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[2020] The update with response to all the previous negative HN reaction -- https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/2

by petee 5y ago

[2020] The update with response to all the previous negative HN reaction -- https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/

politician 5y ago
Wow, that update is required reading. After everything that has happened in the intervening two years, I bet folks would react way differently to this story had it been posted today. That place was clown town. Are they still operating?
- na85 5y ago
  Do we know what company it was?
  - JonathanMerklin 5y ago
    IIRC from when I first read this back in 2020, it's Lyft. The hint is at the end (emphasis mine): "In retrospect, there were many red flags. *Well, pink flags.* Whatever."
    - na85 5y ago
      Does Lyft have pink flags or something? I don't get the significance. (I've never used Lyft or Uber in my life though, so maybe that's why)
      - JonathanMerklin 5y ago
        Give "Lyft color scheme" a quick search :) EDIT: Okay, I see you added an edit where you say you've never used it - so to remove any semblance of snark I'll clarify that you will in fact find pink if you do that.
        na85 5y ago
        I see, thanks!
- kristjansson 5y ago
  Pretty easy to deduce if you read a few of her posts. They’re still operating.
Aachen 5y ago
This one surprised me the most: > I managed to stumble onto the Google spreadsheet (yep) they were using to track feedback for the process. There were dozens of entries, and they were all gushing about it, like oh it was so good, and so fun! Please do more!
- protomyth 5y ago
  Sadly, that didn't surprise me at all. Only keeping the positive feedback is a time honored tradition with some groups in corporations. It is amazing how useful it is to control your own feedback for people wanting to look good.
  - Volundr 5y ago
    To be honest, I've kind of lost all faith in user generated feedback. The first employee I ever had to fire was an internal help desk style person. After firing them for unrelated reasons I started getting all sorts of feedback about how it was time, and people were glad someone finally dealt with the issue. I start digging in and it turns out this person had just been closing tickets they didn't feel like dealing with, with no response. I also heard stories of some pretty hostile interactions with out users. The thing is, we sent out a short little survey to the user after every ticket closed. A little two question thing, "Did we solve your problem?" and "Are you satisfied with the service your received?". This person had a 99% satisfied rating. Getting accurate feedback from employees is hard, and I can only imagine new employees feel even more pressure to say positive things.
    - hobs 5y ago
      I read this as your company culture is really bad if no one can complain about the negative person everybody hates - there's almost always someone who either is too honest or too talkative who lets on what's up - if you dont have those characters the company might have punished them already as well. There's always an in-group/out-group in any group and if you're not aware who the current "least favored" person is in a social circle, its probably you.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jchw 5y ago
I don’t get why this got such a negative response. Seems like the exact kind of bullshit I would walk out on, too.
soneca 5y ago
This is a great example for something that I always advocate: Don’t react to early responses on a HN thread. Wait a few hours (a day?) to really have a feeling of what people are saying as a community. In this follow up she is answering a lot of negative comments about her first post. Trashing HN while doing it. But then you take a look at that thread today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280610 I did a quick review of the top root comments (i.e. the most upvoted ones, the ones the HN, as a community, mostly thinks represents their opinion). The first 6 or 7 are fully supportive of her take, empathizing with horrible onboarding processes, saying they would do the same as her. Then comes a couple of comments mentioning how she is getting flak and referring to a lot of top-level negative comments. This shows that (obviously) she wasn’t delusional addressing negative comments, they were there at the top a few hours after the post was published. But, again, these comments were supportive of her, saying the negative comments were unfair. Then it comes more 5 or 6 posts still supportive or neutral or orthogonal to the point. Then, only the 14th root level comment is a truly negative one (one that she addressed in her follow up). And, for me, 14th is too far down to matter. Or to represent what HN is as a community. This shows to me that HN, as a community, was fully supportive of her text, her tone, her take, and her actions. This is the reaction that was overwhelmingly more upvoted by all. Only temporarily felt like the opposite. That’s why I always wait a day to really grasp what’s the overall reaction of HN as a community to any particular post (if I happen to care about such opinion).
- bibabaloo 5y ago
  In this case, IIRC, the upvoted comments changed _because_ she called out the negative comments in her response.
  - soneca 5y ago
    I don’t think that causality is correct. I find hard to imagine that people read her other post several hours later, went back to the thread about her original post, and upvoted the positive comments.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
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aahortwwy 5y ago
> There are plenty of people who see my writing for what it's supposed to be: a series of cautionary tales on how things can go wrong, and what to do to avoid them. I rarely see the "what to do to avoid them" in Rachel's posts, and I think that's why I find them so frustrating.
- fastball 5y ago
  Yeah, I get why HN likes them, but for me they usually just come across as "this thing is stupid and I hate it". Which I also get – a lot of stuff in the world is stupid. But I also understand that if that is the attitude you go in with, you will almost certainly find what you are looking for (things to be annoyed at). Probably more useful as catharsis than an actual guide.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Generally there is little you can do to avoid them. The incentives are just not there.

