6 ms·

Is it just me or is tech particularly sleazy right now?

api 15y ago
Very. It's bad. I kind of got out of startups for that reason. I just couldn't take working with sociopaths anymore. I have some stories. Serious f'ing stories. And no, I'm not just "player hating." A lot of it didn't even involve me. I just couldn't take working in proximity to such sleaze. Tech's had this reputation as a place where fortunes can be made. That's going to attract a lot of ambitious and creative people, but it's also going to attract a lot of scum. What amazes me about my personal experiences is how unsuccessful a lot of the sociopathic behavior was. It really brought home to me that these people have a mental illness. In the same way that someone with severe OCD will do things like wash their hands until the skin comes off, these people are neurotically compelled to dominate others even if doing so actually harms them. They must win their petty battles and dominate those seen as weaker, even if it means losing in the real world. I literally watched the moment at which a pathological sociopath tanked a million-dollar opportunity because he had to try to put one over on his partner. Had to.
- nickpinkston 15y ago
  Here you're allowed to hate the players, and their games...
  - rhizome 15y ago
    As it should be. Hip-hop damaged humanity's brain with that one line.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Would you be willing to do an anonymous AMA, or write up some of your experiences?
  - sinope 15y ago
    I can confirm that sociopaths are like this, and that they are a large part of why I won't be a part of the startup industry anymore very soon.
  - api 15y ago
    I'll do a quick summary. Episode 1: (this is the one that most directly affected me) I was working on a very interesting but somewhat far-off technology. I did some tech talks about it, and put them on Google Video. Was approached by a guy who said he was a wealthy early-stage technology investor. He showed me a lot of stuff that indicated that this was the case, had a lot of real people vouching for him, etc. He made me an offer of a cash investment over a period of two years in exchange for a percentage ownership in a company I would create. I got a lawyer, did a contract, and was very excited. We'd work with early stage customers, iterate, and he'd support the hiring of two additional people to do R&D work. (The technology was a machine learning application.) He even had some existing customers lined up and interested in bio-medical, oil and gas, and other industries. Came to find out that: a) this guy has almost no money at all and is a complete fraud, b) everyone he associated with literally has a different picture of reality. It was pretty amazing. Some people thought he was associated with a company that he only acted as a salesman for, for example. I walk. In doing so I have to walk away from approximately three years of work because the ownership of said work is now tied to an entity that this guy could have a potential claim on. Guy turns out to also be a f'ing lunatic. He threatens my life verbally. I contemplate buying a handgun. Episode 2: I meet a promising entrepreneur who is interested in bio-med stuff. He's working on a protein classification company. He asks me if I'd be interested in joining as a software engineer. I say sure. He sends my resume out to his investors, only he's listing me as having degrees I don't have. I e-mail him about this. He asks me to personally write up a CV and coaches me on how to pad my resume. I walk. Episode 3: I join a consulting firm that does early stage tech R&D and business consulting for startups. This one involves me only indirectly, but while there I get to witness several pieces of rather astounding sleazery. One episode involved a company that was formed to build a video delivery device. We did a bunch of R&D for them. They were basically a sales pit: founder was a salesman, and he hired a bunch of salesmen to go sell ahead into the market and hired us to build a prototype. (Nothing wrong so far.) But the market didn't seem to be too interested, so he pulled the plug. Walked. Left our firm with almost $100k in uncollected bills. We do some investigation and find out that this guy's name is on over a dozen defunct LLCs. Another episode involved a guy who was "known" as a "genius," a "business God" as one person called him. In this case we did actually get paid, but... the guy was a complete f'ing lunatic. He would berate and insult his employees, sexually harass women, and we come to find out that he'd been sued multiple times by previous partners. We were lucky to get paid... mostly because someone other than this guy was footing the bill. (That someone later pulled the plug.) Consulting firm shutters its doors. I can't blame the guy. I mean... I didn't have to actually negotiate with these pricks. I just worked for the place. He did. Episode 4: Join a startup doing mobile devices. We get funded to develop something, and we're on the verge of making a sale, when the parent company decides to pull the plug. We were inches away. Millimeters away. Then the parent company decides to screw over our development partner. That's it. I'm out. No more startups for me, unless it's my own. Now here is my question: Do they actually teach this s--t in business school? What the hell? I had a friend when I was much younger who got into some shady stuff including drug trafficking, and he told me a lot of stories. None of them approached what I experienced in the "legitimate" business world.
- winter_blue 15y ago
  Would you be interested in putting your e-mail on your profile, or writing more about this. I would like to hear more on it.
- cageface 15y ago
  I'm not willing to go into specifics, but I will say that I saw worse things in the biotech industry. Having something in the pipeline for human clinical trials really boosts the IPO, even if maybe it doesn't belong there.
  - api 15y ago
    I've seen that too, and I've heard some whoppers of stories. Like, stuff that does not even slightly exist. Pig, meet lipstick. Like I said in another part of the thread: the stock market is the dumbest money around.
    - cageface 15y ago
      It looks that way to me too. I wish I knew of a smarter place to put it.
      - forensic 15y ago
        Your own business. Children. Real estate. These long-term investments are as old as time itself, and they do pay off.
fragsworth 15y ago
Looking at their products and how they treat their users I would have expected them to be sleazy in other ways too. I think it's just Zynga.
- danssig 15y ago
  And Facebook... and Skype, etc.
wccrawford 15y ago
It's not tech. It's anything that can make money. People have stopped considering others and only do what they can to make money. Not that there aren't still ethical people out there, it's just that the unethical ones make it so hard to see them.
- itg 15y ago
  I think this is spot on. I have friends who left the finance industry because they absolutely hated the toxic personalities that it attracts. The ones who went into tech say it isn't much different. Anywhere there is fast money to be made will attract scumbags.
