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Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

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Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#571

Post by solidasparagus »

thenaturalist wrote: post #399
solidasparagus wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it could be that Ammon was given a choice: triple profits by end of year or sell his share That seems unbelievably unlikely.

Pardon my ignorance, but what insight or experience leads you to this conclusion? Venture capital is quite the opposite of passive investing. I guess everyone on here is well aware investors are not doing it for fun but first and foremost for protecting and, ideally, multiplying their assets.

I doubt many VCs would see swapping out a founder as improving the outlook of the company, particularly when the issue is the general macroeconomic situation rather than an issue with the founder. Founders are a huge part of the valuation of a company - they've spent years learning their market and how to build/run their company. Once a company hits a certain size, you'll see professional CEOs brought on sometimes, but I would think Triplebyte is too small for that. At ~30 people would the company even survive founders being replaced by VCs?

VCs also like to be able to attract the best founders by being 'founder-friendly' and replacing a founder hurts that image. Starting a company is hard enough - you don't really want investors who add to the pressure.

From what I've heard, COVID seems to have stopped new investments (outside of companies that have gotten a boost from COVID) so that VCs can focus on their existing portfolios.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#573

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 »

perl4ever wrote: post #534
9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could've pushed through and ignored all the feedback they got. That’s a very charitable analysis of the situation. For all we know, this decision was motivated by internal KPIs that immediately reflected what a disaster this was. The whole situation reeks. Announcing on the Friday on a long weekend, the ceo defending it ardently in HN comments, the very deliberate decision to make it opt-in, the difficulty in…

"maligned" Their culture and values have been much maligned, but you mean malignant. Please don't take this personally, it's just that it seems like this misuse of the word is going viral.

I actually really appreciate your comment. Thanks for letting me know!

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#574

Post by ikeyany »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #528
ibejoeb wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He dropped it on the Friday before the biggest holiday weekend of the year. He knows what he's doing. He's done it before, and he's still doing it. Just pulling power moves. Move fast and fuck shit up. The dude has personally tried to pull fast ones on me. This is a fucked company since day one. I brushed it off, but when you keep up these patterns for years...jog on.

> biggest holiday weekend of the year. What holiday was that? I wasn't aware of any. In any case, I'd say Christmas is probably the biggest holiday, although it doesn't always fall on a weekend.

The holiday weekends in the United States are MLK Day, Presidents' Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veteran's Day.

This past weekend was Memorial Day for those in the United States.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#576

Post by NonEUCitizen »

rebotfc wrote: post #46
xiphias2 wrote: post #15

I already changed all my data on my profile (including email), so I won’t be getting the apology email. It’s not just failure of ,,effects’’. I’m an EU citizen and it was a clear intent of GDPR violation.

Wow, they had European users? They are fucked. This is about a serious and willful GDPR contravention as you can get. I hope they have good lawyers because they are gonna be hauled over the coals by multiple countries' data commissioners. Wow just wow.

Presumably they have a lot of California users? Likely goes against CCPA as well.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#577

Post by sah2ed »

ammon wrote: post #180
momokoko wrote: post #127

I’d be very curious how many account deletion requests happened. This is interesting in that it’s the new GDPR / CPPA era where users were legally protected to request the complete deletion of their data. Something that Triplebyte would have had no obligation to do in the past. Are we seeing a change in that violating user privacy can have a meaningful negative impact on a company? Interesting developments

We've seen about 2k account deletions since Friday.

~2k account deletions in just 3 days is a lot. Would be nice to get a ballpark on the total number of accounts?

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#578

Post by extriplebyte123 »

Just went through Triplebyte right as Ammon laid off my talent manager (strangely right before most COVID layoffs) and a lot of their staff. I wrote Ammon and he wrote back saying "layoffs are hard! blah blah blah." I previously had written Ammon about a Triplebyte-facilitated on-site where the company refused to offer me an accommodation due to an arm injury I had and one of the interviewers told me they move so fast that they couldn't hire somebody with such an injury (WTF? it's going to heal!). Ammon replied "hiring is hard!! blah blah blah" and now that company is a favorite of theirs-- the company even has their own channel on Triplebyte's slack community.

I then deleted my Triplebyte account, but they continue to spam me and try to get me to engage on their blogging spinoffs. I would never again trust Ammon with my personal information.

Triplebyte has built a pretty remarkable, data-driven evaluation system; the Talent Managers were also really helpful to me. But Ammon is really really over his head when it comes to managing people and balancing ethics with financial headwinds. The product deserves a much better leader.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#579

Post by synaesthesisx »

It seems to me that this is some sort of last-ditch effort. The fact that this was even considered in the first place shows a massive misalignment between Triplebyte and the type of users it is intended for. Engineering types are less likely to use LinkedIn/Social Media in general, and having a total disregard for privacy is something that generally does not fly well for us.

I’m glad the decision was reevaluated, however there needs to be more work done to re-gain the trust of the community.

Re: Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

#580

Post by antonvs »

ammon wrote: post #543
ravenstine wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're undoubtedly going to have to do more to make things right in the future for those who have been following this issue, but it's at least refreshing to read what seems like a genuine apology. If we can take away anything from this, it's that Triplebyte actually understand why people were upset over this. I've read lots of apology emails where those in charge clearly either didn't understand the problem or they…

We want to do something more concrete to guarantee user privacy going forward. A technical solution would be best. But short of that just a really strong, transparent commitment (that makes it easy to hold our feet to the fire if we screw it up again). But I could not get this together before the email today. I'm expecting to announce something in the next few weeks. I agree with people here when they say that action…

> A technical solution would be best.

This is another error in your thinking.

You can't solve failures in human understanding with technical solutions.

Your first instinct is going to be too try to cite counterexamples - but that only proves the point.

You're in a business that deals with people. You can't eliminate that with technology, and the fact that you think you can try is what makes you dangerous.

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