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How are you still hireable? If I knew you orchestrated two coups at previous companies and I was responsible for hiring, you would be radioactive to me. Especia

How are you still hireable? If I knew you orchestrated two coups at previous companies and I was responsible for hiring, you would be radioactive to me. Especially knowing that all that effort went into putting together a successful coup over other work. Coups, in general, are the domain of the petty. One need only look at Ilya and D'Angelo to see this in action. D'Angelo neutered Quora by pushing out its co-founder, Charlie Cheever. If you're not happy with the way a company is doing business, your best action is to walk away.

bear141 3y ago
I agree completely. People should oppose openly or leave.
- andybak 3y ago
  Aren't you taking sides in a fight without knowing which side was "right"? Or do you believe that loyalty trumps all other values? At this point I'm in danger of triggering Godwin's Law so I had better stop.
  - bear141 3y ago
    My comment was phrased inappropriately.
- oska 3y ago
  As you are new here, I would urge you to read the site's Guidelines [1], which the tone & wording of your comment indicate you have not read. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - bear141 3y ago
    Ok. Thank you.
  - shippintoboston 3y ago
    [dead]
AlchemistCamp 3y ago
Max Levchin was an organizer of two coups while at PayPal. Both times, he believed it was necessary for the success of the company. Whether that was correct or not, they eventually succeeded and I don’t think the coups really hurt his later career.
- adastra22 3y ago
  PayPal had an exit, but it absolutely did not succeed in the financial revolution it was attempting. People forget now that OG PayPal was attempting the digital financial revolution that later would be bitcoin’s raison d'être.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Yep. PayPal was originally a lot like venmo (conceptually -- of course we didn't have phone apps then). It was a way for people to send each other money online.
    - Ar-Curunir 3y ago
      Good thing for PayPal that it now owns Venmo :P
      - adastra22 3y ago
        PayPal went down the embrace, extend, extinguish route. If it were possible for them to do the same with bitcoin, they would have.
    - wavewrangler 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - AlchemistCamp 3y ago
    I think getting to an IPO in any form during the wreckage of the Dotcom crash counts as an impressive success, even if their vision wasn't fully realized.
throwaway35i2 3y ago
Are you the sort of person that hires someone that can successfully organize a coup against corporate leadership? It feels like there is an impedance mismatch here.
- cdogl 3y ago
  If I'm confident in my competence and the candidate has a trustworthy and compelling narrative about how they undermined incompetent leadership to achieve a higher goal - yep, for sure.
  - Aloha 3y ago
    Also, ones persons incompetent is anothers performer. Like, being crosswise in organizational politics does not imply less of a devotion of organizational goals, but rather often simply different interpretation of those goals.
  - brandall10 3y ago
    But being in a situation where this was called for twice? That strikes me as someone who is either lacks the ability to do proper due diligence or they're straight up sociopaths looking for weak willed people they can strong arm out. Part of the latter is having the ability to create a compelling narrative for future marks, to put it bluntly.
- adastra22 3y ago
  I’ve hired people that were involved in palace coups at unicorn startups, twice. Justified or not, those coups set the company on a downward spiral it never recovered from. I’m not sure I can identify exactly who is liable to start a coup, but I know for sure that I would never, ever hire someone who I felt confident might go down that route. Startups die from suicide, not homicide.
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    > I’ve hired people that were involved in palace coups at unicorn startups, twice...I know for sure that I would never, ever hire someone who I felt confident might go down that route. So you hired coupers but you would never hire...coupers? Did you not know about their coups cuz that's the only way I can see that makes sense here. Could you clarify this, seems contradictory... Also, great quote about startup failure :)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ekianjo 3y ago
The regular HN commenter says "ceos are bad useless and get paid too much" but now when someone suggests getting rid of one of them suddenly its the end of the world
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  1. There's different people here with different opions. 2. CEO's at fast growing startups are very different than at large tech.
Aloha 3y ago
Why is there a presumption that it must take precedence over other work? I've run or defended against 'grassroots organizations transformations' (aka, a coup) at several non-profit organizations, and all of us continued to do our daily required tasks while the politicking was going on.
