
Firing People - jmduke
https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people
======
xiaoma
> _" I was informed 28 hours before my 90 day window closed that the agreement
> I had thought I had didn’t exist; it was then that I realized I had 28 hours
> to either come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars that I didn’t have
> to save half of my stock, or I could sign the agreement as-is and avoid
> losing half of my already-diminished stake. I opted to sign."_

This egregiously unethical and it's saddening to hear Github's leadership keep
sinking lower. What a way to treat literally the #1 contributor to
github/github, who gave half a decade of his life to the company.

Takeaway: don't join a startup as one of the first ten employees if you value
your financial future. Zach is living proof that even if you're a top
performer, you fully vest and the company becomes a unicorn, you still might
be broke afterwards.

~~~
sheepmullet
> Takeaway: don't join a startup as one of the first ten employees if you
> value your financial future.

It is the dirty little startup secret. Top performers who care about the
company/vision/product frequently get shafted.

The problem is they typically have significant leadership roles and have a lot
of emotional investment but they haven't negotiated leadership style exit
packages or any official power.

For example I was a top performer at company X ~10 years ago and I really
cared about the product and our customers. So when new senior management
started pushing a complete re-write of our systems into another language stack
I pushed back.

I argued it would cost $8-$10 million and give us minimal benefit. It wasn't
helping our product or our customers. I argued we should upgrade one part of
our system and measure the benefits etc.

And then... I was let go for poor performance (way to really stick it to me!).
They still haven't finished the rewrite but are still around and doing "ok" in
the market.

If I was a bit wiser and more mature I would have simply said "Great lets re-
write it" and used it as an opportunity to learn the new language and
ecosystem and then jump ship.

Now this happens in large corporations as well as startups... But the really
toxic part about startups is they go out of their way to hire and advertise to
top performers who buy into the product vision etc and then they shaft them.

~~~
lololomg
Great, let's rewrite it. We'll start with this piece here and get immediate
benefit without having to complete the entire rewrite first, and then we'll
decide which piece to do next!

------
gyardley
This was a fine read, and somewhat brave, because posting something like this
just invites a bunch of people to play the 'let me judge this person and
decide whether their firing was legitimate / their reaction to it was
appropriate' game, as if it was remotely any of their business.

The only part I disagreed with was the section on being truthful in internal
corporate communications. When it comes to firings, being discreet beats being
truthful. The only thing the vast majority of people at the company need to
know is that the fired person is no longer a coworker. Those who truly need to
know more than that probably already do - and if not, they can quietly be told
verbally.

Impenetrable corporate BS like "we had a very honest and productive
conversation with Zach this morning and decided it was best to part ways"
makes me think "oh good, the company is inclined to keep its mouth shut, and I
don't need to worry quite as much about defending my reputation." If I'm not
Zach but Zach's coworker, I think "whatever happened there (and if I really
want to know I can ask around), it's nice that the company's not shit-talking
him in public."

On the other hand, an honest internal email like "Greg was fired because he
had a fundamental disagreement with our engineering team about the interaction
between engineering and product management, and this lingering conflict led to
him phoning it in" (to use, like Zack, a complete hypothetical) makes me think
"great, I wonder who this is going to be forwarded to, and if the company will
be just as mouthy later on to outsiders."

You might disagree, but I'd take the corporate BS version every time.

~~~
malyk
The problem with this is that /someone/ knows why. And they'll mention half
the story to someone else. Then that person will mention mostly the same half
story and interject 10% more. And then the person who heard that will
completely mangle the whole thing. It's a game of telephone. Eventually the
rumor mill is super excited and has the completely wrong story which ends up
getting people all worked up about their place in the organization. The only
thing to do then is for the company to "come clean"...but then half the people
think they are just covering things up.

It's a tough balancing act, but you have to give your employees something or
they'll just go and make everything up themselves. It's really hard to put
that genie back in the bottle.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
In my experience, remaining employees talk for about a day, then forget the
fired person ever existed. And life goes on.

------
twoquestions
> If an employer has decided to fire you, then you’ve not only failed at your
> job, you’ve failed as a human being.

That was me, being a hateful little shitbird. Reading that is like seeing
myself in a photo of a lynching, gleefully pointing at the victim.

There's no excuse for posting like that, and I am ashamed for hurting you and
kicking you when you were down.

I hope the next time I'm tempted to post like that, someone serves me up a
knuckle sandwich before I hit the 'add comment' button.

I'm sorry.

~~~
holman
All is forgiven. :) Thanks.

