[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.