
What every founder fears - mef
https://medium.com/p/2fe173c44215
======
debt
I'm sorry to offend but she is incredibly full of herself and quite immature.
Like she's on some sort of pulpit, spouting things she thinks people give a
shit about. I mean, she _quotes_ herself numerous times in this post. She
indirectly hints how her lifestyle is so similar to other rich CEOs. Also,
from what everyone else says, she seems to be begging her "friends" to donate
to her charity as to validate or eclipse her husband's success.

Honestly, this whole situation shows that all three of these people don't know
how to interact socially, like for real, with other people. I'm saying "for
real" because it seems their social perspectives are heavily skewed inward and
towards themselves.

Also, it's super odd because towards the end of the post, the lines get
blurred; she seems to be equating her husband's success with her own. She had
literally _zero_ to do with the success of Github.

~~~
mwetzler
Part of me is nodding in agreement, but another part is wondering 1) am I
(unfairly?) biased against the author due to the story from Horvath and 2) is
this another example of a woman being criticised for having a voice? Are we
unfairly expecting her to be polite, not powerful and proud? Her husband's
post was very proud and he didn't get the same criticism, though I think he
did a slightly better job apologizing and focusing his message.

Not criticizing. Just sharing my own mixed feelings.

~~~
calibraxis
Definitely agree that it's more socially encouraged to see a woman's egregious
faults than a man's. And her husband and his buddies clearly had more power.

On the article though, the aristocrat-wannabee pseudo-fears of _" being
misunderstood in their motivations as their companies grow"_, is ridiculous
compared to the employees' fears: wasting their one life, humiliation,
unemployment, impostor syndrome, abuse, etc.

------
kohanz
_After weeks of silence, we learned that, despite, being found not guilty of
the harassment accusations, questions popped up regarding Tom’s judgment in a
separate area. We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me
to work pro-bono for my nonprofit._

This appears to be the real reason for Tom's resignation.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
With this post, I also think that Tom's wife has inadvertently incriminated
herself of meddling in company affairs. Given that she was not an employee at
all, I do find it highly inappropriate that she would interact at all with
GitHub employees regarding her business. Strangely enough, I think that most
of this situation could have been mitigated if she had even a $1/year
figurehead role in the company.

~~~
vajorie
... and didn't harass the employee.

------
btreesOfSpring
I don't know the personalities of anyone involved in this ordeal and that
makes the whole thing difficult to judge. If this is a case of the workplace
sociopath, I pity all involved. In my own experiences working with
manipulative people, they typically find a narrative to support their abusive
behaviors and when these people are called on for those actions, they either
act surprised or hurt and often both. This person is hurt by being called
things like "naive" because it is reflective of their own incompetence.
Certainly "optimistic" is a better way of putting it because it means all of
the "good intentions" were squandered by everyone else who just didn't get it.
The manipulator shouldn't have to suffer the consequences, since it is his/her
trust that has been betrayed. You see, all along, the manipulator was trying
to be the good guy. The one making the office better, "more fun", it was
always good intentions but the other people either misunderstood or just want
to spoil it for the rest of us.

I sincerely hope no one has to work with this personality type but I am
willing to bet most everyone has seen this bad faith behavior in action. You
know the office bully who, when called out for pushing a person around says in
some form, "come on, can't you take a joke?" Isn't it odd how this same person
never calls the thing a joke when he or she gets what is wanted out of the
same behavior?

"I was totally joking when I said I needed you to work over the weekend or
else. Seesch. Lighten up." I can assure you, I have never heard of a single
person getting a monday apology email for putting in that weekend work from
this sort of office "practical joker."

So it is not too surprising to see HR departments and lawyers finding
themselves implementing "PC" policies and "buzz kill" practices as a means of
mitigating these sorts of power abusive strategies since the bully is
ultimately going to act the victim of misunderstood intentions when asked in
any form to stop.

Isn't it odd how the biggest tragedy for this personality type is having to
admit how their actions might have hurt others?

------
ballard
Richard Branson had/has critics that accused him of all sorts of things. His
advice, which is similar to Napoleon Hill's, would be to demonstrate actions
that are discordant to the accusations.

(The bigger of a celeb / more successful you become, the bigger of a target
you wear on your back for people to try to tear you down.)

