I agree that unsustainable and user-hostile growth is a problem caused by overzealous VC investments. However, I don't see the direct connection between adding

I agree that unsustainable and user-hostile growth is a problem caused by overzealous VC investments. However, I don't see the direct connection between adding telemetry to drive product decisions (e.g. improving conversion flows, prioritizing features/bugs) and pressure from investors. I think it was just bad communication and hubris on GitLab's part. It's easy to avoid tracking users when you've got a 20-feature SaaS with a few thousand users. Trying to manage a product with millions of users, thousands of features and open bugs/feature requests is another ballgame and I think telemetry is fine as long as it's first-party (or opt-in), anonymized and explained properly (see Mozilla).