- emptysongglass 3y ago
  Because any defense of being able to orchestrate a professional coup and do your other work with the same zeal and focus as you did before fomenting rebellion I take as seriously as people who tell me they can multitask effectively. It's just not possible. We're limited in how much energy we can bring to daily work, that's a fact. If your brain is occupied both with dreams of king-making and your regular duties at the job, your mental bandwidth is compromised.
rand846633 3y ago
> If you're not happy with the way a company is doing business, your best action is to walk away. This makes no sense at all!
- gmassman 3y ago
  It makes the most sense if you value your own wellbeing over whatever “mission” a company is supposedly chasing.
chris_wot 3y ago
Are you responsible for hiring though?
digi59404 3y ago
Let me pose a theoretical. Let’s say you’re a VP or Senior Director. One of your sibling directors or VPs is over a department and field you have intimate domain knowledge. Meaning you have a successful track record in that field both from a management side and an IC side. Now, that sibling director allows a culture of sexual harassment, law breaking, and toxic throat slitting behavior. HR and the Organizations leadership is aware of this. However the company is profitable, outside his department happy, and stable. They don’t want to rock the boat. Is it still “the domain of the petty” to have a plan to replace them? To have formed relationships to work around them, and keep them in check? To have enacted policies outside their department to ensure the damage doesn’t spread? And most importantly to enact said replacement plan when they fuck up just enough leadership gives them the side-eye, and you push the issue with your documentation of their various grievances? Because that… is a coup. That is a coup that is atleast in my mind moral and just, leading to the betterment of the company. “Your best action is to walk away” - Good leadership doesn’t just walk away and let the company and employees fail. Not when there’s still the ability to effect positive change and fix the problems. Captains always evacuate all passengers before they leave the ship. Else they go down with it.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > “Your best action is to walk away” - Good leadership doesn’t just walk away and let the company and employees fail. Yes, exactly. In fact, it's corruption of leadership. If an engineer came to the leader about a critical technical problem and said, 'our best choice is to pretend it's not there', the leader would demand more of the engineer. At a place like OpenAI, they might remind the engineer that they are the world's top engineers at arguably the most cutting edge software organization in the world, and they are expected to deliver solutions to the hardest problems. Throwing your hands up and ignoring the problem is just not acceptable. Leaders need to demand the same of themselves, and one of their jobs is to solve the leadership problems that are just as difficult as those engineering problems - to deliver leadership results to the organization just like the engineer delivers engineering results, no excuses, no doubts. Many top-level leaders don't have anyone demanding performance of them, and don't hold themselves to the same standards in their job - leadership, management - as they hold their employees. > Not when there’s still the ability to effect positive change and fix the problems. Even there, I think you are going to easy on them. Only in hindsight do you maybe say, 'I don't see what could have been done.' At the moment, you say 'I don't see it yet, so I have to keep looking and innovating and finding a way'.
netaustin 3y ago
I feel like in the parent comment coup is sort of shorthand for the painful but necessary work of building consensus that it is time for new leadership. Necessary is in the eye of the beholder. These certainly can be petty when they are bald-faced power grabs, but they equally can be noble if the leader is a despot or a criminal. I would also not call Sam Altman's ouster a coup even if the board were manipulated into ousting him, he was removed by exactly the people who are allowed to remove him. Coups are necessarily extrajudicial.
- startupsfail 3y ago
  It also looks like Sam Altman was busy creating another AI company, along his creepy WorldCoin venture, wasteful crypto/bitcoin support and no less creepy stories of abuse coming from his younger sister. Work or transfer of intellectual property or good name into another venture, while not disclosing it with OpenAI is a clear breach of contract. He is clearly instrumental in attracting investors, talent, partners and commercialization of technology developed by Google Brain and pushed further by Hinton students and the team of OpenAI. But he was just present in the room where the veil of ignorance was pushed forward. He is replaceable and another leader, less creepy and with fewer conflicts of interest may do a better job. It it no surprise that OpenAI board had attempted to eject him. I hope that this attempt will be a success.

