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Failing the startup game at Unbabel

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Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#161

Post by prawn »

vasco_ wrote: post #131

For the record I am a co-founder and CEO of Unbabel. I feel that I should respond to these allegations. 1 - The contract we had with Andreas was full time employee contract. The first three months were "at will" which means that either one was free to terminate the relation at any time. We have a signed contract to prove it and I am happy to share a sample of the contract to anyone that wants. When we fired him, we n…

IMO, this bit "A position just opened up :)" is a bit tacky. Take the high ground!

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#162

Post by UweSchmidt »

vasco_ wrote: post #131

For the record I am a co-founder and CEO of Unbabel. I feel that I should respond to these allegations. 1 - The contract we had with Andreas was full time employee contract. The first three months were "at will" which means that either one was free to terminate the relation at any time. We have a signed contract to prove it and I am happy to share a sample of the contract to anyone that wants. When we fired him, we n…

Regardless of what is true and what isn't, it must be tough to have your company featured on HN like this. Thanks for handling it so classy in your post.

.oO(What's with the code quality though?)

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#163

Post by neilk »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #148
vasco_ wrote: post #131

For the record I am a co-founder and CEO of Unbabel. I feel that I should respond to these allegations. 1 - The contract we had with Andreas was full time employee contract. The first three months were "at will" which means that either one was free to terminate the relation at any time. We have a signed contract to prove it and I am happy to share a sample of the contract to anyone that wants. When we fired him, we n…

I'm always surprised when a company is so quick to publicly comment on a sensitive personnel matter, but that said, it's interesting to note what this response doesn't contain. The OP basically called into question the quality and stability of Unbabel's platform ("The code was a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-implemented features and misleading comments. Of the few automated tests that existed, most didn'…

> The code was a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-implemented features and misleading comments.

In my experience, a lot of code is like this, and the majority of startup code is like this. I have found there's almost zero correlation between startup success and good coding practices. I have no data, but I suspect there's a negative correlation.

Before you protest, I know that your code is a shining example of clarity. But if you consider all the incentives for a startup, there's much more value in being experimental, and highly responsive to customer demands, than there is in charting a stable, long term course. People celebrate pivots like it's cool, but this is what it does to the code.

Just a forewarning for anyone who is going from a more corporate world into startupland.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#164

Post by pimentel »

btipling wrote: post #59

The truth of it is that the startup life isn't for every engineer. Startup code is messy. You don't have architects who draw UMLs for you, you don't have the luxury of time to do things right. At a small startup everything is often falling apart at the seams. Morale can rise and crash, repeatedly, like a roller coaster. Small startups often have to visit the iron bank of technical debt and take out a huge loan to put…

"You don't have architects who draw UMLs for you"

You better not, who cares about UML diagrams?

But startup code doesn't have to be messy. I don't write messier code (to be used in a company that pays me), just because I'm in a hurry, and neither should anyone.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#165

Post by ScottBurson »

TomGullen wrote: post #14
onion2k wrote: post #7

A really big problem for startups lies in attracting high quality coding talent. There aren't many experienced developers who're in a position to take the necessary risk joining a startup and working for a reduced income for a while. Consequently any startup that screws over a developer isn't just hurting their own rep, but they're damaging the chance of success of every other startup by reducing the size of the tale…

> there's still a lesson in it for every startup founder - developers are necessary and important to your success so being nice (especially if the relationship isn't going well) is a Good Idea. If a founder is only being nice to someone because it's a good idea and in their interest, they are an asshole. It's not a lesson you should need to teach anyone.

There's being nice, which -- you're right -- everyone should do, and then there's going beyond ordinary courtesy to outright generosity. I think onion2k's point is that startups should try to do the latter.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#166

Post by bkeroack »

vasco_ wrote: post #131

For the record I am a co-founder and CEO of Unbabel. I feel that I should respond to these allegations. 1 - The contract we had with Andreas was full time employee contract. The first three months were "at will" which means that either one was free to terminate the relation at any time. We have a signed contract to prove it and I am happy to share a sample of the contract to anyone that wants. When we fired him, we n…

Not sure why other commenters are jumping on the bandwagon to criticize your response. Frankly, OP made a tasteless move by posting a public rant/complaint about being fired. There are no substantive allegations of mistreatment or inappropriate behavior by Unbabel (other than vague assertions of "abuse"). In the light of that, I'm sure a lot of folks at Unbabel are annoyed. I appreciate that you avoided personal attacks on the former employee (because I'm sure you're angry at this distraction).