  - api 15y ago
    The most disturbing thing that I noticed was this: a person's status in the business world (or at least certain sectors of it) seems to be perfectly correlated with how they'd probably score on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist I'm not making some superficial political statement either. I noticed it in myself. There were people I worked with that I completely hated yet... when they were present... it was almost like a drug. There's this "high" you get off them. You feel more confident just because they're in the room. They've got this kind of charisma that goes beyond mere confidence or enthusiasm. They were, by their actions, the most psychopathic ones. It's like we have a genetic, predisposed tendency to follow psychopaths. I found it unbelievably disturbing. I'm a bit skeptical of evolutionary psychology, but this is one area where that kind of thinking feels like it could be right. It's like we know, on some subconscious animal level, that while these individuals are dangerous to us they're also more likely to win in a war. They will kill for us. And our genes want to be on the winning team. Among other things, it converted me to a born-again advocate for human genetic and neurological engineering. We simply have to purge ourselves of this evolutionary legacy code or it will kill us all.
    - slavak 15y ago
      A psychopath as defined by Hare will never kill for you. At least, not in the sense you mean by "kill", which is probably "go to extreme lengths". They quite likely would kill for you, under the right circumstance - but only if it served their purpose and only because taking a life doesn't carry any particular emotional connotation for them. The scariest thing about realizing you're surrounded by psychopaths is knowing that they have about as much regard for your feelings and well-being as those of their toaster oven. From an evolutionary psychology viewpoint, things are probably the other way around. That is - psychopathic personalities evolved to reflect, albeit in a very shallow way, the traits we're programmed to identify and follow as leaders. I find the whole topic morbidly fascinating. In a way, it's the closest we can get to observing an alien intellect. The idea that so many executives in and around my industry could be such people just creeps me the hell out.
zem 15y ago
well, zynga in particular has been sleazy from day one. if any other company had done this, i bet people would have been a lot more taken aback - here it's still shocking, but at some level it's in line with their general business ethic.
- tlear 15y ago
  That was my reaction as well, Zynga doing it is not surprising at all
jccodez 15y ago
Nothing new here: "Later, in 1982 when Allen had been diagnosed with cancer, Allen is reported to have said he overhead Gates and current chief executive Steve Ballmer discussing Allen's lack of recent contributions to the young company, and talking about how to dilute Allen's stock allocation."
- danssig 15y ago
  People often forget what a scumbag company MS was. I would be shocked if they didn't have tons of such stories.
r00fus 15y ago
Overhyped tech startups are sleazy. There are lots of underhyped startups right now that are busy disrupting other areas like enterprise software. Key is to look at who's funding whom and executive leadership... an organization's DNA goes from top-down.
philwelch 15y ago
I went to Startup School in 2009 and 2010, but not this year. In 2009, Mark Pincus was one of the speakers. In 2010, Andrew Mason was one of the speakers. It looks like Pincus spoke again this year. If a seemingly honest man like pg can't arrange a nice little startup conference without having at least one speaker every year who turns out to be some sort of con man, then yes, I'd have to say tech is particularly sleazy right now. I'm not faulting the Startup School organizers for this, but it's an interesting observation.
- api 15y ago
  I would fault the Startup School organizers for this. They are creating a community that is catering largely to people who are young, talented, but not experienced. They need to be educating people about how to avoid the pitfalls and scams of the startup world as well as about how to succeed. Instead, they bring scummy fast talkers and put these people up on the stage as ideals. Not only is that teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs to be scummy fast talkers, but it's setting up these kids (and many of them are kids) to look up to and follow people like this. It's setting them up to be taken advantage of, or to become abusers themselves. Like any guru, pg only pimps the upside. He has a lot of good things to say, but at the end of the day it's basically self-help, water cooler wisdom, and motivational speaking for beginning entrepreneurs. He's not going to tell you about the filthy underbelly. He's not going to tell you that a good 20% of the people in the startup world have a diagnosable psychosis. Psychopathy, narcissistic personality disorder, and bipolar disorder are the most common. He's not going to tell you that startup stock is basically worthless, and that if you're about to vest you are probably about to be fired unless you are in the "inner circle." He's not going to tell you that the game is rigged hugely in favor of the already-connected.
  - DilipJ 15y ago
    pg has also gotten into bed with Yuri Milner and his DST firm. You will notice that both Zynga and Groupon are recipients of DST funds, so it's no surprise that pg is promoting Pincus and Mason. In fact, I have no doubt that if any of the new batch of YC startups were to become successful and IPO, this sort of behaviour that Pincus is trying to pull may be emulated. When you lie with dogs you get fleas, etc.
Tangurena 15y ago
Tech all over. Earlier this year, one such sociopath latched onto my sister and she convinced me to get involved. As soon as the project looked like it was going to get released, the sociopath tried to dilute my sister's and my shares from 1/3 each to 1/20th each. He wanted to bring in partners that he had previously screwed over to make something up to them by screwing us.
- api 15y ago
  "He wanted to bring in partners that he had previously screwed over..." That is so classic. It really does get kind of Monty Python-ish. Like I said in my post above, I have a lot of stories. If I ever wrote a book about it, I'd have to tame them down quite a bit to make them believable.
redditmigrant 15y ago
I dont think my experience is at a similar scale, but it sure is immoral. I interviewed with a SF based YC startup recently. I already had plans of being in the area during the time they wanted to "fly me in" and I asked them if they could just reimburse me. They said yes, and then I got there, things didnt work out and they said they werent going to make me an offer. Thats all good, but then they said "their accountant" had told them they cant reimburse me the measly amount of $200. It just surprised me that people would swoop to such cheap behavior.

