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Did Patrick message you to ask you to post this? The point is not that they have direct control over YC or HN, it's that they have massive indirect control ove

by jsc1986 5y ago

Did Patrick message you to ask you to post this? The point is not that they have direct control over YC or HN, it's that they have massive indirect control over the organization and have done a wizard's job of making themselves untouchable in the media. Some context: I'm a former (early) YC founder, and during my batch the YC team recommended that we spend time with the HN team. The HN team gave us edits on our posts, recommended the best times of day to submit, emailed us when stories about our companies hit the front page, and explained how the ranking algorithms worked (and thus we learned how to game them). And we are not the most valuable YC company ever -- so it's possible more was done for Stripe. It's not direct influence, but rather indirect impact. So again I ask -- Did Patrick request that you write this post?

omarish 5y ago
> And we are not the most valuable YC company ever -- so it's possible more was done for Stripe. Ah yes, surely the reason you didn't create the most valuable YC company ever is because more was done for Stripe.
barmstrong 5y ago
No he did not. We didn’t even discuss it.
- choppaface 5y ago
  I don’t think the question was whether you two actually talked but rather if there is any conflict of interest or other incentives that fueled the defense. You’ve had a particularly divisive approach towards people (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-employees-leave-coinbase-over-ceos-pledge-to-be-apolitical/?sh=612aed55a065 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-emp... ) and so it’s reasonable to assume any of your public statements might not be completely accurate or forthcoming or easy to take at face value. That of course might not be intentional though!
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    It looks like the question actually was whether they talked. It was asked two ways in the same comment: - “Did Patrick request that you write this post?” - “Did Patrick message you to ask you to post this?”
  - 22c 5y ago
    > Did Patrick message you to ask you to post this? Is a pretty direct question and barmstrong gave a direct answer. It's possible that temp7536 and barmstrong simply had different experiences with Patrick. It seems to me that barmstrong wanted to share their experience.
    - choppaface 5y ago
      barmstrong is the coinbase ceo. he’s not “sharing an experience,” he’s doing PR.
  - donkeyd 5y ago
    > You’ve had a particularly divisive approach towards people (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-emp https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-emp... ) Unless you have more information than I do, I really don't understand how that is an example of divisiveness. Picking sides is a great way of being divisive. If they picked a side, people would've also left the company because they disagreed with the side that was picked. Which would mean that the company culture will become that side. People who think differently will be discouraged to join the company because they don't want to work for a company with stand points they disagree with. A company like that will possibly end up blind to whatever the 'other side' thinks. That's how you end up with Juicero. I don't think every organization should be apolitical by default. But there really is a point to being apolitical as an organization, especially in the Crypto market, since there are so many different reasons for people supporting Crypto, any political stand point might cause you to lose customers.
dang 5y ago
That sounds weird to me. There was no "HN team" before I started working on HN in October 2012 - just pg, and no one would have referred to him as "the HN team". The HN team originates in April 2014, when I became public as a mod. (That's not early in YC btw.) In that case you're talking about me (and possibly Scott), and while I guess it's dangerous to make strong claims about some meeting I don't remember, there's no way we would have "explained how the ranking algorithms worked" in such a way that you could game HN. That's precisely what we would not have done. I've worked way too hard on that shit to blab about it and see all that sand run through my fingers. I also doubt that we'd have told you "the best times of day to submit"—people ask us that all the time and the stock answer is we have no idea, there are all sorts of dodgy analyses out there, and you can take your pick. As for helping you by editing text, or emailing people when their stuff shows up on HN's front page, yes—I do that frequently for YC founders, non-YC founders, and non-founders.
- eganist 5y ago
  > As for helping you by editing text, or emailing people when their stuff shows up on HN's front page, I do that frequently for YC founders, non-YC founders, and non-founders. Fact: dang's helped me a few times with this when I've goofed with my own comments, and as best as I can tell, I'm not a founder of any kind.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    that only makes it more likely they're helping more important people more frequently and to a greater degree.
    - pvg 5y ago
      By that logic, there's really nothing generous dang can do that isn't further proof of his perfidy.
      - LegitShady 5y ago
        Indeed once you understand that the moderators are helping people with brand management and suggestions at the very least, and the extent to which this occurs is hidden, they lose the ability to claim neutrality and open themselves up to lots of questions about what else they're doing That's a result of actions taken not some kind of theoretical argument.
austenallred 5y ago
I'm also a YC founder of a (smaller, but top ~100 in terms of valuation) YC company. I don't know what your experience was like with Stripe, but the notion that Patrick has some unduly amount of power to exercise over HN and YC immediately flags to me as untrue. I've been on the receiving end of a lot of HN criticism, and I can assure you the HN mods and all of YC go above and beyond to not tip the scale in YC founders' favor. Edits on your posts, recommending the best times of day to submit, explaining how HN algorithms work broadly, are accessible to everyone; these are discussed frequently on HN, and were all accessible to me even before I was a YC founder. I'm also certain the HN team wouldn't need to email Patrick about something like this being on the front page; when my company (~150 employees) is on the front page I get a bunch of messages about it from all sorts of different angles; certainly many of the thousands of Stripe employees use HN and would be capable of sending a Slack or text. To me it seems the notion that Patrick has "indirect control" over parts of HN is a longer way of saying he has respect. I think Patrick may be the most universally respected founder in Silicon Valley, and perhaps doubly so amongst engineers. I am not surprised at all that people upvote his comments, as he's both the person speaking from authority, and they're usually well reasoned - I use them as a model for how to respond well (something I have not always done). I'm not saying you're being untrue about your experience (and I don't think OP was being untrue about theirs), but the notion that Patrick as at the helm of an evil empire stealing from companies and manipulating folks to keep it quiet just feels farcically different from reality across the dozens of Stripe and YC/HN touch points I have.
- choppaface 5y ago
  Lambda School must also not be an evil empire then huh? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...
- latch 5y ago
  > I can assure you the HN mods and all of YC go above and beyond to not tip the scale in YC founders' favor. Consider [1] which was flagged dead. It was ~10 years ago, so I could be wrong, but I believe there was a follow-up meta "Ask HN" where someone asked why it was flagged (I can't find it), and I __believe__ PG said something along the lines that he didn't find the original constructive, hence flagging it dead. Top comment on the non-constructive OP was from spolsky with some insightful information on job postings... Definitely seemed like going above and beyond to tip the scale in YC founder's favor. Edit: found the followup/meta [2] (I was wrong, no official explanation was given, sorry about that). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703771 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2707385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2707385
boringg 5y ago
I think you might be getting conspiratorial about this. Here's my take on reading the comment thread. I am an outsider peering in - no connection to the companies etc. 1. Your single experience doesn't represent a pattern of behavior - and dang comment's certainly corrected some of your original inaccuracies in your comments. If you can attribute many cases of this happening then maybe it represents a pattern of behavior. 2. Patrick might have different relationships depending where you are on the power curve of importance to them (competitor, investor, partner, etc) - which could explain the discrepancy between your experience + barmstrong. There are also a host of other possibilities. 3. In terms of barmstrong's positive comments does he have an investment in square either personally or through his company, any partnership with the organization, or is personally friends with Patrick. Any of those would bias his comments in favor. He might have a great relationship with Patrick. At the end of the day - I'm not sure where this goes. It comes across like a strong personal attack from a bad situation that is getting a lot of response on HN.

