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TL;DR According to the complaint from Anthony Pompliano: When they were trying to hire him Snapchat said they would hire 40 people under Pompliano for his gr

by bruceb 10y ago

TL;DR According to the complaint from Anthony Pompliano: When they were trying to hire him Snapchat said they would hire 40 people under Pompliano for his growth team. Based on this promise he left FB to join Snapchat. He then found the numbers they were touting were not accurate and they were not committed to what they told him. When the complaint gets to what happened starting the day Pompliano was hired and more specifically what happened when working there, it is blacked out for the next 8 pages. After those pages it says he was fired after 3 weeks and Snapchat told employees, media contacts, and a company looking to hire Pompliano he was fired for being incompetent. This misrepresentation has cost him his reputation, money, etc.

bhouston 10y ago
It is common knowledge that you risk getting sued if you give negative references to ex-employees: Source: https://www.totaljobs.com/careers-advice/money-and-legal/references-faq https://www.totaljobs.com/careers-advice/money-and-legal/ref...
- rlanday 10y ago
  The guy was probably also super pissed that he was fired after only three weeks, after going through all the trouble of moving to LA.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    I could certainly see that as being an issue. Can't go back, can't go forward, now sort of stuck.
- tehlike 10y ago
  it is probably a bit hard to prove competency/incompetency in just 3 weeks.
  - probablybroken 10y ago
    It can be in extreme cases, and in these situations it's better for both parties to resolve things quickly.
  - Shivetya 10y ago
    proving competency is more difficult in short order unless you end up an emergency situation and respond well, incompetency can be demonstrated in a day but at that level should be weeded up through a good interview process. still I have seen developers gone in a weeks time, some voluntarily
- nthcolumn 10y ago
  So the lovely people that hired him and went through that rigorous selection process are they being canned too? They too must be incompetent. Given a big part of Snapchat is trust - and they are clearly not trustworthy - it might be time to divest.
abraca 10y ago
I don't think that's an accurate summary of the complaint.
- poikniok 10y ago
  Seems pretty accurate to me, do you mind stating what exactly you think is inaccurate about the summary?
  - abraca 10y ago
    The summary misses the focus on false metrics that is the core of the complaint, and emphasizes the "hiring 40 people for growth team" part. It sounds like the summary is saying "he thought Snapchat would hire a team around him and they didn't" vs "he pointed out Snapchat's metrics were inaccurate and then they fired him." I would summarize the complaint as: Snapchat hired this guy from Facebook. He claims Snapchat falsely represented their growth during the process (two metrics which are redacted turned out to be false.) After he joined, he alerted the VP of finance that some of Snapchat's representations were false, who apparently agreed with some of it and told their VP of Comms to stop representing that to advertisers and some redacted group. He thinks that Snapchat fired him because of this, that they thought he would "blow the whistle" on upcoming IPO. Further, Snapchat continually pressured him to breach his confidentiality agreements with Facebook. After he was fired, Snapchat told people internally and externally that he was incompetent. In the details, a lot is redacted but it mentions there were specific metrics given to him in the hiring process - that were also given while raising capital in Asia - that were false.
    - xiphias 10y ago
      Wow, this means that Snapchat's valuation went down a lot just because of this one case.
      - dsacco 10y ago
        Well, no, this is still all alleged. It will have to stick. Even if it is all true as presented here, it may not have a significant impact. For reference, take a look at how Facebook publicly admitting it was misrepresenting certain advertising metrics has impacted the long term outlook of the company's stock (it hasn't). Also take a look at how long Theranos maintained its valuation despite widespread, grievous fraud.
jondubois 10y ago
Snapchat did something strange here. You cannot possibly know if a technical employee (at this level) is incompetent after just 3 weeks. Not possible. It's the same as firing a CEO 3 weeks into the job... It doesn't make any sense unless that CEO did something blatantly illegal/dodgy during those 3 weeks. The reality is you won't know how good they are until at least 6 months in. As an engineer, 3 months is the absolute minimum amount of time I need to figure out if I'm a good match for a company.
- mootothemax 10y ago
  > You cannot possibly know if a technical employee (at this level) is incompetent after just 3 weeks. Not possible. You may be assuming a baseline competence, though. I've interviewed many alleged senior developers who talk a good talk, can tell you the full ASP.Net page lifecycle without missing a beat - despite (possibly sometimes in spite of) not being asked - and when it comes to actually coding show their utter incompetence in seconds flat. I'm not being elitist here; they'll do stuff that's just plain weird, like only using strings in C# - no other datatypes, only strings - or if they claim database expertise, create tables with only text columns, no indexes, and storing an integer primary key also as a text field. At any ability level above this, I'm kinda with you; just take into account there is a very real world of sheer utter incompetence out there, and I doubt it's limited to technical employees.
  - GordonS 10y ago
    I have to agree - it is possible to know if someone really just doesn't have a clue. Case in point, this morning I interviewed a 'senior' C# .NET developer with over 10 years' experience - and yet she didn't even know the syntax for using lambda expressions, was barely able to get started with linq, and was unable to tackle a basic string splitting problem. Oh, and she couldn't do fizz-buzz.
    - milesdyson_phd 10y ago
      How does that even happen? Those are things you use all the time in C#.. Maybe it's just working at a mediocre job(s) that never really stress skill?
noobermin 10y ago
As usual, I'm appreciative of TL;DR, but the article was rather short and digestible.

