5 ms·

I think it goes without saying that there is nothing remotely legitimate happening here. The fact that Aaron posted this comment and expected anybody to believe

by crabasa 11y ago

I think it goes without saying that there is nothing remotely legitimate happening here. The fact that Aaron posted this comment and expected anybody to believe it is remarkable. That being said, I spent 5 minutes researching Aaron Cheung and I was astonished by what I found. He has a Twitter account, but has posted exactly 0 times [1]. He has an HN account, but has posted exactly 0 times [2], and only commented twice (including today). He graduated from MIT in 2009 and this has seemingly been the only real job he's had for the past 5 years [3]. I think, from this perspective, I understand why Aaron is doing what he's doing. It doesn't make it right, not even close, but this person has lived and breathed the home cleaning space for his entire professional career. He may not have the slightest idea what else he could possibly do instead. [1]: https://twitter.com/aarontcheung [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=aarontcheung [3]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarontcheung Edit: I'm certainly not claiming that people who are inactive on social media are bad people. But given the complete picture of what has been reported in the media, what was revealed today and the tone-deafness of his comment, I personally think this lack of engagement is part of the explanation.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
CatDevURandom 11y ago
> He graduated from MIT in 2009 ... he may not have the slightest idea what else he could possibly do instead. There's endless ways we could speculate about why he's doing what he's doing, but is being six years out of school one of them? He spent "his entire professional career" (5 years!!!) in home cleaning. And before that it looks like he spent four years at MIT majoring in chemical engineering.
icey 11y ago
Something that smells bad to me: Homejoy was facing multiple lawsuits at the time they shut down (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/17/cleaning-startup-homejoy-shuts-down-citing-worker-misclassification-lawsuits/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/17/cleaning-st...). Is this some kind of end-run around that?
- taneq 11y ago
  That was my first thought. Company facing impending doom? Do a runner with the assets, wait for the dust to settle, and try again with a different name and logo.
  - slantedview 11y ago
    And someone else's website design.
colinbartlett 11y ago
I don't think it's fair to judge people based on a lack of social media presence. Plenty of successful, competent, qualified people don't tweet.
- 91bananas 11y ago
  Just, thank you.
- oneJob 11y ago
  Hear, hear!
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  And some people who do use social media disappear for legitimate reasons.
code_sterling 11y ago
I don't have an active social media presence attached to my real name because I like my privacy. To imply that makes me lacking, is simply ignorant.
mjmsmith 11y ago
Can you explain what exactly "astonished" you about the results of your 5 minute research project?
- crabasa 11y ago
  Sure. He created a Twitter account in 2009 and hasn't tweeted once in 6 years. He was the founder of a YC company and never posted a single submission to Hacker News. He was the founder of of a company that raised $38M+ in venture capital and never once used these two massive audiences to let the world know about his product or his team. That is, to me, astonishing.
  - someear 11y ago
    But that's something the CEO did instead. In many ways, Adora represented the Homejoy brand, and if people saw other founders they wouldn't get as much attention. It made sense for them to have one person be the voice. Not everyone that's a founder has to be in front of people (literally or virtually).
marincounty 11y ago
No offence, but don't become a detective, and decline any jury service. A lot of people use pseudonyms. There's a multitude of good reasons why this poster didn't want to use his real name. In all honestly, if I was hiring, or deciding to do business with an individual, if they used their real name, and had a plethora of comments on Twitter; I don't think I would hire, nor trust that individual with information. (To the HN community. Does HN offer a way to delete comments? I just assumed they did? Maybe they don't? I do know I can delete briefly after I make a comment, but that privilege dies pretty quick. Why?)
jfoster 11y ago
I don't think his comment was "tone deaf" as much as it was trying to change the tone of the conversation. It looks to me as though Homejoy & Fly Maids have done a terrible job of communicating this, but it seems legitimate to me. When companies get acquired, customers have always come along for the ride. In fact, that's often the main thing that companies get acquired for. Facebook could've built a Whatsapp clone, but the billions of dollars of value was the user base. In this case, it's a bit less usual since just the customer data has been acquired.
dang 11y ago
What does it matter whether he twittered or hacker newsered? What a weird thing to bring up. More importantly, this is gratuitously personal. Stalking expeditions are not welcome on Hacker News, whatever one's opinion of the story at hand. Please don't do this on this site. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467925 and marked it off-topic.
- JonFish85 11y ago
  >More importantly, this is gratuitously personal. Stalking expeditions are not welcome on Hacker News, whatever one's opinion of the story at hand. Please don't do this on this site. I agree with your point that they are weird things to bring up, but how is that "stalking"? It's looking at 3 very public profile pages, which requires almost no effort to look at. Unless you've edited the post to remove information, that seems entirely benign. There's absolutely 0 expectation of privacy with those pages, and almost by definition were created to allow access for the general public to that information.
  - dang 11y ago
    I meant it metaphorically, but yes I'm sure there are better ways of putting it. Sure, it's public data, but so are lots of things. When you search them out and compile them, you create something different than the scattered pieces. To do that and use it to attack somebody, or insinuate about them personally, crosses a line we shouldn't cross here. I suspect crabasa meant no harm, was just being curious and participating in the discussion, but in these cases the group dynamic tends quickly to get a lot uglier than the sum of our individual motives.