api 15y ago

Very. It's bad. I kind of got out of startups for that reason. I just couldn't take working with sociopaths anymore. I have some stories. Serious f'ing stories. And no, I'm not just "player hating." A lot of it didn't even involve me. I just couldn't take working in proximity to such sleaze. Tech's had this reputation as a place where fortunes can be made. That's going to attract a lot of ambitious and creative people, but it's also going to attract a lot of scum. What amazes me about my personal experiences is how unsuccessful a lot of the sociopathic behavior was. It really brought home to me that these people have a mental illness. In the same way that someone with severe OCD will do things like wash their hands until the skin comes off, these people are neurotically compelled to dominate others even if doing so actually harms them. They must win their petty battles and dominate those seen as weaker, even if it means losing in the real world. I literally watched the moment at which a pathological sociopath tanked a million-dollar opportunity because he had to try to put one over on his partner. Had to.

nickpinkston 15y ago
Here you're allowed to hate the players, and their games...
- rhizome 15y ago
  As it should be. Hip-hop damaged humanity's brain with that one line.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
Would you be willing to do an anonymous AMA, or write up some of your experiences?
- sinope 15y ago
  I can confirm that sociopaths are like this, and that they are a large part of why I won't be a part of the startup industry anymore very soon.
- api 15y ago
  I'll do a quick summary. Episode 1: (this is the one that most directly affected me) I was working on a very interesting but somewhat far-off technology. I did some tech talks about it, and put them on Google Video. Was approached by a guy who said he was a wealthy early-stage technology investor. He showed me a lot of stuff that indicated that this was the case, had a lot of real people vouching for him, etc. He made me an offer of a cash investment over a period of two years in exchange for a percentage ownership in a company I would create. I got a lawyer, did a contract, and was very excited. We'd work with early stage customers, iterate, and he'd support the hiring of two additional people to do R&D work. (The technology was a machine learning application.) He even had some existing customers lined up and interested in bio-medical, oil and gas, and other industries. Came to find out that: a) this guy has almost no money at all and is a complete fraud, b) everyone he associated with literally has a different picture of reality. It was pretty amazing. Some people thought he was associated with a company that he only acted as a salesman for, for example. I walk. In doing so I have to walk away from approximately three years of work because the ownership of said work is now tied to an entity that this guy could have a potential claim on. Guy turns out to also be a f'ing lunatic. He threatens my life verbally. I contemplate buying a handgun. Episode 2: I meet a promising entrepreneur who is interested in bio-med stuff. He's working on a protein classification company. He asks me if I'd be interested in joining as a software engineer. I say sure. He sends my resume out to his investors, only he's listing me as having degrees I don't have. I e-mail him about this. He asks me to personally write up a CV and coaches me on how to pad my resume. I walk. Episode 3: I join a consulting firm that does early stage tech R&D and business consulting for startups. This one involves me only indirectly, but while there I get to witness several pieces of rather astounding sleazery. One episode involved a company that was formed to build a video delivery device. We did a bunch of R&D for them. They were basically a sales pit: founder was a salesman, and he hired a bunch of salesmen to go sell ahead into the market and hired us to build a prototype. (Nothing wrong so far.) But the market didn't seem to be too interested, so he pulled the plug. Walked. Left our firm with almost $100k in uncollected bills. We do some investigation and find out that this guy's name is on over a dozen defunct LLCs. Another episode involved a guy who was "known" as a "genius," a "business God" as one person called him. In this case we did actually get paid, but... the guy was a complete f'ing lunatic. He would berate and insult his employees, sexually harass women, and we come to find out that he'd been sued multiple times by previous partners. We were lucky to get paid... mostly because someone other than this guy was footing the bill. (That someone later pulled the plug.) Consulting firm shutters its doors. I