[PragmaticPulp]

The author seems to be making live changes to the article. It started as “How I failed to Change Wasmer” but it’s now titled “I’ve loved Wasmer, I still love Wasmer”.

This is a tough story to read for anyone who has been passionate about a startup only to watch it decline under management quarrels. However, I have mixed feelings about this article because the author appears to be a co-founder of the company despite writing much of the article from the perspective of an IC engineer who was taken advantage of. He downplays the role of co-founder later by explaining that he was a “late co-founder” but he also writes about he was responsible for many founder-level activities later in the article.

The only thing worse than startup leadership quarrels is watching one of the founders turn around and try to sink the company by airing all of their dirty laundry on the way out. I don’t necessarily doubt that the environment was toxic, but we’re also only getting one side of the story. If there were any engineers or managers still working at Wasmer and hoping to turn the ship around, this blog post may have destroyed any chance of that. Imagine joining this company only to have a co-founder turn around and advertise to the world how terrible the company is.

I also wish the author would have elaborated more on their original title (“How I failed to change Wasmer”) instead of laying all of the blame on the other co-founder and alluding to toxicities. I suppose the real lesson here is to avoid becoming a co-founder in a company where you know you’re incompatible with the other founders. It never ends well.

[brabel]

> author appears to be a co-founder of the company despite writing much of the article from the perspective of an IC engineer who was taken advantage of.

With all respect to the author, I think, from reading this, they gave him the title of co-founder to try to try to stop him from leaving earlier, given 85% of the engineering team had left (it's implied this happend before he became a co-founder). He jokes about it himself, asking "have you ever seen a co-founder on a free-lancer contract?".

[PragmaticPulp]

He writes further down that he was handling founder-level responsibilities. That’s actually part of his complaint about his workload.

If he has the title of co-founder within the company, describes himself as co-founder in his blog, and was responsible for founder-level activities then I think it’s clear that he was, indeed, a cofounder.

I sympathize with his experience, but I also think we need to be careful about letting someone claim the prestige of a cofounder title while disclaiming the responsibilities that come with that title.

[sam0x17]

I can definitely sympathize with this. I've been in a situation before where I was employee #1, hired an entire team of developers and built a complete product all the while being baited along with promises of "we'll discuss equity later", "we'll incorporate later" etc. Originally our understanding was I'd be a co-founder with double-digit equity (this was the main motivation for being OK with taking a salary 30% below my typical market value, even though we supposedly had "millions in the bank"). All the while this was intermixed with the most toxic micromanagement, gaslighting, and unrealistic expectations disguised as performance shaming that I've ever seen at any company ever (though strictly speaking this was not a company -- we were all self-employed because the guy was too lazy to incorporate or provide benefits). Eventually I left when none of these promises panned out and morale was at an all-time low because of the constant negativity and direction changes from the CEO.

[brabel]

Not saying that he wasn't... as much as a "late" co-founder is a thing... just that the motivation for making hime that might have been a little bit sinister.

[joshstrange]

> The only thing worse than startup leadership quarrels is watching one of the founder exit the company and air all of their dirty laundry on the way out. If there were any engineers or managers still working at Wasmer and hoping to turn the ship around, this blog post may have destroyed any chance of that.

What is the alternative though? I mean this developer, at least from their telling of it, had held almost every role in the company up to and including co-founder (at least in title, it sounds like the founder continued to hold him at arms length), if that's all true then what else could this person do other than air out the dirty laundry? They, by their own admission, tried everything they could from within the company and so now they are leaving and letting their truth be known. At worst nothing changes at Wasmer, at best it's a wake-up call that gives the remaining engineers/mangers the opportunity to make the needed changes (if that's even possible).

[bborud]

When someone feels sufficiently burnt out to leave a company they play a key role in, and are passionate about, I wouldn't judge them too harshly when they feel the need to vent their frustration.

The mature thing to do is to see it for what it is. Not to judge people who've had a hard time.

[PragmaticPulp]

> if that's all true then what else could this person do other than air out the dirty laundry?

Simply leaving the company quietly is a huge statement in itself. A founder who leaves an active company and tactfully announces that they’ve chosen to move on speaks volumes.

Airing dirty laundry like this is politics, plain and simple. It doesn’t benefit the author to advertise his issues as a co-founder and it doesn’t benefit the remaining employees who are now at a company known primarily for founder drama.

