[Aloha]

At the risk of down votes, I'll be as blunt and honest as you claim to be - after reading this screed - you mostly come off as a someone with an inflated view of your own importance and abilities. While I might agree with you that the silicon valley mindset is harmful - anyone who would rather keep a friendship and watch a friend go over a cliff in a barrel, isn't really worth keeping around - either as a friend or an employee.

Fighting the good fight, fighting for the things that are just, and true, and good - are nearly always worth it, the key is to back off before it becomes a pyrrhic victory.

That's a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

[rusk]

I think parent poster is using the term "friend" in a more liberal sense. I would counter that anyone who you're afraid would berate you for honest feedback can't honestly be considered a "true" friend. In most cases anyway. Even then, some people just have to learn the hard way.

[throwawaydbfif]

I'll save somebody but only if it's worth the cost of losing a friend. The better the friend the more I let them learn from their mistakes. The truth is that losing a good friend would hurt us both more than helping them mend the wounds after smaller stuff.

It's not being evil or that I'm always right. The comment was mostly in reference to those that have been calling me a shill the past few days and how they should keep in mind that their opinion is not fact.

I gave up the good fight years ago. The worst was when I helped turn around a failing small business. We all wanted the same goal, the company to be successful. It sucked so bad that I learned that it's better to be nice to your friends than to dedicate yourself to a cause or try to fix all their problems.

If that means letting them fall sometimes that's okay, as long as you don't let them get any deeper than you can reach. If you help pull them out in the end you're still a good friend.

So the company turnaround, it worked in the long run but at great cost. Cutting employees that sucked at their jobs but were friends and helped us with the initial plan. Cutting moochers that I loved but were sucking the company dry with constant unscheduled time off and freebies. Redoing our systems to automate as much as possible made us our first profit in years but a lot of that was from jobs eliminated. Hiring people of a higher caliber than existing employees by raising application requirements above what most of the current employees would meet. Offering our new more qualified people more money than Bob who's been here for 15 years but did our financials on pieces of scrap paper.

By the end of that process a few years later, my lesson was that I made the owners a lot of money at the expense of losing about half my friends. Most of the other half resented me for what I had done and thought I was a traitor, even though I had just helped implement exactly what we had agreed upon a few years back.

We planned to cut dead weight and streamline and automate operations. To add new talent with up to date skills. To cut our benefits slightly to money to invest in the company's future. Everyone wanted this until it was their benefits or their job being automated. I followed through with the cause and at the end I felt like a Judas figure and packed up and left in shame.

You could say it was a pyrrhic victory for sure, but after that I'm very wary to set anything in motion that's too heavy for me to stop on my own