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.
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.