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Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

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81–90 of 93 posts

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must be 50 ways to leave your lover. If you've made up your mind, you can just tell them off and walk out. You can take your sweet time and interview while you still have a paycheck and benefits. You can wait until the cliff and leave the next day. You can give two weeks notice. It's your choice just as it's their choice.

Last company I left I did working till the last minute, on my own unpaid time. I've been treated so well and we shared such a strong spirit of unity in the good and bad times that I can't regret it. No body was ever bullied. Main difference with other tech companies I worked for before: CEO is a woman.

Actually flies in the face of my own anecdotal experience.

CEO is a woman.

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#82

I went through a long drawn out sales engagement with them. It seemed like a cool product at its core (basically a sort of meshed set of interconnected nodes that you could do live "natural language" queries against predefined collected data (i.e. "what machines are running ntpd?") but the stuff they were trying to sell on top of it at the time like patch management ranged from half finished to promises for future re…

I wish we worked at the same company. You're spot on with your comments.

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#83
post #80

While stealing the employee stock options is beyond pale, the real issue is what the working environment must be like there. I was in a similar situation many years ago with a completely corrupt management team. My boss and I got off on the wrong foot when he asked me to lie about another employee he wanted to fire and I refused (which led to him then trying to find people to dish dirt on me so he could fire me). The…

Now, I read these accounts and I wonder, if this is how businesses are run, even a small fraction of them, how are they in business at all? Like, it seems 'business' is really forgiving in terms of staying alive, like turning a profit must be really easy if these morons can do it and stay afloat for any length of time. But you go on /r/entrepreneur or some threads on HN and it is made out to be just a real drag and r…

You've built some sort of just-world hypothesis in your head, where kindness and 'goodness-as-a-person' relates to business success.

In recorded human history, exploitative actors have often been successful in business. I know you've heard about slavery before.

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#84
> One of the most unnerving aspects of life at Tanium is what’s known internally as Orion’s List. The CEO allegedly kept a close eye on which employees would soon be eligible to take sizable chunks of stock. For those he could stand to do without, Hindawi ordered the workers to be fired... which would help Hindawi defend his ownership by limiting the number of stakeholders...

The suggests one of two things: Either Tanium has a really strange vesting schedule or Bloomberg blew the reporting here.

The typical vesting schedule is distributed over four years with a one year cliff. That means, with typical vesting, only It thus is highly unlikely that firing right before the cliff would retain "sizable chunks of stock" big enough to materially affect the CEO's ownership. It's entirely possible that a List exists, but the stated motivation doesn't add up. Bloomberg should really follow up here with details on the vesting schedule.

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#85
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to say, and I mostly agree, but it can be tough. I've seen a few of these cases of bully management and what you notice is that the team under the manager (and the teams around the manager) all already realize and communicate (sometimes just glances, sometimes quite openly) that the manager is a problem. So making a dramatic exit to make a point sometimes only makes an obvious point. There are other factors too.…

Walking out instantly is a romantic idea for people who either have fat bank accounts to fall back on or little-to-no responsibility outside of work to worry about. For the rest of us something like that is indeed a reason to immediately seek other employment, but just because you don't walk out instantly doesn't mean you are supporting that behavior.

You mean people like extremely well-paid developers with in-demand skills who get contacted by recruiters multiple times a week?

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#86
post #11

There are bad reasons to quit a company and good ones, but there are few better ways to make an exit than on the spot when the CEO of your company personally and publicly berates a low-level employee in front of the team.

This is precisely why I quit my job two jobs ago. The CEO yelled at one of my coworkers (for something petty) and made her cry in front of the entire company. I had a job interview scheduled for the next Monday before the end of the day. It took another 10 or so days before I actually quit, but they did not get a two weeks notice.

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#87
post #80

While stealing the employee stock options is beyond pale, the real issue is what the working environment must be like there. I was in a similar situation many years ago with a completely corrupt management team. My boss and I got off on the wrong foot when he asked me to lie about another employee he wanted to fire and I refused (which led to him then trying to find people to dish dirt on me so he could fire me). The…

Now, I read these accounts and I wonder, if this is how businesses are run, even a small fraction of them, how are they in business at all? Like, it seems 'business' is really forgiving in terms of staying alive, like turning a profit must be really easy if these morons can do it and stay afloat for any length of time. But you go on /r/entrepreneur or some threads on HN and it is made out to be just a real drag and r…

I think you might be looking at it from the wrong angle. Some of the most morally bankrupt people I've ever met are crazy intelligent. You seem to equate being a sociopath with being a moron and that is more often than not a poor assumption.

The other aspect that I think you're overlooking is that people who are wired like this are often incredibly driven people. Sure, someone on /r/entrepreneur might be willing to give up everything to pursue their dream but a sociopath is willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want.

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#88
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is board majority, not common shares majority. Because board can change the rules.

The board does not change the shareholder agreement nor does the board change anything else to do with the shares. What the board can do - and will do - is fire the CEO if they are of the opinion the CEO is not functioning well, but if the CEO is also a shareholder and has majority control of the stock (or the confidence of the majority of the shareholders) he/she can call a shareholder meeting, get rid of the board…

The board can change the bylaws, issue new shares to get a majority of each class, wash out founders with a forward and reverse split. Preferred shares have all kinds of rights not given to founders. 50.1% of shares outstanding means nothing by itself.

Re: Tanium is facing employee unrest and an executive exodus

#89

Where is the evidence? Where are the quotes by previous employees making this claim? These employees were fired because they were failing to do their job. If you are running a company will sit aside and do nothing and continue to let anyone stay in the company that proved to miss their target repetitively? These claims are 100% false. This story is not only poorly written but it is full of false information crafted o…

If you've got contradictory information you're willing to share, it would be interesting to hear about it.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/working-tanium-stacey-ruesch-...
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