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Agree. We have seen this before.

What if someone reverse engineered Twitter's services and built a separate client and tried to monetize it. What would Twitter do?

What if someone reverse engineered Reddit's services and built a separate client and tried to monetize it. What would Reddit do?

What if someone reverse engineered Instagram's services and built a separate client and tried to monetize it. What would Instagram do?


Not really. Twitter, and Reddit publish(ed) API's that required one to obtain a key in order to use at scale. No one reverse engineered them.


It is interesting to see that employees of Convoy aren't saying bad things about the CEO. But people on the outside who don't know the CEO are saying bad things.

Usually it is the reverse.


>It is interesting to see that employees of Convoy aren't saying bad things about the CEO

A whole two people who claim to be ex-convoy employees have chimed in from what I have seen. Hardly representative of what the average ex-employee thinks. Certainly not enough to form a conclusion either way.


Selection bias - Convoy employees who didn't like the CEOs approach didn't stay employees for long.


OTOH who stayed until the end for nothing is often more bitter


Is it your serious contention that because insufficient numbers of (now ex-) employees of this company haven't posted on Hacker News within three hours of learning about their unemployment, that it's a non-issue?



To be clear, it actually isn't a recognized psychological phenomenon as you can see at your own link. It was invented by a police psychiatrist who did a bad job being a hostage negotiator and came up with it to explain why the hostages were mad at him.


do we know if the commenters claiming to be ex-employee, real ex-employees ?


They got caught in the same thing that happened to Flexport and others in the freight industry.

Price per shipment cratered -> Revenue cratered. (They make a % of each shipment) -> Losses spiked up. (Because they had fixed cost)

Flexport had a burn run rate of $600M a year. Convoy had less burn but also less in the bank.

https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/flexport-revenue-dr...


So Convoy's UVP was based all on price? Wouldn't the CEO/COO have seen this before rapid expansion?


I thought Flexport was still hiring a month or two ago


They had that weird moment where they fired/rescinded a bunch of new hires after Peterson came back and basically said "oh yeah we weren't supposed to be hiring."


They were and the ceo commented on twitter that he had no idea why that was and then rescinded offers to people who were starting the next week.


The CEO who was the founder and until he came back as CEO was on the BOD, the executive, in fact.

"No idea at all!"


I've worked at 1k employee-sized companies. The CEOs definitely know what's happening, who shits on who, who's hired/fired, what each project is going through at a glance, etc. So I would attribute this 100% to either lying, incompetence and/or "faking" by trying to emulate a Steve Jobs/CEO persona.


The founder left the company and brought in a new CEO from amazon. He was still on the board. Then he saw they were hiring and complained on twitter, presumably fired the new ceo and came back to rescind the offers. I think it's believable that he was chilling on the beach or something until he saw the hiring news.


To be clear these are not random people inside the respective organizations. These are the CEOs of the organizations.

I trust that they had the judgment to decide that they needed to defend their reputation.


lol


As I understand it, the beef is that Neo compared themselves to YC claiming to be a better incubator because they have comparatively more mentors.

YCs contention is that the number of mentors on the website is not the right way to compare. For example, the YC mentors are working full time at YC helping startups while Neo’s mentors have full time jobs elsewhere and only spend a % of their time mentoring startups.

So the contention is that Neo is directly calling out YC and making dishonest comparisons.

There are other things as well about the ethics and behavior of the Neo founder, Ali Partovi, but it is only hinted at. Not explicitly stated with examples backing up any claims.


No, YC's contention is that the other organization made the (supposedly false) statement that "YC does not offer personalized advice". Which is not actually what he said at all, what he said was that they both have the same number of mentors but YC has significantly more startups.

I don't know whether those numbers are accurate or not because i don't know (or care) about either of these companies, but he definitely did not say what he's being accused of saying.


so the "slander" went both ways then?


Not clear that slander is in play here. Neo used a framing that made themselves look better and others look worse. YC refuted it. I am assuming YC has the receipts for broader insinuations.


"slander" was the word used by Gary Tan, the CEO of YC

https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1703121529683456286?s=20


This is the scariest part of the whole article “during a presentation they said took months to prepare.”

This sounds like what I would expect in the federal government or IBM. Not a fast growing startup changing the world.

I hope Ryan can change this part of the culture or they are dead.