omarish 5y ago

> And we are not the most valuable YC company ever -- so it's possible more was done for Stripe. Ah yes, surely the reason you didn't create the most valuable YC company ever is because more was done for Stripe.

barmstrong 5y ago

No he did not. We didn’t even discuss it.

choppaface 5y ago
I don’t think the question was whether you two actually talked but rather if there is any conflict of interest or other incentives that fueled the defense. You’ve had a particularly divisive approach towards people (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-employees-leave-coinbase-over-ceos-pledge-to-be-apolitical/?sh=612aed55a065 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-emp... ) and so it’s reasonable to assume any of your public statements might not be completely accurate or forthcoming or easy to take at face value. That of course might not be intentional though!
- 1123581321 5y ago
  It looks like the question actually was whether they talked. It was asked two ways in the same comment: - “Did Patrick request that you write this post?” - “Did Patrick message you to ask you to post this?”
- 22c 5y ago
  > Did Patrick message you to ask you to post this? Is a pretty direct question and barmstrong gave a direct answer. It's possible that temp7536 and barmstrong simply had different experiences with Patrick. It seems to me that barmstrong wanted to share their experience.
  - choppaface 5y ago
    barmstrong is the coinbase ceo. he’s not “sharing an experience,” he’s doing PR.
- donkeyd 5y ago
  > You’ve had a particularly divisive approach towards people (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-emp https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/10/08/60-emp... ) Unless you have more information than I do, I really don't understand how that is an example of divisiveness. Picking sides is a great way of being divisive. If they picked a side, people would've also left the company because they disagreed with the side that was picked. Which would mean that the company culture will become that side. People who think differently will be discouraged to join the company because they don't want to work for a company with stand points they disagree with. A company like that will possibly end up blind to whatever the 'other side' thinks. That's how you end up with Juicero. I don't think every organization should be apolitical by default. But there really is a point to being apolitical as an organization, especially in the Crypto market, since there are so many different reasons for people supporting Crypto, any political stand point might cause you to lose customers.