------
joslin01
> I hadn’t been involved with the company at all for two months through my
> sabbatical, and I hadn’t even talked to my manager in four months, ever
> since she had decided that 1:1s weren’t really valuable between her and me.

> I’m still not fully certain why I got the axe ... My best guess is that it’s
> Tall Poppy Syndrome

Probably some signs here... I wouldn't say he was fired "fast" by any stretch
of the imagination.

I will explain what firing fast means to me. I get a lot of work done through
foreign devs I find on Upwork. I have to manage them closely, but overall, as
they become acclimated and trained, they become pretty self-reliant in about
2-3 months.

However, I have also invested plenty of time into bad apples hoping to train
their dev skills, teach them about our product, and all sorts of things only
to get random "hey I'm going away for couple weeks tomorrow" kind of messages
or a waning commitment to the project and quality of work.

Admittedly, I used to feel bad about firing people. I didn't care if they were
"just" some Upwork guys, I try to get everyone involved in my team and feel
like they're part of something. These days, I'm experienced enough to see the
warning signs and rather than mull over "should I do it?" I just fire them and
get onto hiring the next. I've never seen anyone turn around after warning
signs, and I've gone through enough "oh come on they're human too, let me try
to just understand their situation" moments to know it's a flawed manner of
thinking. This is why you "fire fast" and "hire slowly".

Business is business. It sucks to get fired, but it's worse for your business
to run on rusty cogs that can break at any moment.

~~~
curun1r
> Probably some signs here... I wouldn't say he was fired "fast" by any
> stretch of the imagination.

He didn't mention it, but there was political/PR situation that happened at
Github shortly before that and it's entirely conceivable that his firing was
Github distancing itself from him for that reason. It was his former partner
that was the center of the very public allegations of sexism at the company
and she had some none-too-flattering things to say, again publicly, about his
role in the matter.

As a manager, it wouldn't even cross my mind to fire someone that was
underperforming when they had previously been such a strong contributor
without at least first trying to figure out why the performance suffered.
Where I have been involved in such abrupt terminations, it's _always_ been
because of something unrelated to performance (sexual harassment, abusing the
corporate card, etc). The fact that he was never given an explanation from the
company only makes this explanation seem more likely.

~~~
gingerrr
I'm not sure the lack of an explanation from the company really means anything
here. Most companies, especially the more risk-averse, will not tell you why
you were let go unless there are clearly-documented performance milestones
that were missed (i.e. not meeting your PIP goals). It's a potential
liability, up to and including a lawsuit for wrongful termination, to justify
a firing in any recordable way unless they've been exceptionally judicious in
documenting cause.

~~~
jonnathanson
Yup. This is why you will rarely, if ever, get a detailed explanation for your
firing if you happen to be fired from somewhere. You might not get _any_
explanation.

Similarly, don't expect to get feedback from a potential hiring manager as to
why you didn't get a job you were interviewing for. Here, again, the company
faces liability risk, and usually prefers to offer no comment on the matter.

------
baldfat
> "I have fired people. It is brutal. I have been fired. It's worse. So
> managers, please: Never solicit sympathy for the pain of firing people."

I left a college I worked at because of this they fired 12 people in the
morning and called a all hands meeting at 3PM and said they were feeling
horrible and please pray for them. A) It was a complete surprise to anyone
that didn't know the actual numbers for incoming freshmen like I did. B) They
acted like they were the ones who were equal harmed by the firings.

So you fired 12 people "fast" and you then ask for sympathy? That was
September and I got the new job in May.

~~~
e40
More people than we care to admit, in our culture, have a huge empathy gap.
It's really quite troubling. Just look at the political landscape. Quite
scary.

------
Mithaldu
As a bit of perspective: I'm from germany and worker protection laws here are
really strong.

It is common in many companies for there to be a two-way 6 month
firing/quitting limititation, meaning: At the point the worker turns in their
quitting notification, they can make an agreement with the company to be let
go earlier, or the company can insist on them staying the full term. Similarly
when letting a worker go, the company has to let them know 6 months before
that, though the worker can agree to leave earlier.

Of course faster firings are possible as well, with "immediately" usually
reserved for "breaking a law". Additionally workers can be let go early for
performance reasons, but only after three separate, paper-trailed
notifications of such issues. Additionally, those are unlikely to be trivial,
since a worker can sue their company for the remaining wage, if fired
unfairly, and if successful the company will have to pay all legal bills of
both sides.