~~~
jmtame
Contrast this to Elon Musk, who is very direct and open in responding to
criticism. To each his own?

~~~
ballard
Denying something doesn't carry the same weight and it seems like a PR move,
whereas "actions speak louder than words."

------
bowlofpetunias
_" Naive, no. Optimistic, absolutely."_

Neither. Arrogant it the right word. Not maliciously so, but arrogance
nevertheless.

An arrogance that is far from unique in the start-up world, the arrogance to
think that in spite of _centuries_ of documented history you can create an
organization that doesn't have clear formal structure and not have it end up
as a cult-like snake pit.

As companies, they fail to provide the kind of safety and security people who
are not entrepreneurs need, and call it "freedom". And it may feel like
freedom for a while, when it's still a small group of close friends, but after
that it's just a Darwinian social experiment.

And when the shit hits the fan, it doesn't matter who exactly did what. It's
the arrogance and narcissism of the founders that is responsible. Founders who
believe that everyone who works for them should be like them, and then
everything will magically be good.

 _" Tom saw himself not as CEO, but as the architect of a unique business
structure. He wanted to create a company where he, himself, would have loved
to have been an employee."_

This isn't visionary. This isn't naivety. This isn't optimism. It's
narcissism.

~~~
Jgrubb
I dunno. I think it could be any of those things, or all of those things, and
ultimately depends on who you're talking about.

Question though - isn't one of the points of starting your own business that
you're having a hard time finding a perfect job working for someone else?
Ergo, don't a lot of us "[want] to create a company where [we], [ourselves],
would have loved to have been an employee."?

edit - I totally agree with the rest of your comment about arrogance.

------
firstOrder
> We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me to work pro-
> bono for my nonprofit. We racked our brains trying to understand this new
> allegation...I am so very sorry if anyone felt that I was pressuring him or
> her for advice, labor, or to sign up. I truly never had that intention...my
> idealistic belief in the status-free community of GitHub, I failed to
> recognize that power structures cannot ever be obscured entirely.

> employees view them as disconnected and only trying to build empires of
> gold. Tom saw himself not as CEO, but as the architect of a unique business
> structure...He wanted to invest heavily in employees and to create a space
> that gave each employee the autonomy, tools, and support to build great
> things. In our home every night, he spoke passionately about how to build a
> company that gave employees freedom.

Other than being a Github user and customer, I know nothing of the details of
this case other than what I've read. She admits she was obtuse about "power
structures" in the company, but this also is not a unique thing in Silicon
Valley - she's not blind to these things in a unique way.

That said - it's like someone believing their own press releases. "A space
that gave each employee the autonomy, tools, and support to build great
things". To me that sounds like saying Platt from "Twelve Years a Slave" got
an excellent bag to pick cotton from, and build up the glorious plantation he
was working on. Preston-Warner can snap his fingers, and someone who was
getting a check to put food on the table and a roof over their head is
suddenly not going to have the rent check by the end of the month. Especially
when the next employer is asking for references, why you left the last job,
are there any gaps in employment etc. People on an H1-B visa are dependent
upon the company so they can't be thrown out of the country, so their green
card application can not be restarted etc.

