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I feel like my work isn't done. The truth needs to be told, and unfortunately, very few people have the courage to tell it, especially under their real names.

I feel like my work isn't done. The truth needs to be told, and unfortunately, very few people have the courage to tell it, especially under their real names. No, I don't dislike all founders or VCs obviously. I just hate most of the ones I've interacted with, and I'm shocked by the number of people who've had similarly horrible experiences. When I left my last startup after being asked to do something horribly unethical, in March 2012, I thought I'd been extremely unlucky. I thought my experience was a 1-in-10,000 case of bad luck. As I poked around, though, I realized that horrible experiences are the norm in VC-istan. People just don't talk about it. Why the fuck aren't they speaking up? Why aren't they exposing unethical people and companies? Why are people so terrified of ex-bosses that they refuse to tell the truth so the horrible founders can fail and some good ones can step in? I've managed to put cracks in the image of VC-istan. My job is to make those cracks bigger so some light can get through. At least some of the climate of anger that's been on Hacker News for the past few months is something I've started. Good for me. I'm starting to contribute. Courage is in rare supply in our industry; we tend to bend over and take it when our masters screw us. Well, at least I will fucking speak up. So, I've also worked in finance. As an industry, it has an image problem. To get smart people, it has to pay. So it does. Most of the work isn't terribly interesting, but the pay is good and the people are actually a lot more decent than in VC-istan. If you're good, they'll treat you well. In general, financial firms are a lot better, ethically speaking, than VC-istan. If we can bring VC-istan's image in line with what it actually is, then they'll have to (like finance) start treating engineers better if they want to get talent, and the bad startups will die out, making room for good ones.

textminer 14y ago
I find your comments to be spectacularly useful. I'm a twenty something machine learning developer with a functional bent and high expectations for rewarding stimulation in VC-land, and you've recapitulated many of my own thoughts and conclusions spectacularly well. Would you mind if I bent your ear about a dilemma over private channels?
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  You might be better off asking someone who has accomplished more than blog posts and hn comments. Sounding like you know what you're talking about and actually knowing it are not always the same. Results are often a better signal of the latter. Just my 2c.
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    On the other hand, only talking to those who have been wildly successful, or giving their advice more weight, sounds like a great way to get trapped by confirmation and survivorship bias.
    - jamesaguilar 14y ago
      Good point. But if I were looking for an unsuccessful person to get advice from, I'd pick someone who looked within for mistakes/opportunities for improvement, rather than exclusively blaming external factors.
      - nitrogen 14y ago
        Even if they are largely external, we can't say that michaelochurch hasn't been providing suggestions for improvement. His overall message doesn't strike me as complaining just to complain, even if some of his individual posts are a bit over the top.
        jamesaguilar 14y ago
        His overall message is how companies and management can improve -- advice for a position he's never been in and has no experience with. If he's said things that represent a serious acknowledgement of his own shortcomings as an employee -- i.e. a frank discussion of why such a high proportion of his employment experiences have been bad compared to typical HNers or engineers -- I'm not aware of them. He seems to be fairly self-congratulatory on that front, which is at odds with the results so far.
mindcrime 14y ago
FWIW, I enjoy your posts very much as well. I don't always agree with everything you say, but I often agree with much of it. And even where I disagree, it's where I sometimes think you are guilty of over-generalizing. Keep it up. The world needs more people who are willing to shed the light on unpopular truths, speak their minds, and say things most other people won't say.
brandnewlow 14y ago
This post is problematic on several levels. 1. You call founders and VCs rapists and slaveowners. "We tend to bend over and take it when our masters screw us." Do you know founders who literally own their employees? Do you know founders who have literally raped their employees? Of course not. You're trying to score points through lazy writing. Citation needed. 2. You state that developers lack courage. Citation needed. 3. You spend most of the comment writing in the first person singular and then switch to the first person plural in the last paragraph as a rhetorical trick to elicit a sense of solidarity in the reader. This is manipulative. 4. You state that you had a bad experience about a year ago and say that you thought it was a 1-in-10,000 case, but then after you "poked around" you found out it was "the norm", i.e. 1-in-1. This is a ludicrous statement. How can you know what the norm is after poking around? Did you talk to 100 people? The other 9,999? There are actual people out there conducting surveys on things like this. Are you one of them? Citation needed. You are not contributing. You are not doing a job. You are fearmongering, aggressively and perniciously. Certainly there are bad actors and bad players in "tech". But simply stating that "horrible experiences are the norm" over and over and over again does not make it true. It's lazy writing.

textminer 14y ago

I find your comments to be spectacularly useful. I'm a twenty something machine learning developer with a functional bent and high expectations for rewarding stimulation in VC-land, and you've recapitulated many of my own thoughts and conclusions spectacularly well. Would you mind if I bent your ear about a dilemma over private channels?

jamesaguilar 14y ago
You might be better off asking someone who has accomplished more than blog posts and hn comments. Sounding like you know what you're talking about and actually knowing it are not always the same. Results are often a better signal of the latter. Just my 2c.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  On the other hand, only talking to those who have been wildly successful, or giving their advice more weight, sounds like a great way to get trapped by confirmation and survivorship bias.
  - jamesaguilar 14y ago
    Good point. But if I were looking for an unsuccessful person to get advice from, I'd pick someone who looked within for mistakes/opportunities for improvement, rather than exclusively blaming external factors.
    - nitrogen 14y ago
      Even if they are largely external, we can't say that michaelochurch hasn't been providing suggestions for improvement. His overall message doesn't strike me as complaining just to complain, even if some of his individual posts are a bit over the top.
      - jamesaguilar 14y ago
        His overall message is how companies and management can improve -- advice for a position he's never been in and has no experience with. If he's said things that represent a serious acknowledgement of his own shortcomings as an employee -- i.e. a frank discussion of why such a high proportion of his employment experiences have been bad compared to typical HNers or engineers -- I'm not aware of them. He seems to be fairly self-congratulatory on that front, which is at odds with the results so far.

mindcrime 14y ago

FWIW, I enjoy your posts very much as well. I don't always agree with everything you say, but I often agree with much of it. And even where I disagree, it's where I sometimes think you are guilty of over-generalizing. Keep it up. The world needs more people who are willing to shed the light on unpopular truths, speak their minds, and say things most other people won't say.

brandnewlow 14y ago

This post is problematic on several levels. 1. You call founders and VCs rapists and slaveowners. "We tend to bend over and take it when our masters screw us." Do you know founders who literally own their employees? Do you know founders who have literally raped their employees? Of course not. You're trying to score points through lazy writing. Citation needed. 2. You state that developers lack courage. Citation needed. 3. You spend most of the comment writing in the first person singular and then switch to the first person plural in the last paragraph as a rhetorical trick to elicit a sense of solidarity in the reader. This is manipulative. 4. You state that you had a bad experience about a year ago and say that you thought it was a 1-in-10,000 case, but then after you "poked around" you found out it was "the norm", i.e. 1-in-1. This is a ludicrous statement. How can you know what the norm is after poking around? Did you talk to 100 people? The other 9,999? There are actual people out there conducting surveys on things like this. Are you one of them? Citation needed. You are not contributing. You are not doing a job. You are fearmongering, aggressively and perniciously. Certainly there are bad actors and bad players in "tech". But simply stating that "horrible experiences are the norm" over and over and over again does not make it true. It's lazy writing.