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Unless you're willing to take a long look in the mirror and recognize that the primary fuckup here was in abusing someone's trust, I hope this story serves as a

Unless you're willing to take a long look in the mirror and recognize that the primary fuckup here was in abusing someone's trust, I hope this story serves as a cautionary tale to others. You can tell yourself whatever you want.

argumentum 14y ago
If what I've written over the past few days does not appear to be a long look in the mirror, I've not made myself clear enough. At the same time, abusing someone's trust implies intent to harm. If you actually read the emails, you can see that no where I deny the risk involved. I didn't hide anything about the company (or myself) hardly having an idea of what we were doing. But where there is risk, there is opportunity. That was the dream I sold to Patrick, not to fool him, but because it was my dream as well. I hardly see that as abusing trust.
- pfisch 14y ago
  It's kind of hard for me to believe you since I predicted what would happen so accurately from the email chain. Like how could you in good faith hire 8 people and then fire all of them in days. I mean honestly you only were hiring them for 3 months anyway. Did you hire them without having enough money to pay them for 2 months and no method of earning revenue? It seems like you made contracts in bad faith, and then did exactly what you told Patrick to do with his real internship offer. "When you signed the contract, you really believed that you wanted that job. Now you dont. Human being can change their mind, it's not ethically wrong to do so." This isn't right. That is not a reasonable or ethical way to treat employees, and from your emails it sounded pretty clear that you thought it was. This is why I thought you guys sounded sketch and that there was not enough trust to work for you. If that is your outlook on agreements/commitments then nothing would stop you from screwing over your employees, and employer's have many many opportunities to do so.
  - argumentum 14y ago
    Well, I am not the entire team. There was great disagreement amongst the co-founders, in fact I lost friendships as a result and (now) have left the company entirely. I was on the side of keeping everyone and involving them in coming up with a new idea. But that, my co-founders convinced me, and I actually now believe to be true, would be the worse ethical decision than simply being honest about the situation and helping the interns move on to opportunities where they could actually help build something and feel good about their summer. No, it wouldn't be ethical if we abandoned them, but that was far from the case. We made personal phone calls, emails and used our own networks to ensure everyone was taken care of with a better opportunity than we could offer at the time. During the transition of 2 weeks or so, all the interns continued to stay in our house, and a few stayed for free the whole summer. It was my pleasure to host the ones that stayed, and (they are well aware of this) when the day comes for them to do their own startup I will be the first person to offer social, emotional and (if capable) financial support form them to take their own risks and start their own adventures. For you to consider someone like Patrick, a brilliant kid in one of the most prestigious undergraduate programs in this country, to be incapable of making his own decisions is the real unethical position here. It's patronizing, it's demeaning.. and you ought to really think about what message you are sending. If the brightest kids (legally adults actually) in this country are not encouraged to look at the options that are available to them... to take risks because you really only get one chance at youth and at life.. that would be a real tragedy.
    - argumentum 14y ago
      A world where most fail and a few succeed brilliantly is a far better world than one where mediocre is the norm. Choose which world you want to live in, then make your argument to get there,

argumentum 14y ago

If what I've written over the past few days does not appear to be a long look in the mirror, I've not made myself clear enough. At the same time, abusing someone's trust implies intent to harm. If you actually read the emails, you can see that no where I deny the risk involved. I didn't hide anything about the company (or myself) hardly having an idea of what we were doing. But where there is risk, there is opportunity. That was the dream I sold to Patrick, not to fool him, but because it was my dream as well. I hardly see that as abusing trust.

pfisch 14y ago
It's kind of hard for me to believe you since I predicted what would happen so accurately from the email chain. Like how could you in good faith hire 8 people and then fire all of them in days. I mean honestly you only were hiring them for 3 months anyway. Did you hire them without having enough money to pay them for 2 months and no method of earning revenue? It seems like you made contracts in bad faith, and then did exactly what you told Patrick to do with his real internship offer. "When you signed the contract, you really believed that you wanted that job. Now you dont. Human being can change their mind, it's not ethically wrong to do so." This isn't right. That is not a reasonable or ethical way to treat employees, and from your emails it sounded pretty clear that you thought it was. This is why I thought you guys sounded sketch and that there was not enough trust to work for you. If that is your outlook on agreements/commitments then nothing would stop you from screwing over your employees, and employer's have many many opportunities to do so.
- argumentum 14y ago
  Well, I am not the entire team. There was great disagreement amongst the co-founders, in fact I lost friendships as a result and (now) have left the company entirely. I was on the side of keeping everyone and involving them in coming up with a new idea. But that, my co-founders convinced me, and I actually now believe to be true, would be the worse ethical decision than simply being honest about the situation and helping the interns move on to opportunities where they could actually help build something and feel good about their summer. No, it wouldn't be ethical if we abandoned them, but that was far from the case. We made personal phone calls, emails and used our own networks to ensure everyone was taken care of with a better opportunity than we could offer at the time. During the transition of 2 weeks or so, all the interns continued to stay in our house, and a few stayed for free the whole summer. It was my pleasure to host the ones that stayed, and (they are well aware of this) when the day comes for them to do their own startup I will be the first person to offer social, emotional and (if capable) financial support form them to take their own risks and start their own adventures. For you to consider someone like Patrick, a brilliant kid in one of the most prestigious undergraduate programs in this country, to be incapable of making his own decisions is the real unethical position here. It's patronizing, it's demeaning.. and you ought to really think about what message you are sending. If the brightest kids (legally adults actually) in this country are not encouraged to look at the options that are available to them... to take risks because you really only get one chance at youth and at life.. that would be a real tragedy.
  - argumentum 14y ago
    A world where most fail and a few succeed brilliantly is a far better world than one where mediocre is the norm. Choose which world you want to live in, then make your argument to get there,