This means that both sides here tend to make a lot of effort to avoid firings.
The company because it's just easier to help an employee improve, and the
worker because they'll see it coming.

I've been in the situation myself where a company expected certain things of
me, that just didn't fit my nature and health. We tried to improve things
informally for a while and i kept failing. Then we had a serious talk and
agreed that things wouldn't work like that, and now i contract for them, with
both sides being very happy.

\--

An important contrast between that, and the american system, is that i knew at
every single point exactly how far away i was from being fired. Due to the
wording of my contract, i was at all times, right up to the end, exactly 3
months away from being fired, at least. My livelihood was never in danger, and
i was given plenty motivation to help both myself and my company, instead of
being put into an adversarial situation.

~~~
13of40
> the company can insist on them staying the full term

What happens if they quit showing up for work?

~~~
Mithaldu
I honestly do not know, and find it hard to research on what actually happens
in that case. I presume the employer would be able to successfully sue for
damages of some kind, which would be dangerous for the worker if at fault, due
to the duty to pay legal fees.

It is rather rare a case.

------
MrAlmostWrong
> More than once I had been confusingly introduced as a founder or CEO of the
> company. That, in part, was how I ultimately was able to sneak into the
> Andreessen Horowitz corporate apartments and stayed there rent-free for
> sixteen months. I currently have twelve monogrammed a16z robes in my
> collection, and possibly was involved in mistakenly giving the greenlight to
> a Zenefits employee who came by asking if they could get an additional key
> to the stairwell for a… meeting.

This seems unethical.

~~~
fmela
I think the bit about the Zenefits employee is a reference to the "no more sex
in the stairwell" memo sent by their former CEO.

------
imgabe
_If an employer has decided to fire you, then you’ve not only failed at your
job, you’ve failed as a human being._

Damn, that's a downright toxic attitude. I've never been fired, but nobody
should consider their job a measure of their worth as a human being.

~~~
harryh
Why not? My job isn't my _only_ worth as a human being, but it's certainly a
pretty big portion of it. I spend approximately 25% of my time working. If I'm
not accomplishing something meaningful in those hours, then something is
definitely wrong.

~~~
kasey_junk
Because firing decisions get made all the time absent details about the human
behind it. I was there when a team that was better at their job than another
one at every measure was let go because of their lease terms.

~~~
harryh
Oh I agree with you about firing. It's a fuzzy measure of your job performance
for sure. I've been fired before. Had something to do with me, something to do
with them. Was what it was.

My point was more responding to imgabe saying "nobody should consider their
job a measure of their worth as a human being." I think work matters.

------
catfest
Look, I'm all for Zach writing about his experience, but I never see him
mention the whole incident with Julie Ann Horvath which is what I understand
to be the reason he was fired.

Is there a reason he can't talk about what happened there?

~~~
virtuexru
Can you expand on this at all?

~~~
unfunco
Zach mentions his being fired as one of the top stories on Hacker News; Julie
Ann Horvath is probably somewhere on that list too.

[http://www.inc.com/abigail-tracy/github-julie-ann-horvath-
hr...](http://www.inc.com/abigail-tracy/github-julie-ann-horvath-hr.html)

~~~
virtuexru
Interesting read. Thanks.

------
planetjones
The two most striking points to me were a company where the employer can call
the employee an asshole in front of HR. And a company where one employee hugs
other employees, including those who just fired him. It sounds like a very
difficult place to set or maintain boundaries.

~~~
fapjacks
To be honest, it feels like Github is a big social experiment (or game)
masquerading as a company. I feel like going to work there would be to
implicitly agree to be part of those experiments, and that -- exactly as you
mention -- it would be hard to discover the rules of the game and even harder
to continually abide by them while maintaining any sort of sense of
individuality. I interview for fun in my spare time, and every once in a while
I am invited to interview at a company that breeds a Borg-like hivemind which
seems to consume all traces of individuality for whatever reason (usually I
think this boils down to a volatile management environment). Google is one of
those companies. Whisper (the "anonymous" social network) is another. And
Github feels like it would easily reign supreme in that respect. I would not
feel comfortable being myself in that environment for fear of breaking these
unknowable boundaries, and it would affect my work.

------
tyre
A great overview on everything that happened, with the exception of the
reasoning behind "Fire fast."

It isn't about churning and burning through people. This isn't about "move
fast and break people." As a CEO that has had to fire employees, there is
literally nothing more difficult. I'm not asking for sympathy, just
communicating that nothing is more important in terms of a company's health
and success than the people. I agree that managers don't deserve sympathy.
They asked for or accepted the responsibility to manage people and now it's
time to put up or shut up.