Why? If they were futzing with the wording of a powerpoint for months that is indeed bad. If they worked hard on getting answers to questions nobody else can answer that can be reasonable.

After all one can describe a phd defense as “a presentation which took years to prepare.”


Didn't Ryan hire him?


Steve Jobs hired John Sculley III. And then came back to rebuild the company.


Lines up with the sentiment about Flexport being a tech retirement home


Pretty provincial attitude probably propagated by some overpaid MAANG bro who doesn't realize that there's an entire industry of tech folks out there who aren't making $300K/yr TC. So if you are making that . . . a little humility is in order.


I indeed was a former “MAANG bro”, but this is sentiment gleaned from both a cohort of former coworkers who had stints there, along with general Flexporter attitude on Blind (which, for its imperfections and distortions, gives pretty good signal on company morale and culture).


I'm saying for what you call a "retirement colony," there are dozens of businesses in which the vast majority of the tech industry actually work. Blind is where spoiled rich people complain about being rich in the wrong way.


Off topic, but wouldn't MANGA be a better aconym?


The problem with that is “manga” is also a japanese word for “comic book,” which could result in some confusion.


Don't trust the company. Trust the business model.

Eventually a company with great intentions will be dragged to do terrible things if it required to serve their business model.

Google will ruin their user experience (e.g. YouTube, Google) and push the boundary on user privacy in the interest of more clicks & higher CPM.


Oracle is one of those companies like Microsoft which many in the tech industry wrote off years ago.

Neither one qualified for the illustrious FAANG acronym.

Ideally, when these things happen people would examine their blindspots.


Get rid of fb, enter Microsoft and Oracle

MAANGO


Who is this "many" you speak of? And why are you chiding the hype machine for not including Oracle in its acronym?

Put aside the online rags trying to grab eyeballs and look at investors. My RIA has been using Oracle in portfolios for decades: Oracle has been sitting quietly in my portfolio for over 25 years, just doing its thing being a solid stock and paying dividends. There are many other blue-chips out there that focus on providing a reliable product instead of being some sexy risky growth stock that grabs all the media attention.


I’m still writing Oracle off. It might be profitable but it’s not influential or innovative, and because of the later it will eventually die.


I'm less sure about that. Back in 2007 or so, our company was gobbled up by Oracle. Part of that process, I was the propeller head they sent with the suites to be screened by Larry. Very first question: Why you wearing a suite? He knew our Java app, knew the space, and really asked good questions. One of the more intimidating interviews I've ever done.

The nature of Oracle is they are willing to evaluate if things are working or not. They build in house, they buy where they think they have a gap. The two units will be kept somewhat separate while they compete. Eventually there will be just one. To the outside world, it is a bit of a WTF on the overlapping product list. You see the same sort of competitive, aggressive nature with their Sales folks. Hunters, not farmers. What I don't see Oracle doing is pulling a Rooster.com. They likely will figure out the 'next big thing' by making sure there is a market for it, building internally and then buying up the talent that flew just a tad too close to the sun - and make something that gives a maintenance stream. When you see them doing it, you can bet it has hit the point where it will be profitable for them.


All companies will eventually die. I'm not writing Oracle off, as they don't care about innovation at all. They care about those governmental and corporate contracts that innovative companies shun.

The world is big enough for both to exist.


Actually you're right. I shouldn't say die.

Oracle will fade into obscurity sooner. Like Tivoli or Lotus or Sun.


Absolutely. I am sure their goal is to be another IBM. The less they have to spend on stuff such as R&D the better.


Or IBM?


“Immigration support: We will set the termination date for March 1, 2023, giving those with visa applications (and a desire to stay in the US) as much time as possible to find a new job”

Every company should do this to help employees on H1B that are laid off.

The standard terms are one of the horrific things about US immigration policy; suddenly uprooting families including kids attending school in the US.


That's by design, the H1B program is similar to illegal immigration like that. Create a underclass of workers that are more vulnerable with less rights and beat the domestic workers over the head with them to drive down wages.


While that might be what's happening in some regards - it definitely wasn't by design. Your giving too much credit to policy builders and far too much weight to cynicism.

Occam's razor can probably finesse your logic on this one. You are adding too much complexity to the origin's of H1B to push your narrative.