can't blame the guy. I mean... I didn't have to actually negotiate with these pricks. I just worked for the place. He did. Episode 4: Join a startup doing mobile devices. We get funded to develop something, and we're on the verge of making a sale, when the parent company decides to pull the plug. We were inches away. Millimeters away. Then the parent company decides to screw over our development partner. That's it. I'm out. No more startups for me, unless it's my own. Now here is my question: Do they actually teach this s--t in business school? What the hell? I had a friend when I was much younger who got into some shady stuff including drug trafficking, and he told me a lot of stories. None of them approached what I experienced in the "legitimate" business world.
winter_blue 15y ago
Would you be interested in putting your e-mail on your profile, or writing more about this. I would like to hear more on it.
cageface 15y ago
I'm not willing to go into specifics, but I will say that I saw worse things in the biotech industry. Having something in the pipeline for human clinical trials really boosts the IPO, even if maybe it doesn't belong there.
- api 15y ago
  I've seen that too, and I've heard some whoppers of stories. Like, stuff that does not even slightly exist. Pig, meet lipstick. Like I said in another part of the thread: the stock market is the dumbest money around.
  - cageface 15y ago
    It looks that way to me too. I wish I knew of a smarter place to put it.
    - forensic 15y ago
      Your own business. Children. Real estate. These long-term investments are as old as time itself, and they do pay off.

fragsworth 15y ago

Looking at their products and how they treat their users I would have expected them to be sleazy in other ways too. I think it's just Zynga.

danssig 15y ago
And Facebook... and Skype, etc.

wccrawford 15y ago

It's not tech. It's anything that can make money. People have stopped considering others and only do what they can to make money. Not that there aren't still ethical people out there, it's just that the unethical ones make it so hard to see them.

itg 15y ago
I think this is spot on. I have friends who left the finance industry because they absolutely hated the toxic personalities that it attracts. The ones who went into tech say it isn't much different. Anywhere there is fast money to be made will attract scumbags.
- api 15y ago
  The most disturbing thing that I noticed was this: a person's status in the business world (or at least certain sectors of it) seems to be perfectly correlated with how they'd probably score on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist I'm not making some superficial political statement either. I noticed it in myself. There were people I worked with that I completely hated yet... when they were present... it was almost like a drug. There's this "high" you get off them. You feel more confident just because they're in the room. They've got this kind of charisma that goes beyond mere confidence or enthusiasm. They were, by their actions, the most psychopathic ones. It's like we have a genetic, predisposed tendency to follow psychopaths. I found it unbelievably disturbing. I'm a bit skeptical of evolutionary psychology, but this is one area where that kind of thinking feels like it could be right. It's like we know, on some subconscious animal level, that while these individuals are dangerous to us they're also more likely to win in a war. They will kill for us. And our genes want to be on the winning team. Among other things, it converted me to a born-again advocate for human genetic and neurological engineering. We simply have to purge ourselves of this evolutionary legacy code or it will kill us all.
  - slavak 15y ago
    A psychopath as defined by Hare will never kill for you. At least, not in the sense you mean by "kill", which is probably "go to extreme lengths". They quite likely would kill for you, under the right circumstance - but only if it served their purpose and only because taking a life doesn't carry any particular emotional connotation for them. The scariest thing about realizing you're surrounded by psychopaths is knowing that they have about as much regard for your feelings and well-being as those of their toaster oven. From an evolutionary psychology viewpoint, things are probably the other way around. That is - psychopathic personalities evolved to reflect, albeit in a very shallow way, the traits we're programmed to identify and follow as leaders. I find the whole topic morbidly fascinating. In a way, it's the closest we can get to observing an alien intellect. The idea that so many executives in and around my industry could be such people just creeps me the hell out.

