[daniel-cussen]

I, Daniel Cussen, and let me say I'm going to get this Hacker News account notarized so you'll know I'm a real guy, actually worked for a company he was financing and it was a great job. The money from earning a high starting salary allowed me to work my hardest, which felt amazing, and do my best work.

That money came from him, not from the founders. He cut the checks and decided conditions. He didn't have to pay those wages, and he got his money's worth, but that doesn't change that he still did just that, which is completely against the MBA playbook.

That, to me, is a contrarian.

[jjulius]

You're replying to a comment thread that is implying Thiel is corrupt. What you stated in your response, about you enjoying working for him, does not mean at all that he wasn't corrupt. It's quite common for people to be happily employed by corrupt individuals.

[skinnymuch]

Thiel was able to get you to work your hardest? In exchange for paying you a good salary? How is that not what the MBA playbook is for high value employees? Higher status white collar/knowledge workers are normally paid pretty well.

[voisin]

The MBA playbook, if such a thing existed, would be to define “good salary” based on the market. I think OP is implying it was above market - above what the founders or other competitors would have paid.

[skinnymuch]

Yes and I was positing if such a playbooks exists. That strategy isn’t for higher value and status knowledge workers.

[the_only_law]

Cool, what does this have to do with Thiel not being concerned with corruption again?

[heyoni]

That whole post makes no sense. Almost like Peter himself hired a PR team to randomly say nice things.

[dang]

This breaks the site guideline against insinuating astroturfing/shillage without evidence. Somebody having a different view from you does not count as evidence.

Please don't do that. You can make your substantive points without it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[heyoni]

It wasn’t for having a different point of view though, it was for being so completely out of place and not addressing anything in the original comment it was responding to. So much so that it reads like an AI or a script.

[dang]

That's exactly the sort of thing that internet users routinely see in the comments they strongly disagree with. These perceptions are extremely unreliable, which is why we have that guideline.

[nl]

Giving knowledge workers good pay and conditions is literally from the MBA textbook.

[smt88]

What does any of that have to do with anything? Lots of history's monsters were very kind to individual people, especially useful ones.

One of my relatives was the ambassador to Germany before WWII started (from an economically important, non-White country) and loved to tell everyone how Hitler was incredibly nice to him and his wife.

[daniel-cussen]

So basically what you're saying is put the equivalent of the History Channel, meaning random web pages with good domain names, above the words of the people I met personally, his own words in The Diversity Myth and Zero to One, and as the final documents, the checks I cashed?

[Talanes]

Emphasizing how well he paid you only makes you more suspect as a source for everyone who is not you. I mean, the first accusation that gets thrown about in internet arguments is that the other side is a shill. Because we don't trust people to give honest public assessments about the people who pay them.

[daniel-cussen]

I guess if he paid me and I speak up on his behalf that makes me a shill according to your definition. I don't agree. He didn't pay me to defend him in any circumstances, I never met him, never communicated with him. Anonymity. There's significance in him paying me more than what he strictly had to, my point is it was highly unmotivated, it was like a taxpayer paying excess taxes.

EDIT: It's not like a bribe, he didn't pay me an outrageous amount. I earned it then, in full. It was just unusual because he wasn't trying to minimize what I got from working for him. And I spoke to another employee there who loved the place and the top thing on her mind was beyond its basic virtue, it was a place that didn't require a college degree to get paid decently. Go figure, the wage a place pays, without you having to play mind games and negotiation tactics day in and day out, matters. Wages drive employee satisfaction, who would have thought.

[Talanes]

I mentioned "shills" not to call you one, but to emphasize how counter-productive "This person gave me money" is as a measure of character. It meant a lot to you, obviously, but bringing it up only serves to reduce your credibility. Doing so repeatedly and with greater emphasis is not doing you any favors.

[TomSwirly]

"Someone gave me money to work" is NOT a proof of character, as has been explained to you repeatedly.

[smt88]

No one cares about the checks you cashed. Thiel is not a good person because he paid a random employee well.

[PopeUrbanX]

Which of Thiel's companies was it? Palantir? Just curious what your contribution was in his longstanding efforts to make the world an objectively worse place.

[tlackemann]

Granted, PayPal hasn't made the world an objectively worse place, just for developers.