Firing quickly is partly about the company, but it is also respectful to the
employee. If you know it isn't going to work out, don't waste their time. How
many people do you know how have been in romantic relationships that dragged
out for too long? Where they knew it wouldn't work out but kept the hope
alive?

Everyone loses. It sucks. People are both immensely rewarding and Really
Fucking Hard.

The reason people say Fire Fast is that new managers (in my experience and
that of close mentors to me) _almost never_ fire too quickly. Very often, they
either make excuses for the employee or are afraid that firing is their fault.
A lot of times it is.

Look, if you hire someone for a role and have to fire them, that is your
fault. 100%. And it is gut-wrenching to think you built someone up, got them
to quit another job, had them tell their friends and family how excited they
were, then forcing them to go back and say "oh yeah, I got fired and now you
think I'm a failure."

But if you are the manager and you know it isn't going to work, you owe it to
the employee, to yourself, and (especially) to everyone at the company to not
drag things out.

## On Zach

Github is changing and he didn't fit in with its future. They took a tone of
investment and needed to be a different company. Whether that is the right or
wrong strategy isn't the point (and I have no idea.) They needed people who
were on board with that and believed (probably correctly) that he wouldn't be.
It's not an easy decision, and everyone involved knows it could have gone down
better, but it also could have been much worse.

~~~
cldellow
> Firing quickly is partly about the company, but it is also respectful to the
> employee.

This a thousand times. Under Microsoft's brutal stack rank system, I chatted
with a peer who saw me as a good source of career advice. This fellow was not
performing very well in his current team. His management had given up on him
and IMO his peers didn't see him as a leader. Whether it was his skills or his
environment that led to this situation, the environment was definitely no
longer there for him to improve or gain responsibility.

His read of the situation was totally different. He was seeking increased
responsibility in the team and had a promotion goal he was targeting. This was
lunacy. His past 3 annual reviews had been the lowest score possible. If his
manager was following policy, he would have been fired a long time ago, not
kept on as a sacrificial lamb for the stack rank gods.

There's a lot of gray area, obviously, but I shared your feeling that "fire
fast" was misrepresented here.

------
wambotron
I'm in a situation now where I was one of the first five (#5, to be precise)
employees at a startup. I told them what I needed to get as a salary, and I
didn't cut it down for the sake of hoping to cash out later. I got less stock
than I could've, but that money (if it ever exists), is more of a bonus to me
than anything.

I can't afford to go out on a limb for a startup or to hope for some big pay
day. I'm a single earner in a family of five and I can't just make my kids
stop eating and growing because I want to get some stock options.

I would suggest anyone thinking of working at a startup keeps their regular
salary in mind as what you need/want, and think of stock as a bonus later that
probably will NOT ever come.

Stock is a nice carrot to dangle if you're a stingy employer (or one who
refuses to pay folks' worth), but it shouldn't be considered as part of your
compensation if you're a lowly employee like myself.

~~~
mathattack
Very well written. Stock options don't pay for the groceries. My landlord
doesn't take a potential bonus as a reason for not paying rent.

You need to be able to find a way to make ends meet with just base salary.

------
kafkaesq
_I was in Colorado at the time, but agreed to meet up and have a video chat
about things. When I jumped on the call, I noticed that — surprise! — someone
from HR was on the call as well._

It's always an onerous sign when HR "joins you" for a call or an in-person
meeting.

But when the person inviting you doesn't _tell you in advance_ that they'd
like to have their pal from HR join in? That's a pretty solid indication that
not only is the chat not going the be particularly fun. They've pretty much
reached a certain "disconnect" stage with you already, and are already in the
mindset of going over your head -- and beyond caring how disconcerting this
may be for you, or how you might react.

As a prerequisite to excreting you out of their system more formally and
definitively, shortly thereafter.

------
13of40
> Fire fast

It's been my experience that people who are on the path to getting fired turn
hostile either to their direct management or to the company, and keeping them
around after that is a net-negative for the team. Once you've decided to fire
someone, you should do it as fast as you legally can.

------
maherbeg
This is an excellent multi-faceted view of getting fired.

>Don’t talk to HR.

This is so true in the firing case. But do remember, as a regular employee, HR
can be extremely helpful. When I took a Leave of Absence for a health issue,
HR was so incredibly helpful and empathetic to help me get back on my feet and
return with a smooth transition on both ends.