by petee 5y ago

[2020] The update with response to all the previous negative HN reaction -- https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/23/nope/

politician 5y ago

Wow, that update is required reading. After everything that has happened in the intervening two years, I bet folks would react way differently to this story had it been posted today. That place was clown town. Are they still operating?

na85 5y ago
Do we know what company it was?
- JonathanMerklin 5y ago
  IIRC from when I first read this back in 2020, it's Lyft. The hint is at the end (emphasis mine): "In retrospect, there were many red flags. *Well, pink flags.* Whatever."
  - na85 5y ago
    Does Lyft have pink flags or something? I don't get the significance. (I've never used Lyft or Uber in my life though, so maybe that's why)
    - JonathanMerklin 5y ago
      Give "Lyft color scheme" a quick search :) EDIT: Okay, I see you added an edit where you say you've never used it - so to remove any semblance of snark I'll clarify that you will in fact find pink if you do that.
      - na85 5y ago
        I see, thanks!
kristjansson 5y ago
Pretty easy to deduce if you read a few of her posts. They’re still operating.

Aachen 5y ago

This one surprised me the most: > I managed to stumble onto the Google spreadsheet (yep) they were using to track feedback for the process. There were dozens of entries, and they were all gushing about it, like oh it was so good, and so fun! Please do more!

protomyth 5y ago
Sadly, that didn't surprise me at all. Only keeping the positive feedback is a time honored tradition with some groups in corporations. It is amazing how useful it is to control your own feedback for people wanting to look good.
- Volundr 5y ago
  To be honest, I've kind of lost all faith in user generated feedback. The first employee I ever had to fire was an internal help desk style person. After firing them for unrelated reasons I started getting all sorts of feedback about how it was time, and people were glad someone finally dealt with the issue. I start digging in and it turns out this person had just been closing tickets they didn't feel like dealing with, with no response. I also heard stories of some pretty hostile interactions with out users. The thing is, we sent out a short little survey to the user after every ticket closed. A little two question thing, "Did we solve your problem?" and "Are you satisfied with the service your received?". This person had a 99% satisfied rating. Getting accurate feedback from employees is hard, and I can only imagine new employees feel even more pressure to say positive things.
  - hobs 5y ago
    I read this as your company culture is really bad if no one can complain about the negative person everybody hates - there's almost always someone who either is too honest or too talkative who lets on what's up - if you dont have those characters the company might have punished them already as well. There's always an in-group/out-group in any group and if you're not aware who the current "least favored" person is in a social circle, its probably you.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jchw 5y ago

I don’t get why this got such a negative response. Seems like the exact kind of bullshit I would walk out on, too.

soneca 5y ago

This is a great example for something that I always advocate: Don’t react to early responses on a HN thread. Wait a few hours (a day?) to really have a feeling of what people are saying as a community. In this follow up she is answering a lot of negative comments about her first post. Trashing HN while doing it. But then you take a look at that thread today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280610 I did a quick review of the top root comments (i.e. the most upvoted ones, the ones the HN, as a community, mostly thinks represents their opinion). The first 6 or 7 are fully supportive of her take, empathizing with horrible onboarding processes, saying they would do the same as her. Then comes a couple of comments mentioning how she is getting flak and referring to a lot of top-level negative comments. This shows that (obviously) she wasn’t delusional addressing negative comments, they were there at the top a few hours after the post was published. But, again, these comments were supportive of her, saying the negative comments were unfair. Then it comes more 5 or 6 posts still supportive or neutral or orthogonal to the point. Then, only the 14th root level comment is a truly negative one (one that she addressed in her follow up). And, for me, 14th is too far down to matter. Or to represent what HN is as a community. This shows to me that HN, as a community, was fully supportive of her text, her tone, her take, and her actions. This is the reaction that was overwhelmingly more upvoted by all. Only temporarily felt like the opposite. That’s why I always wait a day to really grasp what’s the overall reaction of HN as a community to any particular post (if I happen to care about such opinion).

bibabaloo 5y ago
In this case, IIRC, the upvoted comments changed _because_ she called out the negative comments in her response.
- soneca 5y ago
  I don’t think that causality is correct. I find hard to imagine that people read her other post several hours later, went back to the thread about her original post, and upvoted the positive comments.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aahortwwy 5y ago

> There are plenty of people who see my writing for what it's supposed to be: a series of cautionary tales on how things can go wrong, and what to do to avoid them. I rarely see the "what to do to avoid them" in Rachel's posts, and I think that's why I find them so frustrating.

fastball 5y ago
Yeah, I get why HN likes them, but for me they usually just come across as "this thing is stupid and I hate it". Which I also get – a lot of stuff in the world is stupid. But I also understand that if that is the attitude you go in with, you will almost certainly find what you are looking for (things to be annoyed at). Probably more useful as catharsis than an actual guide.
Aeolun 5y ago
Generally there is little you can do to avoid them. The incentives are just not there.