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I have to wonder how many anti-Lyons comments in this thread are HubSpot employees in stealth mode. Doesn't HubSpot do 'Sentiment Analysis' and that sort of stu

I have to wonder how many anti-Lyons comments in this thread are HubSpot employees in stealth mode. Doesn't HubSpot do 'Sentiment Analysis' and that sort of stuff?

dlandis 11y ago
I wonder the same thing. Last time there was a post about him here a couple weeks ago there were current and former HubSpot employees all over it. Apart from that, it is a shady company for sure though. It was less than a year ago that top executives were implicated by the fbi in trying to hack and extort Lyons during the lead up to the book. I think only one or two of the implicated executives ended up leaving the company as a result. Was their departures enough to fix the culture there?
skewart 11y ago
There may well be plenty. There are probably also a lot of people, like myself, with no connection to HubSpot who dislike Lyons's latest writing. Having read a few of the promotional articles for the book, I'm certainly not a fan. He seems like he went looking for the worst and is generalizing as broadly as possible to create a sensation. A publicly traded email marketing company founded by a couple of MBAs in Boston 10 years ago doesn't really represent all of Silicon Valley startup culture. Lyons does touch on some genuine problems. But he doesn't seem to approach ageism or problematic work cultures with much thoughtfulness, and he isn't contributing much to the conversation. At the same time, HubSpot doesn't seem like a great place to work. In fact it seems like they have (or have recently had) some serious issues they need to sort out.
Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
You really don't have to look far to find people who don't rate Dan Lyons. Daring Fireball is one pretty obvious example.
dang 11y ago
It's against HN's rules to accuse other users of astroturfing or shilling without evidence. If you're worried about it, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look at the data and investigate (which we always do). But it's not ok to turn threads in that direction based on nothing more than opposing views. Few things are more destructive of civil discourse, and it's nearly always the case that opposing views are honestly held.

I have to wonder how many anti-Lyons comments in this thread are HubSpot employees in stealth mode. Doesn't HubSpot do 'Sentiment Analysis' and that sort of stuff?

dlandis 11y ago

I wonder the same thing. Last time there was a post about him here a couple weeks ago there were current and former HubSpot employees all over it. Apart from that, it is a shady company for sure though. It was less than a year ago that top executives were implicated by the fbi in trying to hack and extort Lyons during the lead up to the book. I think only one or two of the implicated executives ended up leaving the company as a result. Was their departures enough to fix the culture there?

skewart 11y ago

There may well be plenty. There are probably also a lot of people, like myself, with no connection to HubSpot who dislike Lyons's latest writing. Having read a few of the promotional articles for the book, I'm certainly not a fan. He seems like he went looking for the worst and is generalizing as broadly as possible to create a sensation. A publicly traded email marketing company founded by a couple of MBAs in Boston 10 years ago doesn't really represent all of Silicon Valley startup culture. Lyons does touch on some genuine problems. But he doesn't seem to approach ageism or problematic work cultures with much thoughtfulness, and he isn't contributing much to the conversation. At the same time, HubSpot doesn't seem like a great place to work. In fact it seems like they have (or have recently had) some serious issues they need to sort out.

Doctor_Fegg 11y ago

You really don't have to look far to find people who don't rate Dan Lyons. Daring Fireball is one pretty obvious example.

dang 11y ago

It's against HN's rules to accuse other users of astroturfing or shilling without evidence. If you're worried about it, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com so we can look at the data and investigate (which we always do). But it's not ok to turn threads in that direction based on nothing more than opposing views. Few things are more destructive of civil discourse, and it's nearly always the case that opposing views are honestly held.