
Upload: Lurid Lawsuit’s Quiet End Leaves Startup Barely Dented - corvallis
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/technology/lurid-lawsuits-quiet-end-leaves-silicon-valley-start-up-barely-dented.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
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SeanBoocock
I often hear investors framing their investment decisions in terms of the team
as much or more than the product. I would hope that investors recognize that
the sort of alleged behavior and culture at Upload is both wrong and poisonous
to building a company that can scale. Investors should do more due diligence
and counseling around creating a healthy company culture lest any traction be
undermined by becoming known as a bad actor, reducing your talent pool as a
result, lawsuits, etc.

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comstock
Yes, but in my experience it's just talk.

What they actually mean by "team" is have the founders previously founded a
successful startup, or been involved in one. That's it.

I'd love to hear other opinions, but that's my experience talking to VCs. They
rarely ask detailed team questions, or get to know the team. They ask tech and
market questions mostly...

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jonnathanson
Team is basically code for what I will call the Three P's: pedigree, pattern,
and proof.

* Pedigree: Do you have a track record in this domain? Have you been involved in success stories before? If nothing else, do you check the requisite Stanford/Google/Facebook/Apple boxes?

* Pattern: Does this team more or less resemble successful teams the VC has seen before?

* Proof: Who is vouching for this team? Who else is interested in this deal?

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KKKKkkkk1
> Across the tech industry, sexual harassment appears to be ingrained. While
> the research is largely anecdotal and fragmentary, Chloe Hart, a Ph.D.
> candidate in sociology at Stanford University, said the subject came up
> often in 27 in-depth interviews she had with female engineers about their
> social interactions at work.

This article is spinning a narrative that sexual harassment and discrimination
in Silicon Valley are so widespread and endemic that we need a fresh start.
All based on one sociology grad student's unpublished research. I'm not sure I
share this view. Are Google, Facebook, Netflix so far beyond repair that we
need a fresh start? From what I know of these companies, I would think that
they actually treat women better than most other American companies, including
the New York Times.

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paladin314159
> When asked about being mentioned in the suit, Mr. Gopman, who has drawn
> attention in tech circles before for criticizing homeless people, said he
> was not happy about it. “How am I going to get married some day if I have to
> explain that?” he asked. Upload declined to comment on its former employee.

Really now?

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neveroffensive
Is anyone else over all this? I just can't seem to care anymore. Why can't
people just do their jobs and go home? Why is it so important for a work
environment to be "socially safe"? The definition of social safety is
arbitrary anyways. The assertion that sexual comments could be so pervasive
you can't do your job is utterly absurd in my opinion. Then again maybe I'm
just incapable of seeing past my male perspective...

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saalweachter
> Why can't people just do their jobs and go home?

I would actually use this line at the beginning of a rant to the opposite
effect: why can't people be professional in the workplace? Why can't they just
do their jobs and go home, and not treat the office like a social club / bar?

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neveroffensive
What is professional? What sexual taboos are/aren't acceptable? What is
acceptable workplace banter? I feel like it makes more sense to defer to the
least restrictive system...

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saalweachter
_No_ banter is professional. Not sports, not politics, not art, not the
weather.

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neveroffensive
Honestly, this makes perfect sense. I don't know if this is practical in the
real world, but there is logic to it that I can agree with.

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saalweachter
Oh, it's almost completely impractical in the real world.

First and foremost, it would make at least a heavy minority if not a majority
of people rather unhappy. Because of a wagon-load of reasons (excessive work
hours, moving to a new city for work separating you from most of your pre-
existing social network, general difficulty of making new friends as an
adult), work friends are the core of most people's social networks nowadays.
If you eliminate work friends, you'd leave a lot of us more-or-less
friendless, isolated, and sad.

It also becomes complicated when you consider that some work inherently
involves discussing your personal opinions. What business practices are
ethical, aesthetics of design, editorial choices.

Finally, employees must be able to discuss matters of common interest
directly, to organize against management in both traditional matters of worker
interest (conditions, pay, benefits) and to express a collective opinion about
the direction of the company (eg, when the company takes actions the employees
believe are unethical). This also requires employees be able to express
potentially objectionable opinions to each other.

But as a model of professional behavior, it would make everything so much
simpler if you never said one extra word to or treated the person in the next
desk/cube/office in the slightest way different, inside the workplace,
regardless of whether they're your best friend, your spouse, your kidney
donor, your childhood bully, your crush, your worst enemy, or your closest
relative. If you work with your best friend, finish your work, leave the
office, and _then_ talk to them about sports or your porn collections.