zem 15y ago

well, zynga in particular has been sleazy from day one. if any other company had done this, i bet people would have been a lot more taken aback - here it's still shocking, but at some level it's in line with their general business ethic.

tlear 15y ago
That was my reaction as well, Zynga doing it is not surprising at all

jccodez 15y ago

Nothing new here: "Later, in 1982 when Allen had been diagnosed with cancer, Allen is reported to have said he overhead Gates and current chief executive Steve Ballmer discussing Allen's lack of recent contributions to the young company, and talking about how to dilute Allen's stock allocation."

danssig 15y ago
People often forget what a scumbag company MS was. I would be shocked if they didn't have tons of such stories.

r00fus 15y ago

Overhyped tech startups are sleazy. There are lots of underhyped startups right now that are busy disrupting other areas like enterprise software. Key is to look at who's funding whom and executive leadership... an organization's DNA goes from top-down.

philwelch 15y ago

I went to Startup School in 2009 and 2010, but not this year. In 2009, Mark Pincus was one of the speakers. In 2010, Andrew Mason was one of the speakers. It looks like Pincus spoke again this year. If a seemingly honest man like pg can't arrange a nice little startup conference without having at least one speaker every year who turns out to be some sort of con man, then yes, I'd have to say tech is particularly sleazy right now. I'm not faulting the Startup School organizers for this, but it's an interesting observation.

api 15y ago
I would fault the Startup School organizers for this. They are creating a community that is catering largely to people who are young, talented, but not experienced. They need to be educating people about how to avoid the pitfalls and scams of the startup world as well as about how to succeed. Instead, they bring scummy fast talkers and put these people up on the stage as ideals. Not only is that teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs to be scummy fast talkers, but it's setting up these kids (and many of them are kids) to look up to and follow people like this. It's setting them up to be taken advantage of, or to become abusers themselves. Like any guru, pg only pimps the upside. He has a lot of good things to say, but at the end of the day it's basically self-help, water cooler wisdom, and motivational speaking for beginning entrepreneurs. He's not going to tell you about the filthy underbelly. He's not going to tell you that a good 20% of the people in the startup world have a diagnosable psychosis. Psychopathy, narcissistic personality disorder, and bipolar disorder are the most common. He's not going to tell you that startup stock is basically worthless, and that if you're about to vest you are probably about to be fired unless you are in the "inner circle." He's not going to tell you that the game is rigged hugely in favor of the already-connected.
- DilipJ 15y ago
  pg has also gotten into bed with Yuri Milner and his DST firm. You will notice that both Zynga and Groupon are recipients of DST funds, so it's no surprise that pg is promoting Pincus and Mason. In fact, I have no doubt that if any of the new batch of YC startups were to become successful and IPO, this sort of behaviour that Pincus is trying to pull may be emulated. When you lie with dogs you get fleas, etc.

Tangurena 15y ago

Tech all over. Earlier this year, one such sociopath latched onto my sister and she convinced me to get involved. As soon as the project looked like it was going to get released, the sociopath tried to dilute my sister's and my shares from 1/3 each to 1/20th each. He wanted to bring in partners that he had previously screwed over to make something up to them by screwing us.

api 15y ago
"He wanted to bring in partners that he had previously screwed over..." That is so classic. It really does get kind of Monty Python-ish. Like I said in my post above, I have a lot of stories. If I ever wrote a book about it, I'd have to tame them down quite a bit to make them believable.

redditmigrant 15y ago

I dont think my experience is at a similar scale, but it sure is immoral. I interviewed with a SF based YC startup recently. I already had plans of being in the area during the time they wanted to "fly me in" and I asked them if they could just reimburse me. They said yes, and then I got there, things didnt work out and they said they werent going to make me an offer. Thats all good, but then they said "their accountant" had told them they cant reimburse me the measly amount of $200. It just surprised me that people would swoop to such cheap behavior.