[freedomben]

I totally relate. I previously worked for Red Hat and got a lot of hate for decisions I had absolutely nothing to do with and in some cases was vehemently opposed to them (but I had no power to change it).

Overall I love the HN community and think it is the best one on the internet, but it still has a vocal shallow-minded pocket of people who:

1. Seem to forget that they're talking to a fellow human being rather than a username, and don't engage any of their manners that normally filter out unproductive rudeness

2. Feel strong emotions toward big companies and think life is just as simple as telling a single engineer to "fix the company" as though that is even remotely reasonable.

3. Don't seem to understand how big corporate systems work. Suggesting that a single engineer (even if they are a team lead) is to blame for business decisions that get made almost entirely against what the engineers want, is absurd.

Good for you for speaking up though. It won't make a difference to the people you were commenting to, but overall it provides the masses with a reminder that there's a human on the other side of this.