It sounds like exactly what you said: OP was a bad fit for this company. Rather than sour grapes and trying to publicly shame Unbabel (for what? Recognizing a bad fit and acting on it?), OP should take this as a lesson learned.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#167

Post by JadeNB »

vasco_ wrote: post #131

For the record I am a co-founder and CEO of Unbabel. I feel that I should respond to these allegations. 1 - The contract we had with Andreas was full time employee contract. The first three months were "at will" which means that either one was free to terminate the relation at any time. We have a signed contract to prove it and I am happy to share a sample of the contract to anyone that wants. When we fired him, we n…

As 7Figures2Commas says below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8259046), this seems really tasteless, and possibly illegal.

((

EDIT: In light of gamblor956 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8259687)'s response, I should clarify that what I found tasteless and possibly illegal was the posting of this personal information, not the arrangement itself (about which I think it is wisest to offer no opinion).

))

I agree with bkeroack (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8259618) that Andreas's posting this rant publically may not have been desireable (although the poster says that your company was given some warning about the content appearing), but I think that does not give you the ethical right to compound the wrong by complaining about the poster ("he was a terrible fit"), or the ethical or legal right to post sensitive and private information about an employee.

Without commenting on the merits of the situation (I have no idea who is in the right, and think that this kind of unpleasantness should probably not have made the front page), I think that it would have sufficed to say that his allegations are demonstrably untrue, but that you cannot provide documentation due to privacy concerns, without giving personal information about his performance and salary details.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#168

Post by jacquesm »

neilk wrote: post #163
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised when a company is so quick to publicly comment on a sensitive personnel matter, but that said, it's interesting to note what this response doesn't contain. The OP basically called into question the quality and stability of Unbabel's platform ("The code was a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-implemented features and misleading comments. Of the few automated tests that existed, most didn'…

> The code was a tangled mess of mindless duplication, half-implemented features and misleading comments. In my experience, a lot of code is like this, and the majority of startup code is like this. I have found there's almost zero correlation between startup success and good coding practices. I have no data, but I suspect there's a negative correlation. Before you protest, I know that your code is a shining example…

I can't comment about any specific code bases for obvious reasons but I'm more often than not positively surprised by the quality of the code at the start-ups that I look at. Of course there are corners being cut, but usually that's for very good reasons marked with copious 'todo's. Start-ups definitely aren't equal when it comes to this and in my experience there is a definite correlation between those that ride that fine line between being in a hurry and making a good product and those that create a mess and those that try to be perfect out of the gate.

The idea here is that you do the best you can within the constraints, not that you use your start-uppishness as an excuse to be sloppy or to produce crap.

In fact, the majority of the real messes I see are not in start-ups but in more established companies where the original developers have long since moved on. Large codebases where very few people (if any!) have an idea of what is really going on.

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#169

Post by gamblor956 »

JadeNB wrote: post #167
vasco_ wrote: post #131

For the record I am a co-founder and CEO of Unbabel. I feel that I should respond to these allegations. 1 - The contract we had with Andreas was full time employee contract. The first three months were "at will" which means that either one was free to terminate the relation at any time. We have a signed contract to prove it and I am happy to share a sample of the contract to anyone that wants. When we fired him, we n…

As 7Figures2Commas says below ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8259046 ), this seems really tasteless, and possibly illegal. (( EDIT: In light of gamblor956 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8259687)'s response, I should clarify that what I found tasteless and possibly illegal was the posting of this personal information, not the arrangement itself (about which I think it is wisest to offer no opinion). ))…

To follow up on your comment about the illegality of it... The following source notes that while at will termination is no longer completely illegal in Portugal, probation periods must generally be at least 90 days in length for indefinite-term contracts:

http://www.portugalglobal.pt/EN/Biblioteca/Documents/Portuga...

Re: Failing the startup game at Unbabel

#170

Post by jorgis »

PaulHoule wrote: post #132
untog wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stories like this (and my own experience) kind of sum up why I don't intend to work for another startup unless it's one I've founded. Too many people out there are taking roles with because it's a startup is always a bad idea.

I can say you also see the "perpetual clusterfuck" antipattern in organizations that don't fit the traditional "startup" mold. You can definitely see it in government, non-profits as well as existing businesses. It's the end result of a culture that values "getting shit done" and ends up with nothing but "shit".

Here are some sources of potential clusterfucks I've seen firsthand:

* Paying a contact manufacturer to design and build electronic hardware, then not getting any sources for the software.

* Selling R&D prototypes.

* Mistaking being customer-driven for waiting for customer orders before developing a product.

* Promising customers 3 month lead times on products that exist only as R&D prototypes.

* Not documenting what was built until product is shipping.

* Not documenting design decisions.

These are all real things that happened at a 20 year old company that I used to work for. This is also a short list of the many reasons I left.

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