by bruceb 10y ago

bhouston 10y ago

It is common knowledge that you risk getting sued if you give negative references to ex-employees: Source: https://www.totaljobs.com/careers-advice/money-and-legal/references-faq https://www.totaljobs.com/careers-advice/money-and-legal/ref...

rlanday 10y ago
The guy was probably also super pissed that he was fired after only three weeks, after going through all the trouble of moving to LA.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I could certainly see that as being an issue. Can't go back, can't go forward, now sort of stuck.
tehlike 10y ago
it is probably a bit hard to prove competency/incompetency in just 3 weeks.
- probablybroken 10y ago
  It can be in extreme cases, and in these situations it's better for both parties to resolve things quickly.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  proving competency is more difficult in short order unless you end up an emergency situation and respond well, incompetency can be demonstrated in a day but at that level should be weeded up through a good interview process. still I have seen developers gone in a weeks time, some voluntarily
nthcolumn 10y ago
So the lovely people that hired him and went through that rigorous selection process are they being canned too? They too must be incompetent. Given a big part of Snapchat is trust - and they are clearly not trustworthy - it might be time to divest.

abraca 10y ago

I don't think that's an accurate summary of the complaint.

poikniok 10y ago
Seems pretty accurate to me, do you mind stating what exactly you think is inaccurate about the summary?
- abraca 10y ago
  The summary misses the focus on false metrics that is the core of the complaint, and emphasizes the "hiring 40 people for growth team" part. It sounds like the summary is saying "he thought Snapchat would hire a team around him and they didn't" vs "he pointed out Snapchat's metrics were inaccurate and then they fired him." I would summarize the complaint as: Snapchat hired this guy from Facebook. He claims Snapchat falsely represented their growth during the process (two metrics which are redacted turned out to be false.) After he joined, he alerted the VP of finance that some of Snapchat's representations were false, who apparently agreed with some of it and told their VP of Comms to stop representing that to advertisers and some redacted group. He thinks that Snapchat fired him because of this, that they thought he would "blow the whistle" on upcoming IPO. Further, Snapchat continually pressured him to breach his confidentiality agreements with Facebook. After he was fired, Snapchat told people internally and externally that he was incompetent. In the details, a lot is redacted but it mentions there were specific metrics given to him in the hiring process - that were also given while raising capital in Asia - that were false.
  - xiphias 10y ago
    Wow, this means that Snapchat's valuation went down a lot just because of this one case.
    - dsacco 10y ago
      Well, no, this is still all alleged. It will have to stick. Even if it is all true as presented here, it may not have a significant impact. For reference, take a look at how Facebook publicly admitting it was misrepresenting certain advertising metrics has impacted the long term outlook of the company's stock (it hasn't). Also take a look at how long Theranos maintained its valuation despite widespread, grievous fraud.

jondubois 10y ago

Snapchat did something strange here. You cannot possibly know if a technical employee (at this level) is incompetent after just 3 weeks. Not possible. It's the same as firing a CEO 3 weeks into the job... It doesn't make any sense unless that CEO did something blatantly illegal/dodgy during those 3 weeks. The reality is you won't know how good they are until at least 6 months in. As an engineer, 3 months is the absolute minimum amount of time I need to figure out if I'm a good match for a company.

mootothemax 10y ago
> You cannot possibly know if a technical employee (at this level) is incompetent after just 3 weeks. Not possible. You may be assuming a baseline competence, though. I've interviewed many alleged senior developers who talk a good talk, can tell you the full ASP.Net page lifecycle without missing a beat - despite (possibly sometimes in spite of) not being asked - and when it comes to actually coding show their utter incompetence in seconds flat. I'm not being elitist here; they'll do stuff that's just plain weird, like only using strings in C# - no other datatypes, only strings - or if they claim database expertise, create tables with only text columns, no indexes, and storing an integer primary key also as a text field. At any ability level above this, I'm kinda with you; just take into account there is a very real world of sheer utter incompetence out there, and I doubt it's limited to technical employees.
- GordonS 10y ago
  I have to agree - it is possible to know if someone really just doesn't have a clue. Case in point, this morning I interviewed a 'senior' C# .NET developer with over 10 years' experience - and yet she didn't even know the syntax for using lambda expressions, was barely able to get started with linq, and was unable to tackle a basic string splitting problem. Oh, and she couldn't do fizz-buzz.
  - milesdyson_phd 10y ago
    How does that even happen? Those are things you use all the time in C#.. Maybe it's just working at a mediocre job(s) that never really stress skill?

noobermin 10y ago

As usual, I'm appreciative of TL;DR, but the article was rather short and digestible.