bear141 3y ago

I agree completely. People should oppose openly or leave.

andybak 3y ago
Aren't you taking sides in a fight without knowing which side was "right"? Or do you believe that loyalty trumps all other values? At this point I'm in danger of triggering Godwin's Law so I had better stop.
- bear141 3y ago
  My comment was phrased inappropriately.
oska 3y ago
As you are new here, I would urge you to read the site's Guidelines [1], which the tone & wording of your comment indicate you have not read. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bear141 3y ago
  Ok. Thank you.
- shippintoboston 3y ago
  [dead]

AlchemistCamp 3y ago

Max Levchin was an organizer of two coups while at PayPal. Both times, he believed it was necessary for the success of the company. Whether that was correct or not, they eventually succeeded and I don’t think the coups really hurt his later career.

adastra22 3y ago
PayPal had an exit, but it absolutely did not succeed in the financial revolution it was attempting. People forget now that OG PayPal was attempting the digital financial revolution that later would be bitcoin’s raison d'être.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Yep. PayPal was originally a lot like venmo (conceptually -- of course we didn't have phone apps then). It was a way for people to send each other money online.
  - Ar-Curunir 3y ago
    Good thing for PayPal that it now owns Venmo :P
    - adastra22 3y ago
      PayPal went down the embrace, extend, extinguish route. If it were possible for them to do the same with bitcoin, they would have.
  - wavewrangler 3y ago
    [flagged]
- AlchemistCamp 3y ago
  I think getting to an IPO in any form during the wreckage of the Dotcom crash counts as an impressive success, even if their vision wasn't fully realized.

throwaway35i2 3y ago

Are you the sort of person that hires someone that can successfully organize a coup against corporate leadership? It feels like there is an impedance mismatch here.

cdogl 3y ago
If I'm confident in my competence and the candidate has a trustworthy and compelling narrative about how they undermined incompetent leadership to achieve a higher goal - yep, for sure.
- Aloha 3y ago
  Also, ones persons incompetent is anothers performer. Like, being crosswise in organizational politics does not imply less of a devotion of organizational goals, but rather often simply different interpretation of those goals.
- brandall10 3y ago
  But being in a situation where this was called for twice? That strikes me as someone who is either lacks the ability to do proper due diligence or they're straight up sociopaths looking for weak willed people they can strong arm out. Part of the latter is having the ability to create a compelling narrative for future marks, to put it bluntly.
adastra22 3y ago
I’ve hired people that were involved in palace coups at unicorn startups, twice. Justified or not, those coups set the company on a downward spiral it never recovered from. I’m not sure I can identify exactly who is liable to start a coup, but I know for sure that I would never, ever hire someone who I felt confident might go down that route. Startups die from suicide, not homicide.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  > I’ve hired people that were involved in palace coups at unicorn startups, twice...I know for sure that I would never, ever hire someone who I felt confident might go down that route. So you hired coupers but you would never hire...coupers? Did you not know about their coups cuz that's the only way I can see that makes sense here. Could you clarify this, seems contradictory... Also, great quote about startup failure :)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ekianjo 3y ago

The regular HN commenter says "ceos are bad useless and get paid too much" but now when someone suggests getting rid of one of them suddenly its the end of the world

jonny_eh 3y ago
1. There's different people here with different opions. 2. CEO's at fast growing startups are very different than at large tech.