This is in the default structure of a corporation, and the laws, and all the
default papers that super-angels and VC's put forward. Ownership and control
of a corporation is 80-90% in the hands of the angels, VC's and founders. Of
the scraps left over, executives and top-level experienced techs get the
lion's share. This is the reality, and everyone knows it. People believing
their own press releases about people building great things are delusional.
It's like the Tuskeegee or Dr. Mengele subjects happy about how they are
helping contribute to science. No one is fooled by this other than naive, new
to the workplace, socially maladjusted programmers in their early 20's. This
is why there is such a feeding frenzy over this small pool of naive young men.

~~~
swombat
> _Preston-Warner can snap his fingers, and someone who was getting a check to
> put food on the table and a roof over their head is suddenly not going to
> have the rent check by the end of the month._

Very, very unlikely. Even though employment laws are very employer-friendly in
the US, from the sound of it, Tom built an inclusive, open company culture.
One of the side effects of that is that if you abuse your power as a leader,
you cause irreparable damage to the culture - which is not something you want
to do at practically any cost after spending so much effort building the
culture and getting it to stand up on its own feet.

Ricardo Semler, major shareholder and CEO of Semco, explained it like this: "I
have a handgun in my desk drawer with a single bullet in it."

If he really had built the kind of culture where he could just fire people by
snapping his fingers, surely the easiest thing would have been to fire the
troublemaker at the first sign of trouble instead of waiting for her to resign
and make a fuss.

~~~
kjhgkhjf
How is that unlikely? Unless Github has a very, very atypical employment
contract, all employees are at-will[1]. Sure, it might damage Tom or Github's
reputation if he just randomly fired people[2], but he _could_. Saying that it
would also bring down the rest of the company doesn't really help.

[1] Of course, you still have to give two weeks notice if _you_ want to
exercise that at-willness for _yourself_!

[2] I mean, unless he "randomly" fires all the people of race X, or something
like that

~~~
swombat
I explained how it's unlikely, but here we go again.

Tom has spent considerable time (as I have, in my own company) getting people
to a point where they think for themselves, make decisions as a group, and
generally behave as independent adults rather than the kind of infantile
employees who just do what they're told by their boss. Since the latter is the
way most businesses operate, it's no mean feat to get this done with a company
of a dozen, let alone with one of hundreds.

If Tom decides to arbitrarily fire someone, even just one person, without
going through the group-oriented processes he's spent all this time building
up, he immediately undermines all that, potentially fatally.

Since he clearly cares about the company's culture (enough to make it his
priority for the last half-decade), it's very unlikely he would risk that to
get rid of one person.

And finally, again, there's the evidence: if he really did want to get rid of
this woman, and he could, why didn't he?

~~~
zimpenfish
> And finally, again, there's the evidence: if he really did want to get rid
> of this woman, and he could, why didn't he?

That's more speculation than evidence, surely?

------
colinbartlett
I don't understand why people in these situations feel compelled respond. Why
defend yourself? Why say anything publicly at all? Curious if any PR-
knowledgable folks around here know if there is any benefit to such
statements.

~~~
HillRat
Generally, it's best _not_ to say anything more than the minimal amount
necessary; if you want to get a particular angle on the story out, you float
it through friendly media, of which SiV has a preponderance. ("Sources close
to the story say that ...".)

It appears that GitHub and the Preston-Werners aren't coordinating their
messages (though no doubt all counsel involved have reviewed them): the GH
release is appropriately terse, giving away the bare minimum of information in
order to minimize both PR and legal exposure, while the P-Ws are working their
angle to the story while still minimizing actual information. The P-Ws really
don't have any legal exposure, so there's very little downside to their
attempts to work the refs, while GH is operating under the continued threat of
legal action (even if it's remote, their attorneys are obviously being
appropriately cautious here, so kudos to them).

Of the two statements, Tom Preston-Werner's statement is far more effective
and well-crafted than his wife's; he comes across as -- at least for public
consumption -- sincere, open and genuinely remorseful while affirming his
dedication to Good Things and avoiding admitting to actual culpability. It's a
_very_ nicely-handled statement, and it's instructive to compare it to how
MoCo and Eich handled _their_ crisis du jour. (The OP statement by Theresa
P-W, however, is less artful, more defensive, and personalizes the criticism.
Understandable from a personal point of view; not good PR.)

How much of this is true? Well, does it matter? Truth is for courtrooms and
confessionals; what matters here is _spin_. Again, consider MoCo. In both
cases, an executive was ousted but, in GH's case, the company looks stronger
for it (investigation by outside counsel! No wrongdoing found! Action taken!)
and the P-Ws don't look much worse (we support diversity! Created an open
culture! Feel terrible that some people felt hurt!).

The ouster of Eich, however, just made moCo look opportunistic _and_ weak, and
Eich personally came out looking pretty bad due to his inability to craft a
solid message (he said the right things about diversity, but failed to connect
it to his _personal_ narrative, so it rang hollow). The lesson, I think, is
either move quickly and aggressively (as GitHub did), or else buckle down and
stay the course (as Mozilla _should_ have -- though, as I've said previously,
I have no issues whatsoever with the campaign to oust Eich). Anything else is
going to make a problem into a crisis.