On the other side, having mentored a lot of people at my previous job who were
on PiPs/cusp of getting fired...they are definitely not your friend and their
first order of business is to protect the company.

Get everything in writing, emails etc should be printed out.

------
palakchokshi
I think the author is taking firing too personally. His rant about "Fire fast"
seems to indicate that people who fire employees are somehow devoid of empathy
for the person. Fire fast does not mean you fire at the first instance that
someone didn't agree with your opinion or some trivial reason like that. Fire
fast means if you notice a general trend with the person that is harmful to
the company or the team then stop giving the person chances and fire them. I
think the sentiment is expressed very well by the culture doc by Netflix. [1]

It's not personal!! Don't take it personally! Unless of course it was
personal.

[1][http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/23-Were_a...](http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/23-Were_a_team_not_a)

~~~
jmduke
One of the big positions of this article is that despite employers' insistence
that "firing isn't personal", employees will take firing personally and it
negatively impacts them and can negatively impact the company's culture.
Saying "no it doesn't, don't take it personally" isn't really a
counterargument.

~~~
palakchokshi
It doesn't affect the company's culture if the employee chooses to take the
firing personally. In the end if there is a valid reason for firing someone
then from a company's perspective it doesn't matter to the company how it
affects the employee fired.

Additionally this article just talks from the author's viewpoint so we really
don't know exactly why he was fired. If you read the post it would seem like
the CEO told him he can take a sabbatical and his manager told him don't come
back. There is a huge disconnect somewhere that we are not being told about.
If the author's behavior prior to leaving for sabbatical was toxic to the team
the company shouldn't be responsible for taking care of his feelings and
emotional state on being fired.

I'm not saying being fired doesn't suck as an employee but expecting the
company to take care of you as you are being fired or afterwards is kind of
naive and a little self-centric in my opinion.

~~~
sheepmullet
> It doesn't affect the company's culture if the employee chooses to take the
> firing personally

When you fire a highly productive team member it will almost certainly mess
with the companies culture. If that team member was "fired incorrectly" and
talks to the rest of the team about it productivity and culture will take a
beating.

As soon as I see a good team mate fired I start looking for a new job.

~~~
palakchokshi
Without finding out "why" he/she was fired? A highly productive team member
can also be a toxic team member if they make members of the team uncomfortable
or is a bully or condescending or.... or....

However your point is well taken in the sense that if the employee does take
it personally and then spins a tale, in front of the team, that makes them
look innocent and paint the company as vindictive or unreasonable, then yes it
would affect team morale but that is easily remedied by managers being candid.
We are actually going through a similar situation right now where I work so
this topic is very timely.

~~~
sheepmullet
> Without finding out "why" he/she was fired?

If management give a good reason and they have put in place measures to reduce
fallout then I'll consider staying.

One question I always ask is what work are we dropping out of scope?

I'm currently working in a team of 5. We have two high performers and three
average performers (I'm one of the average performers). The top performers do
~60% of the work.

If management doesn't plan on descoping 30%+ of the work for the next 3-6
months then it means an extra 10+ hours of work each week for me.

Realistically it's an extra 120-240 hours all up. I freelance at ~$100/hr so
that's a cost of $12-24k.

So yeah if they have punched or sexually assaulted a colleague etc then I'll
just put up with the cost.

If they make someone feel uncomfortable or are a bit condescending and you
fire fast then I'm going to be looking for a new job.

------
jasode
_> What the shit does that even mean, fire fast? Should I fire people four
minutes after I hire them? That’ll show ‘em!_

My suggestion is to remove all sentences like the above from the essay. The
"four minutes" sounds juvenile or coy (or combination of both).

Are there reasonable adults out there who have _no idea_ what the " _fast_ "
in " _fire fast_ " actually means? If not, don't insult your audience with a
caricature. Demonstrate that you have some perspective so readers can focus on
the stronger parts of your commentary.

The essay is almost 10,000 words long and stumbling across that sentence
doesn't entice me to commit the time and read the rest of it.

~~~
archemike_
Well I'll take a reasonable attempt. Have done a firing like this in the real
world as well.

Fire fast when a few things happen, such as when energy belief and overall
personality inertia has lowered of an employee where their fire has diminished
for one reason or another then you should get them fired and replaced as soon
as possible to not allow that to affect others on the team. This can be for a
number of reasons and the signs will be clear and instead of saying "oh gee
he'll turn around" just fire fast stoicly and move on. The fire fast is a very
unemotional philosophy where as a leader you view the team as a chain and
weakest links must be cut out and a new one placed.