dang 5y ago

That sounds weird to me. There was no "HN team" before I started working on HN in October 2012 - just pg, and no one would have referred to him as "the HN team". The HN team originates in April 2014, when I became public as a mod. (That's not early in YC btw.) In that case you're talking about me (and possibly Scott), and while I guess it's dangerous to make strong claims about some meeting I don't remember, there's no way we would have "explained how the ranking algorithms worked" in such a way that you could game HN. That's precisely what we would not have done. I've worked way too hard on that shit to blab about it and see all that sand run through my fingers. I also doubt that we'd have told you "the best times of day to submit"—people ask us that all the time and the stock answer is we have no idea, there are all sorts of dodgy analyses out there, and you can take your pick. As for helping you by editing text, or emailing people when their stuff shows up on HN's front page, yes—I do that frequently for YC founders, non-YC founders, and non-founders.

eganist 5y ago
> As for helping you by editing text, or emailing people when their stuff shows up on HN's front page, I do that frequently for YC founders, non-YC founders, and non-founders. Fact: dang's helped me a few times with this when I've goofed with my own comments, and as best as I can tell, I'm not a founder of any kind.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  that only makes it more likely they're helping more important people more frequently and to a greater degree.
  - pvg 5y ago
    By that logic, there's really nothing generous dang can do that isn't further proof of his perfidy.
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      Indeed once you understand that the moderators are helping people with brand management and suggestions at the very least, and the extent to which this occurs is hidden, they lose the ability to claim neutrality and open themselves up to lots of questions about what else they're doing That's a result of actions taken not some kind of theoretical argument.

austenallred 5y ago

I'm also a YC founder of a (smaller, but top ~100 in terms of valuation) YC company. I don't know what your experience was like with Stripe, but the notion that Patrick has some unduly amount of power to exercise over HN and YC immediately flags to me as untrue. I've been on the receiving end of a lot of HN criticism, and I can assure you the HN mods and all of YC go above and beyond to not tip the scale in YC founders' favor. Edits on your posts, recommending the best times of day to submit, explaining how HN algorithms work broadly, are accessible to everyone; these are discussed frequently on HN, and were all accessible to me even before I was a YC founder. I'm also certain the HN team wouldn't need to email Patrick about something like this being on the front page; when my company (~150 employees) is on the front page I get a bunch of messages about it from all sorts of different angles; certainly many of the thousands of Stripe employees use HN and would be capable of sending a Slack or text. To me it seems the notion that Patrick has "indirect control" over parts of HN is a longer way of saying he has respect. I think Patrick may be the most universally respected founder in Silicon Valley, and perhaps doubly so amongst engineers. I am not surprised at all that people upvote his comments, as he's both the person speaking from authority, and they're usually well reasoned - I use them as a model for how to respond well (something I have not always done). I'm not saying you're being untrue about your experience (and I don't think OP was being untrue about theirs), but the notion that Patrick as at the helm of an evil empire stealing from companies and manipulating folks to keep it quiet just feels farcically different from reality across the dozens of Stripe and YC/HN touch points I have.

choppaface 5y ago
Lambda School must also not be an evil empire then huh? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...
latch 5y ago
> I can assure you the HN mods and all of YC go above and beyond to not tip the scale in YC founders' favor. Consider [1] which was flagged dead. It was ~10 years ago, so I could be wrong, but I believe there was a follow-up meta "Ask HN" where someone asked why it was flagged (I can't find it), and I __believe__ PG said something along the lines that he didn't find the original constructive, hence flagging it dead. Top comment on the non-constructive OP was from spolsky with some insightful information on job postings... Definitely seemed like going above and beyond to tip the scale in YC founder's favor. Edit: found the followup/meta [2] (I was wrong, no official explanation was given, sorry about that). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703771 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2707385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2707385

boringg 5y ago

I think you might be getting conspiratorial about this. Here's my take on reading the comment thread. I am an outsider peering in - no connection to the companies etc. 1. Your single experience doesn't represent a pattern of behavior - and dang comment's certainly corrected some of your original inaccuracies in your comments. If you can attribute many cases of this happening then maybe it represents a pattern of behavior. 2. Patrick might have different relationships depending where you are on the power curve of importance to them (competitor, investor, partner, etc) - which could explain the discrepancy between your experience + barmstrong. There are also a host of other possibilities. 3. In terms of barmstrong's positive comments does he have an investment in square either personally or through his company, any partnership with the organization, or is personally friends with Patrick. Any of those would bias his comments in favor. He might have a great relationship with Patrick. At the end of the day - I'm not sure where this goes. It comes across like a strong personal attack from a bad situation that is getting a lot of response on HN.