by crabasa 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

CatDevURandom 11y ago

> He graduated from MIT in 2009 ... he may not have the slightest idea what else he could possibly do instead. There's endless ways we could speculate about why he's doing what he's doing, but is being six years out of school one of them? He spent "his entire professional career" (5 years!!!) in home cleaning. And before that it looks like he spent four years at MIT majoring in chemical engineering.

icey 11y ago

Something that smells bad to me: Homejoy was facing multiple lawsuits at the time they shut down (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/17/cleaning-startup-homejoy-shuts-down-citing-worker-misclassification-lawsuits/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/17/cleaning-st...). Is this some kind of end-run around that?

taneq 11y ago
That was my first thought. Company facing impending doom? Do a runner with the assets, wait for the dust to settle, and try again with a different name and logo.
- slantedview 11y ago
  And someone else's website design.

colinbartlett 11y ago

I don't think it's fair to judge people based on a lack of social media presence. Plenty of successful, competent, qualified people don't tweet.

91bananas 11y ago
Just, thank you.
oneJob 11y ago
Hear, hear!
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
And some people who do use social media disappear for legitimate reasons.

code_sterling 11y ago

I don't have an active social media presence attached to my real name because I like my privacy. To imply that makes me lacking, is simply ignorant.

mjmsmith 11y ago

Can you explain what exactly "astonished" you about the results of your 5 minute research project?

crabasa 11y ago
Sure. He created a Twitter account in 2009 and hasn't tweeted once in 6 years. He was the founder of a YC company and never posted a single submission to Hacker News. He was the founder of of a company that raised $38M+ in venture capital and never once used these two massive audiences to let the world know about his product or his team. That is, to me, astonishing.
- someear 11y ago
  But that's something the CEO did instead. In many ways, Adora represented the Homejoy brand, and if people saw other founders they wouldn't get as much attention. It made sense for them to have one person be the voice. Not everyone that's a founder has to be in front of people (literally or virtually).

marincounty 11y ago

No offence, but don't become a detective, and decline any jury service. A lot of people use pseudonyms. There's a multitude of good reasons why this poster didn't want to use his real name. In all honestly, if I was hiring, or deciding to do business with an individual, if they used their real name, and had a plethora of comments on Twitter; I don't think I would hire, nor trust that individual with information. (To the HN community. Does HN offer a way to delete comments? I just assumed they did? Maybe they don't? I do know I can delete briefly after I make a comment, but that privilege dies pretty quick. Why?)

jfoster 11y ago

I don't think his comment was "tone deaf" as much as it was trying to change the tone of the conversation. It looks to me as though Homejoy & Fly Maids have done a terrible job of communicating this, but it seems legitimate to me. When companies get acquired, customers have always come along for the ride. In fact, that's often the main thing that companies get acquired for. Facebook could've built a Whatsapp clone, but the billions of dollars of value was the user base. In this case, it's a bit less usual since just the customer data has been acquired.

dang 11y ago

What does it matter whether he twittered or hacker newsered? What a weird thing to bring up. More importantly, this is gratuitously personal. Stalking expeditions are not welcome on Hacker News, whatever one's opinion of the story at hand. Please don't do this on this site. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467925 and marked it off-topic.

JonFish85 11y ago
>More importantly, this is gratuitously personal. Stalking expeditions are not welcome on Hacker News, whatever one's opinion of the story at hand. Please don't do this on this site. I agree with your point that they are weird things to bring up, but how is that "stalking"? It's looking at 3 very public profile pages, which requires almost no effort to look at. Unless you've edited the post to remove information, that seems entirely benign. There's absolutely 0 expectation of privacy with those pages, and almost by definition were created to allow access for the general public to that information.
- dang 11y ago
  I meant it metaphorically, but yes I'm sure there are better ways of putting it. Sure, it's public data, but so are lots of things. When you search them out and compile them, you create something different than the scattered pieces. To do that and use it to attack somebody, or insinuate about them personally, crosses a line we shouldn't cross here. I suspect crabasa meant no harm, was just being curious and participating in the discussion, but in these cases the group dynamic tends quickly to get a lot uglier than the sum of our individual motives.