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I'm not entirely sure either side is lying. It's pretty tough to go around a CEO to the board or investors with concerns like that. I don't think it's necess

I'm not entirely sure either side is lying. It's pretty tough to go around a CEO to the board or investors with concerns like that. I don't think it's necessarily fair for Suster to say "Hey I talked to this engineer and he never voiced these concerns while I worked with him" based on that reason. Mark is an operator and knows that most people do respect the CEO chain of command unless the behavior is unethical or the situation extreme. On the other hand, what's the bloody point of the engineer coming out in a secret blog to raise concerns on the tech. If the team can't develop a solution, the company will not be able to raise money and fail. If enough people read the blog and get concerned reading the blog- the company fails because of litigation around fraud etc and everyone loses their jobs and the company for sure fails to find a solution. Either way, if all of our goals is to see innovation, it's not a very constructive approach.

paulsutter 10y ago
calcsan never suggested anyone is lying. He said in each circumstance a different party is much more likely to be right.
ryguytilidie 10y ago
At this point I honestly have no idea what people at startups are supposed to do if they suspect wrongdoing/foul play by executives. Tell your boss, who tells the CEO, who fires you. Tell an investor, who wants to protect their investment, and they fire you. Tell the CEO and they fire you. Tell the HR manager and, again, their job is to protect the CEO and the exec team so they fire you. I'm genuinely wondering what the expectation was here. I imagine if this person had expressed these concerns to Suster he would have been shushed/fired, so thats why he didn't...
- pjc50 10y ago
  CYA is pretty much the only rule. Whistleblowing always works out badly for the whistleblower. It's strange but true that it's far easier to get hired from a failed startup than as a whistleblower, so the only thing to do is keep your head down and look for a new job. Let them fly the investors' money into the ground as long as your name isn't on anything illegal. Fortunately SV startups are rarely capable of getting people killed with a bad product. I'd like to hope that someone would whistleblow the safety issues on home thorium reactors before the Bay Area is rendered uninhabitable, but I know it would be career suicide for the person that did.
- holi 10y ago
  Yup basically game over. Time to walk away. Easier said than done.

paulsutter 10y ago

calcsan never suggested anyone is lying. He said in each circumstance a different party is much more likely to be right.

ryguytilidie 10y ago

At this point I honestly have no idea what people at startups are supposed to do if they suspect wrongdoing/foul play by executives. Tell your boss, who tells the CEO, who fires you. Tell an investor, who wants to protect their investment, and they fire you. Tell the CEO and they fire you. Tell the HR manager and, again, their job is to protect the CEO and the exec team so they fire you. I'm genuinely wondering what the expectation was here. I imagine if this person had expressed these concerns to Suster he would have been shushed/fired, so thats why he didn't...

pjc50 10y ago
CYA is pretty much the only rule. Whistleblowing always works out badly for the whistleblower. It's strange but true that it's far easier to get hired from a failed startup than as a whistleblower, so the only thing to do is keep your head down and look for a new job. Let them fly the investors' money into the ground as long as your name isn't on anything illegal. Fortunately SV startups are rarely capable of getting people killed with a bad product. I'd like to hope that someone would whistleblow the safety issues on home thorium reactors before the Bay Area is rendered uninhabitable, but I know it would be career suicide for the person that did.
holi 10y ago
Yup basically game over. Time to walk away. Easier said than done.