Nobody is perfect. Be it life or work, we all do mistakes. It is easy to disillusion ourselves or justify ourselves, that others were right. In this occasion, it is probably easy for Noah to relate to few things that didn't go well and assume them as reasons for getting fired.
If Mark Zuckerberg used this tactic so that he could have more value for his stocks at the end of the day, then it is quite a disgusting one. I have great respect for Mark. I hope it is not true.
If so many people were fired, then clearly there was a problem with hiring the right people.
I think the most important property of a good leader is behave like an umbrella. Guard the shit and magnify the happiness. If someone takes the stance of firing employees to justify dilution then, in my not so humble opinion, they dont deserve to lead.
>Nobody is perfect. Be it life or work, we all do mistakes.
And be man enough to own up, learn from the mistake and don't repeat it again.
>If Mark Zuckerberg used this tactic so that he could have more value for his stocks at the end of the day, then it is quite a disgusting one. I have great respect for Mark. I hope it is not true.
"I'm a CEO, bitch". Does that sound familiar? The whole of Facebook works with the preamble of "Mark is always right". That sounds more like a dictator than a founder. And a dictator is only interested in his own interests.
>If so many people were fired, then clearly there was a problem with hiring the right people.
Or, the founder just wanted to get work by paying less. Ideally these people should have been hired as contractors. But the founder decided to create an illusion of a long term commitment to compromise on the Cost to the Company.
Disclaimer: I had worked for Facebook, got fed up with the idiocy and resigned after 3 months.
I seriously doubt this is the reason. Doesn't Noah own like 80-90% of that business, and any one superstar employee is maybe looking at 1% or less in equity.
So you're saying Noah would burn people to pick up rounding-error-level equity? I don't buy it.
There may be other untoward reasons for firing people, but hoarding equity is not one of them. More likely he realized the people he hired don't operate at the level he wanted or he decided he can't afford their above market salary. Salary is a FAR more likely reason, especially because AppSumo is so capital efficient.
That Noah fired some people who may or may not have deserved it. Happens every day. Anyone on HN who builds a company of any size will probably have employees mad at them for doing the same.
Employment is a MARKET. Both parties are "at will"...
If an employee quits without a good reason, is that scummy?
Should the scumminess of it depend on how it "affects" the COMPANY?
People quit every day to earn 10% more across the street, work with better technology, walk away from technical debt, shorten their commute, get away from a dreary office or smelly coworkers. Whatever.
There's no morality in it, good or bad. And employers should feel free to fire people who aren't fitting and/or cannot be kept for whatever reason.
As far as I can tell, that's the AppSumo situation. If you want to call that "scummy" feel free, but I don't see any logic in it.
That said, I learned early on in my career that you can't make mistakes or have bad optics with people's comp. There's no way to recover from a mistake like that, and people do not give you the benefit of the doubt.
What's the real story here? Your comment comes off more like a bitter ex-employee than someone who's qualified to judge Noah's moral compass from a blog post and anonymous rumor about AppSumo.
Disclosure: I count Noah as a good friend.
1. the rumor is, until verified, a rumor.
2. Basing a judgement about one's moral compass on a rumor about firing half the company (even if it's true) and blog post is a classic example of a Fundamental attribution error.
2) see 1)
Can't you easily verify either of these for us?
Email him.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Because Cushman pointed out that a compass tends to have two points, he has received several downvotes. He's got, surprisingly, more than one person suggesting that he should be fired. Where does that even come from? Why is someone being a little pedantic on a web forum cause to tell them they shouldn't have a job?
Especially when he's right: compasses can point both directions. He didn't attack anyone and say they should be fired, he didn't accuse someone of being a "rhetoric astronaut". What's the value in being so hurtful? Most surprising of all is that so many people jumped in. Like they were just waiting to make fun of someone on the internet.
I'd love to see attacks at people stop happening here, because good discussions do still occur. But my remarks are just more reactionary bullshit, I guess. Maybe I should be fired too.
It does seems like an interesting little pattern on HN, though. I've found I tend to get the most upvotes for expressing the strongest opinions, even "controversial" ones. Maybe it goes against the conventional wisdom, but usually, when I get downvoted, it's not because I've said something unpopular, but because I've said something mildly challenging, but otherwise completely blasé-- like pointing out that there's nothing privileged about the north pole of a dipole magnet. (It's the sort of thing liberal arts grads love to talk about, I'm not surprised it doesn't play well here.)
Normally, of course, there'll be a downvote or two and that's that. On the extreme end, you'll see this strange phenomenon where something is so insultingly boring that it necessitates a whole comment thread complaining about it. I actually find it really fascinating.
He is being downvoted because obviously none of this has any to do with an actual compass and is merely adding noise to the discussion.
well, that's because his comment, though superficially relevant, was actually pure noise. there was no compass involved to have two points; the term was being used metaphorically, and everyone (cushman included) knew what it meant.
"Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like "Napster is a peer-to-peer service for downloading music" and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it's interesting because it's peer to peer, completely missing the point that it's interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away."
Yes there might be two points on your compass but the "interesting" point is the one that's drawn to the magnetic pole of the planet. Cushman, you're a rhetoric astronaut.
(Now I suspect the bit about the level of discourse does apply; I was well-aware of magnetic polarity in 1st grade, and polarity itself defines there being two ends...)
Nerds, each of us. I say that affectionately but man I regret answering theorique's question.
And the pedantic-bs-to-save-some-face-of-the-day award, goes to...
This is the precise reason I work as an independent contractor for companies and explicitly make an effort not to get into an employment.
Honestly, I think finance is better. The money's better, the work is about the same in quality, and if you stick to the quantitative stuff, the people are a lot more ethical in finance.
Yesterday, he fired half of AppSumo, despite the company is profitable and growing.
Here is Noah's m.o. with AppSumo:
1) Attract and hire people by paying them above market salary and promising equity.
2) New employees grow the company by building systems, automating inefficient processes, creating new lines of business, etc.
3) Once systems are built and operating efficiently; fire staff before equity vests.
4) Rinse, repeat, wash.
Entrepreneurs like this give startups a bad name. It's sad to see so many people celebrate him as a startup role model.
The reason he was fired from Facebook because he leaked internal features to the press and blogged about them. Yet he still seems unapologetic "I don’t think what I did was that wrong since the marketing team did not do anything to promote our new features."
Clearly this guy's moral compass points south.