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Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

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Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#31

Post by smeej »

msteffen wrote: post #23
smeej wrote: post #11

> Ward’s reaction to the scandal was all too familiar: first, attempting to downplay the concerns; then, publicly attacking the person reporting them; then, rushing out a “thought leadership” puff piece that raised more questions than it answered; before finally pulling a 180 and announcing that the company would exit the liquidity business entirely…without ever explaining what had actually gone wrong, or how Carta w…

I’m fortunate not to know any really serious narcissists (I think), so maybe this makes no sense, but it’s interesting to me that 1, 2, and 3 in your list seem to roughly correspond to the first three stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining)

It does seem a bit like a fight against what might otherwise become the death of their self-image.

The difference between it and actual grief seems to be that the unwanted outcome is not inevitable here. Sometimes this works.

Hopefully we can make it less and less likely to work over time by raising awareness of the tactic.

Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#32

Post by vidarh »

Aurornis wrote: post #3

From the original blog post: > I had joined as a Director with a single direct report, been promoted three times in two years to Chief Technology Officer, and then led engineering through a period of unprecedented growth to a team more than 400 strong. Carta had a 400 person engineering team? I know they raised a lot of money, but this seems like a lot of engineers for what I thought they did. Maybe they were explori…

They were hiring people for positions related to automating fund management recently. I'm sure they're trying to add a lot of new stuff.

Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#33

Post by smeej »

voisin wrote: post #14

This needs to be said more often, and should be at the core of ethics courses: “What is the point of accruing influence and money and prestige if you won’t use them to help people? Stop saying “this isn’t my job; there’s nothing I can do; I don’t want to know; it didn’t happen to me; it’s none of my business.” Mankind is your business. The common welfare is your business. The dealings of your trade are but a drop of…

I think the point for such leaders, unconscious though it may be, is to feel safe. There's something they're hoping never to have to experience or feel ever again, and this is what they're doing to keep that from happening.

It's only ever going to be a temporary solution, but the parts of the person's psyche that are driving these decisions are probably pretty stuck in a difficult time when they felt powerless against the same sort of thing they're trying to avoid today, and they react from that immaturity.

I'm armchair psychologizing, but I think the behavior of people who seek power for reasons other than to help people makes more sense if we realize they're not making decisions from a mature, adult part of their experience.

Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#34

Post by smeej »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
Aurornis wrote: post #3

From the original blog post: > I had joined as a Director with a single direct report, been promoted three times in two years to Chief Technology Officer, and then led engineering through a period of unprecedented growth to a team more than 400 strong. Carta had a 400 person engineering team? I know they raised a lot of money, but this seems like a lot of engineers for what I thought they did. Maybe they were explori…

> for what I thought they did At one point Ward was talking about taking out the global banks. Carta raised too much money and then didn’t know what to do with it.

When I read that they'd closed a Series G, I laughed because that's definitely the farthest down the alphabet I've seen anybody go, and it made me wonder if there's even a theoretical limit to where it might stop.

Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#35

Post by voisin »

smeej wrote: post #33
voisin wrote: post #14

This needs to be said more often, and should be at the core of ethics courses: “What is the point of accruing influence and money and prestige if you won’t use them to help people? Stop saying “this isn’t my job; there’s nothing I can do; I don’t want to know; it didn’t happen to me; it’s none of my business.” Mankind is your business. The common welfare is your business. The dealings of your trade are but a drop of…

I think the point for such leaders, unconscious though it may be, is to feel safe. There's something they're hoping never to have to experience or feel ever again, and this is what they're doing to keep that from happening. It's only ever going to be a temporary solution, but the parts of the person's psyche that are driving these decisions are probably pretty stuck in a difficult time when they felt powerless agains…

Perhaps ethics classes should be replaced with counselling sessions so people can value their demons. Maybe C-suite execs and corporate board members should have mandatory hours of monthly therapy in order to have the power they wield.

Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#36

Post by rsynnott »

bogomipz wrote: post #16
ametrau wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a chief people officer?

At some point in the last decade or so HR at many tech companies have decided to rebrand themselves at "People Operations." And CPO as a title is the logical conclusion of this nonsense. You guessed the acronym correctly. Practically speaking it's the same old mundane HR department. They may use "Hey" in their email salutations or promote "Wellness" programs now but their primary purpose is still to protect the inter…

I mean honestly "people operations", while not a good term, is still a much better term than "human resources". Always wondered who came up with that one, and whether they intended it to be used in real life, or just in dystopian sci-fi.

Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#37

Post by PhoenixReborn »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
perryh2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulley https://pulley.com/

Ah, I'd seen them put on a second tier due to the crypto affiliation. But that looks like it's only marketing now. If anyone avoided them due to that, reconsider.

I'm a Pulley customer for our startup - it's great, relatively straightforward and no hassle. Also much cheaper than Carta with less overhead

Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#38

Post by coxley »

Aurornis wrote: post #3

From the original blog post: > I had joined as a Director with a single direct report, been promoted three times in two years to Chief Technology Officer, and then led engineering through a period of unprecedented growth to a team more than 400 strong. Carta had a 400 person engineering team? I know they raised a lot of money, but this seems like a lot of engineers for what I thought they did. Maybe they were explori…

Caveat: I had a _very_ brief stint there.

My take was that — like many companies — it takes more people than you expect to untangle a Python 2.7 monolith. They also seemed to move somewhat slow and steady by design.

Re: Carta: When Your Company Tries to Cancel You

#39

Post by fulladder »

smeej wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for what I thought they did At one point Ward was talking about taking out the global banks. Carta raised too much money and then didn’t know what to do with it.

When I read that they'd closed a Series G, I laughed because that's definitely the farthest down the alphabet I've seen anybody go, and it made me wonder if there's even a theoretical limit to where it might stop.

I suppose the theoretical limit would be Z.
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