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This article misses the main reason people omit information: to avoid embarrassing others. I always talk about how Xobni Analytics failed, for example. Recent

This article misses the main reason people omit information: to avoid embarrassing others. I always talk about how Xobni Analytics failed, for example. Recently I've been talking a lot to others about my own weaknesses. But by necessity most of the stories about Xobni involve other people, and the stories often involve internal conflict among some of the people on the team, and to tell those stories properly would require being honest about others' weaknesses as well. There's not a culture of doing that in public settings, and I don't expect that to change. EDIT: the two exceptions that prove the rule are High Stakes No Prisoners by Charles Furgeson, and some of Steve Blank's recent blog posts, even though Steve doesn't name names. AFAIK, both of these guys are basically retired from the valley.

iamwil 16y ago
Good point. Is there no way around it? Because given that the #1 reason startups fail (according to pg) is founder fights, and that in organizations, it's usually people to people problems, those might be lessons well learnt. However, given the old adage of "praise others in public, and only criticize them in private" (it assumes you're talking to the person you're criticizing in private), I've often avoided saying anything, not to mention it'd sound like I was bashing the other person, when in fact, not all puzzle pieces fit each other, with no completely fault to each piece. The only ways I've seen is to talk about it after some time, and to not name names. But with time, accuracy comes into question, and if it's too recent, it's too easy to infer and deduce the names.