~~~
lobotryas
Excellent analysis. I'm also surprised why MoCo decided against staying the
course and jettisoned Eich. The majority of the complaints would have blown
over in several weeks as people got bored/distracted/found something else to
be outraged about. The few remaining die-hard complainers could be safely
ignored as all companies have some amount of detractors.

~~~
ubernostrum
_jettisoned Eich_

You probably want to read the reply above yours, or the FAQ it links. The
announcement from Brendan was that he had chosen to resign. No evidence has
been presented that he was fired or in any way pressured by the board to
leave; in fact, everybody in the know who's commented publicly says it was the
other way around (and always was -- it really looks like he never wanted to be
CEO but was talked into it, then wanted to resign and others tried to talk him
into staying).

------
gruntmaster9000
> I suspect that what founders really fear is being misunderstood in their
> motivations as their companies grow. They fear that employees view them as
> disconnected and only trying to build empires of gold.

These are the fears of a bad founder. Their job is to set the vision of the
company. If the founder fears the employees feel they are disconnected, the
founder probably _is_ disconnected. If a founder should fear anything, they
should fear not creating a safe environment where the employees can feel
comfortable bringing their concerns to superiors — about any aspect of the
company — instead of that self-centered fear of being “misunderstood”.

------
mathattack
The naive nature of this note is almost incredulous.

 _After weeks of silence, we learned that, despite, being found not guilty of
the harassment accusations, questions popped up regarding Tom’s judgment in a
separate area. We learned that unnamed employees felt pressured by Tom and me
to work pro-bono for my nonprofit. We racked our brains trying to understand
this new allegation._

Ummm... Perhaps it's because you're the CEO's wife and you're asking them to
do something. It comes with the power.

 _I was the wife of the CEO, but that never entered my mind when I hung out
with any GitHubbers._

Ummmm.... ok....

 _I have never known anyone like Tom. When I was interviewed by the 3rd party
investigator, she abruptly asked if I thought Tom was naive. I was
dumbfounded, unable to answer until she offered a different word; “Perhaps,
you would call him optimistic?” Naive, no. Optimistic, absolutely._

ok, so at least it's not her husband that was naive.

Apparently there are still threats of legal suits around all this fun too.
[http://news.easybranches.com/news/1844059.html](http://news.easybranches.com/news/1844059.html)

------
AznHisoka
_Yawns_ In a few months, nobody will remember. I'm a HUGE Github fan, but the
world doesn't revolve around you, not even the tech world. We all live in a
bubble here.

------
troels
"Sign in to continue"

What is this, Quora? When did Medium start with that?

~~~
asadlionpk
exactly, they will lose readers by doing that.

------
nppc
This is so NOT what every founder fears !

------
adnam
This is quite some schmaltz

------
vajorie
Hmm, so, not a single comment about how absolutely none of the issues raised
by @nrrrdcore are addressed by neither github (whitewashing it all) nor these
folk (one of which threatened everyone who questions him with a lawsuit). And
none of the comments even mention @nrrrdcore or what she raised.

We seem to be witnessing the convenient limits of discourse.

------
Theodores
It could be worse: it is not as if Github has a Hans Reiser on the books! Yet
the way this story has been gone over you would think that something of that
magnitude of catastrophivity had gone on.

------
tryp
x

------
tryp
#