When the consequences are trivially visible and remain for this long, then it becomes by design by way of inaction by the people who make the rules.


Again Occam's razor. Your are applying to much to it.

There's been no push to overhaul H1B as it has little political value for the politicians. I see what people are frustrated about especially those on H1B but I don't think it is some cynical reason by the politicians - its more that it has little to gain for them.

It's a non-voting group of people and it isn't a large enough issue for any of their voting base.

It is not some weird theory about keeping H1B an underclass and putting downwards pressure on domestic employees.


> its more that it has little to gain for them.

But it will cause them a loss from the big donors that do benefit from H1-B people having less negotiating power, which is why the cynicism is warranted.

“Occam’s razor” is for situations where something is happening unintentionally. There exists intention here, however indirect.


Occam's razor: "It is generally understood in the sense that with competing theories or explanations, the simpler one, for example a model with fewer parameters, is to be preferred."


The mass of people who provided popular, democratic support for visa restrictions were motivated by the nativist concern of protecting American workers from foreign competition. You can always attribute popular sentiment to mustache-twirling elites pulling the people's puppet strings, but there's no getting around the widespread, populist fear that American workers would lose their jobs to foreign, racial others who were inhumanly smart and/or inhumanly hard-working and/or willing to live in inhuman conditions.

Liberal economic elites would have preferred unrestricted, laissez-faire access to technically skilled immigrant labor rather than being forced to deal with the caps, lotteries, and bureaucracy associated with the H1B program.


> The mass of people who provided popular, democratic support for visa restrictions were motivated by the nativist concern of protecting American workers from foreign competition.

Why would they support H1-B then? It is literally increasing supply of workers who have less negotiating power than the “mass of people” I presume you are referring to. Surely they would be better off with immigrants whose legal status was not tied to employers.


A common refrain you will hear is "Americans don't want to do those jobs", but what that misses is if you gave a immigrant the same rights and opportunities as a citizen they won't want to do that job either (at the price and on the terms offered). Relatively open ended immigration programs with minimal restrictions are defensible, but this caste system is not.


I am not sure how that is related, but the last part of that phrase is often left out. “Americans do not want to do those jobs at a certain price”

>Relatively open ended immigration programs with minimal restrictions are defensible, but this caste system is not.

Yes, that was my point. The only population benefiting from H1-Bs reduced negotiating power due to their immigration rules is business owners.


> It is literally increasing supply of workers who have less negotiating power than the “mass of people”

It restricts the number of workers that are able to work in the U.S., and forces companies to jump through hoops to hire them. The idea was that companies would be forced to hire American workers whenever they were available, and only rely on foreign workers as a fallback. Obviously corporations were able to somewhat neuter the law so that it wasn't as much of an obstacle as it was sold as.

> less negotiating power

Protectionists were convinced that foreign workers would undercut them by working harder for less money in worse conditions; the idea of foreign workers actually helping improve working conditions would have sounded ridiculous (if not faintly sinister) to them.


> It restricts the number of workers that are able to work in the U.S., and forces companies to jump through hoops to hire them.

Restricting workers would be denying them entry into the country to work in the first place. And forcing companies to jump through hoops simply means instead of lower paying employers taking advantage of the visa, higher paying employers take advantage. Either way, there is going to be an increase in labor supply of people willing to work for lower wages (since they cannot shop for other employers), and that negatively effects all workers.


I think you're talking about the truth of the matter, but I'm talking about what motivated the creation of the program in the first place. Economic liberals wanted unrestricted access to labor regardless of borders, protectionists in the U.S. did not want to compete against labor from other countries, and the H1B visa program came out of that conflict.


Oh, I see. Yes, that could have been the case.


fwiw, this is because H1B has evolved far from its initial purpose. Most tech H1Bs really should be on EB-1A, which has more reasonable regs.


I admire this approach, but I am a bit worried that making big public announcements of doing so will trigger a crackdown (especially if Stephen Miller or his ilk are ever in charge of US immigration policy again).


So long as it is applied evenly to all laid off.

Personally, I find the health benefits extension to be much more meaningful


Ugh.. It shouldn't even need to be said.. companies überhaupt shouldn't be doing mass lay-offs..


The timing is interesting.

The job market has finally softened. Employers have been waiting for a moment to kill off the WFH movement.

Expect other companies to follow suit.


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