Aloha 3y ago

Why is there a presumption that it must take precedence over other work? I've run or defended against 'grassroots organizations transformations' (aka, a coup) at several non-profit organizations, and all of us continued to do our daily required tasks while the politicking was going on.

emptysongglass 3y ago
Because any defense of being able to orchestrate a professional coup and do your other work with the same zeal and focus as you did before fomenting rebellion I take as seriously as people who tell me they can multitask effectively. It's just not possible. We're limited in how much energy we can bring to daily work, that's a fact. If your brain is occupied both with dreams of king-making and your regular duties at the job, your mental bandwidth is compromised.

rand846633 3y ago

> If you're not happy with the way a company is doing business, your best action is to walk away. This makes no sense at all!

gmassman 3y ago
It makes the most sense if you value your own wellbeing over whatever “mission” a company is supposedly chasing.

chris_wot 3y ago

Are you responsible for hiring though?

digi59404 3y ago

Let me pose a theoretical. Let’s say you’re a VP or Senior Director. One of your sibling directors or VPs is over a department and field you have intimate domain knowledge. Meaning you have a successful track record in that field both from a management side and an IC side. Now, that sibling director allows a culture of sexual harassment, law breaking, and toxic throat slitting behavior. HR and the Organizations leadership is aware of this. However the company is profitable, outside his department happy, and stable. They don’t want to rock the boat. Is it still “the domain of the petty” to have a plan to replace them? To have formed relationships to work around them, and keep them in check? To have enacted policies outside their department to ensure the damage doesn’t spread? And most importantly to enact said replacement plan when they fuck up just enough leadership gives them the side-eye, and you push the issue with your documentation of their various grievances? Because that… is a coup. That is a coup that is atleast in my mind moral and just, leading to the betterment of the company. “Your best action is to walk away” - Good leadership doesn’t just walk away and let the company and employees fail. Not when there’s still the ability to effect positive change and fix the problems. Captains always evacuate all passengers before they leave the ship. Else they go down with it.

wolverine876 3y ago
> “Your best action is to walk away” - Good leadership doesn’t just walk away and let the company and employees fail. Yes, exactly. In fact, it's corruption of leadership. If an engineer came to the leader about a critical technical problem and said, 'our best choice is to pretend it's not there', the leader would demand more of the engineer. At a place like OpenAI, they might remind the engineer that they are the world's top engineers at arguably the most cutting edge software organization in the world, and they are expected to deliver solutions to the hardest problems. Throwing your hands up and ignoring the problem is just not acceptable. Leaders need to demand the same of themselves, and one of their jobs is to solve the leadership problems that are just as difficult as those engineering problems - to deliver leadership results to the organization just like the engineer delivers engineering results, no excuses, no doubts. Many top-level leaders don't have anyone demanding performance of them, and don't hold themselves to the same standards in their job - leadership, management - as they hold their employees. > Not when there’s still the ability to effect positive change and fix the problems. Even there, I think you are going to easy on them. Only in hindsight do you maybe say, 'I don't see what could have been done.' At the moment, you say 'I don't see it yet, so I have to keep looking and innovating and finding a way'.

netaustin 3y ago

I feel like in the parent comment coup is sort of shorthand for the painful but necessary work of building consensus that it is time for new leadership. Necessary is in the eye of the beholder. These certainly can be petty when they are bald-faced power grabs, but they equally can be noble if the leader is a despot or a criminal. I would also not call Sam Altman's ouster a coup even if the board were manipulated into ousting him, he was removed by exactly the people who are allowed to remove him. Coups are necessarily extrajudicial.

startupsfail 3y ago
It also looks like Sam Altman was busy creating another AI company, along his creepy WorldCoin venture, wasteful crypto/bitcoin support and no less creepy stories of abuse coming from his younger sister. Work or transfer of intellectual property or good name into another venture, while not disclosing it with OpenAI is a clear breach of contract. He is clearly instrumental in attracting investors, talent, partners and commercialization of technology developed by Google Brain and pushed further by Hinton students and the team of OpenAI. But he was just present in the room where the veil of ignorance was pushed forward. He is replaceable and another leader, less creepy and with fewer conflicts of interest may do a better job. It it no surprise that OpenAI board had attempted to eject him. I hope that this attempt will be a success.