[munificent]

There's a tricky balancing act here. I agree in general that it's good to not air dirty laundry and I personally would be very unlikely to publicly write something like this about a previous coworker.

At the same time not sharing information widely about a toxic member of your community can create a "missing stair"[0] effect where those with inside info know to steer away from the person. Meanwhile, newcomers to the community don't have that knowledge and end up getting burned.

I don't think there's any perfect solution here. We each have to judge for ourselves where to draw the line between public shaming and the duty to protect others from potential harm.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair

[Floegipoky]

It might give somebody enough information to decide not to work for that CEO.

[slibhb]

Ah, so the author of this blog is a humanitarian

[stilist]

If there's no public acknowledgement that the CEO ran an awful workplace, there's not much to stop him doing it again with another company.

[hitekker]

> The only thing worse than startup leadership quarrels is watching one of the founders turn around and try to sink the company by airing all of their dirty laundry on the way out.

Wait, why is that a problem? Let all be aired and let us figure it out for ourselves. We're all adults. If the situation is indeed as the cofounder claims, a cleaned, distilled version of events is untruthful and patronizing.

And if the events aren't as claimed, startups are evaluated on their ability to hire the right people. If the CEO chose a cofounder who would lie and destroy the startup for no good reason, then that also reflects poorly on the CEO.

I, for one, appreciate the signal that Wasmer is a startup to avoid doing business with

[sam0x17]

> The author seems to be making live changes to the article. It started as “How I failed to Change Wasmer” but it’s now titled “I’ve loved Wasmer, I still love Wasmer”.

People second guess themselves when they write something emotionally charged and it goes semi-viral. So what? Wouldn't you? That doesn't make the article any less valid. A title change is very different from materially changing the actual events discussed, yet you imply something of this magnitude is going on (it isn't).

> The only thing worse than startup leadership quarrels is watching one of the founders turn around and try to sink the company

Maybe for you. For the rest of us, being a toxic founder who exhibits even a third of the bad behaviors mentioned in the article would be grounds for forced removal. Looking over the timeline and events that took place at Wasmer, it's pretty clear this dirty laundry needed to be aired, and everyone (the users, the employees) would benefit if this CEO is actually removed. Perhaps this idea makes you uncomfortable? It's also super disingenuous to paint this as an attempt to sink the company -- clearly it's an attempt to say the product has tons of promise but the CEO needs to go. All other options have been exercised at this point, so going to a public forum with huge industry influence is exactly the kind of thing that could solve this problem that otherwise probably has no solution other than the company floundering. The CEO could quit tomorrow, and then this entire endeavor would obviously be justified and well worth it.

> I also wish the author would have elaborated more on their original title (“How I failed to change Wasmer”) instead of laying all of the blame on the other co-founder and alluding to toxicities

In a literal sense you are right to say that the author doesn't discuss this much, but come on man, it's super obvious -- this "late co-founder" was not given enough control or say in the first place to make any of the changes that needed to be made. Heck, he couldn't even take a sick day without incurring tremendous ire. Most of the article is about that. Did we read different articles? It's like you're going way out of your way to trash this for no real reason other than it makes you feel uncomfortable. Airings of grievances like this are one of the good things about Hacker News and have a positive impact on the industry. I dare you to come up with a single example where that isn't the case. Show me an example of a startup that floundered because of disingenuous HN exposure that wasn't caught until way too late. If anything they'll have a sales bump today.

[andrewingram]

My reading of the article suggest the "co-founder" title was a late addition to the author's responsibilities, and not a co-founder in the "starting a company together" sense.

[PragmaticPulp]

Regardless, he identifies himself as a co-founder and took the co-founder responsibilities during the time period this article describes.

[mst]

He was still on a freelance contract.

He was given the title but not a real co-founder position, which frankly was a giant red flag itself.

[yebyen]

If 85% of the company has left suddenly and your tenure predates the exodus and you are still there in anything remotely close to a leadership position, it's "congrats you are now a late co-founder."

You are reading too much into the title.

[Floegipoky]

It seemed to me like the author was not actually a cofounder, he was an early hire working under a freelance contract who was retroactively named a "late-cofounder", whatever that means, once the whole thing started to go off the rails. And it also sounded like he was a victim of wage theft and other abusive management behaviors. The CEO may not have displayed such toxic tendencies in the beginning when things were going well.