to a a divorce, or an accident, or some other type of tragedy? What if he always had to support others?

I hope he didn't take the decision to leave a good job in a country with one of the best economies in Europe for a start-up job in a country with one of the worst economies in Europe - while having no savings and/or having to support others.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#108

Post by davidw » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 3:09 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #75

debt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has a market cap of nearly 200 billion, some of the most talented engineers in the industry, a world-class AI lab , nearly unlimited perks and over a billion users. So unless this startup can start where FB is right now, no one will "clone" FB.

You'd be surprised. FB is large and that often means conservative and ossified. How long does it take for new ideas to end up on the web page? I don't see that happening much, certainly not daily. The back-end I can't see but I wonder if anybody cares; its not part of what makes FB attractive to users. So replacing FB means recruiting some niche of customers, and providing something fresh and useful. That can be done…

It's very, very rare that someone successfully takes on a big, entrenched competitor like IBM or Microsoft, and wins a head-on fight.

It's much more likely that they exploit some new thing.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#109

Post by webwright » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 3:16 PM UTC

It was unclear to me what the terms of the contract were in terms of early termination of the agreement by either party. If you're moving for a 3 month "try before you buy" agreement, it's good to have that clause in the agreement or at least discuss it.

Say something like, "You guys seem like you're pretty organized, but I've heard a horror story or two about startup hiring... Companies pivoting and laying people off/etc. Given that I'm moving for this opportunity, can we have a clause in the agreement that spreads the risk around a bit? Say, if you guys let me go for any reason before the end of the contract, I get $X as a severance in consideration for my moving expenses, etc."

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#110

Post by morgante » Tue, Sep 02, 2014, 3:18 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #102

morgante wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could say the same thing to Unbabel if this story is as OP has written it up. Not going to pay out the contract? What a great way of ruining your future. Future employees will avoid you like the plague. Yup. Neither party comes out looking good from this.

I have a hard time conjuring up much sympathy for Unbabel in this situation. Work is work, and this person has come to one of the only recourses. Also, informing the community that a company doesn't seem to value the work of its employees should be valued.

> Work is work

I agree, but in what way is Unbabel not compensating for the work actually done? They just prematurely said no more work would be done for them.