Fire fast is not at all indicative of what the term entails and you can't
really deduce anything from that as the right deduction is what you said, fire
right after hiring! But what I think the rational interpretation is; is to
fire as soon as there are negative connotations being exhibited by a team
member and instead of wondering if it'll change execute an order to fix it
asap. I would also say fast can mean set guidelines and expecations and
transparent ways to reinstill vigor into an individual. I think fire fast has
an unquantified blowback where someone who could be good( even "10X" ) is
fired prematurely and they could have been someone worth multiples of their
salary in output for a company but were fired for internal reasons (Your
policies and docs suck).

------
baus
Maybe one reason the author is depressed and seems a bit aimless is that when
you put the kind of energy into a company, which I'm sure he did at GitHub,
then the relationship grows beyond something simple like employee/employer and
closer to family.

When the relationship falls apart, for whatever reason, it is like getting a
divorce. I spent most of my career at one company, and when I decided to
leave, dealing with that separation was a lot harder than I thought it would
be.

------
hooloovoo_zoo
Can someone please summarize this? I can't get past his rambling style.

~~~
jonnathanson
Zach was fired from GitHub last year, after which he published a few tweets
and a blog post that got a great deal of attention here. Now he is revisiting
the situation, both to mine lessons from it and to make peace with it.

There is some room for agreement or disagreement with Zach's characterization
of the circumstances, as indicated by many of the comments on this thread.
Regardless, I think it's a worthwhile and interesting read.

------
harryh
Denial is a hell of a drug.

------
joshmanders
Great article Zach, really resonated with me. I too was fired from a company I
helped build. I was employee number 4, and the only non-cofounder to have
equity. You're damn right on the phrase "If you don't own the company, the
company owns you"

------
EugeneOZ
When every company in web dev is yelling "we are firing" on each corner, I
don't understand such extreme feelings about being fired. Couple of weeks and
you are hired again, calm down.

------
dawhizkid
Why didn't he sign an 83b when he joined? That's a must when you join an early
stage startup!

~~~
phonon
Because he got ISO style options, and not restricted stock (which is what an
83b affects). Those options have an exercise price (that he could not afford).

------
joesmo
"Even though I helped move a company’s valuation almost two billion dollars, I
haven’t made a dime from the company outside of making a pretty below-to-
average salary. That’s after six years."

Pretty much sums up most startup experiences in the area.

------
yuhong
I have been thinking about Yishan-style CEOs for a while now, and I would like
to fix the problems with firing this way.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Isn't Zach Holman the guy about whom was written "He ... even admitted to
plotting with Theresa Preston-Werner to get women at the company fired."

~~~
ryanSrich
Where was this quote pulled from? Can't find it via Google search.

~~~
etjossem
In an interview of Julie Ann Horvath by a Valleywag reporter: "@Holman is my
ex-partner. He was complicit in the actions of both Tom and Theresa Preston-
Werner and even admitted to plotting with Theresa Preston-Werner to get women
at the company fired. He should be let go from GitHub and I regret being kind
to him in previous interviews." [1]

[1] [http://valleywag.gawker.com/ims-and-email-support-
allegation...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/ims-and-email-support-allegations-
about-the-toxic-cultu-1567175545)

~~~
etjossem
(By the way, I don't have an informed perspective on this - I just remember
the source. Holman says elsewhere in this thread "It didn't have anything to
do with my departure, nor is it my story to tell.")

------
fideloper
This is getting prematurely buried

------
mikestew
_That, in part, was how I ultimately was able to sneak into the Andreessen
Horowitz corporate apartments and stayed there rent-free for sixteen months. I
currently have twelve monogrammed a16z robes in my collection_

At which point what little sympathy I might had for the author vanished,
unless I missed the part that explains why this isn't just outright thievery.
And then to publicly admit that if it's not nailed down, you'll steal it.
Yeah, "tall poppy syndrome", that must be it. You were just too good for this
world.

Besides, do I want to take advice from someone with such large blinders on?
Yes, HR joins video conferences because they want to personally thank you for
your outstanding work. Be careful at train crossings, Zach, because if you
didn't see this metapohorical train coming with it's lights and horn ablazin',
you might not see a real one.

~~~
holman
I'm really not even sure a16z _has_ corporate apartments. It's just poking a
little fun in the middle of a dreary subject. I don't even own a single robe,
much less twelve, although I'd be into it.

~~~
mikestew
Fair enough. I don't really get the joke, but that's on me for not reading the
article word-for-word.

