[verdverm]

> calling out Ryan directly for some reason

Accountability starts and stops at the top. Many CEOs (CxOs) get called out. Personally, I want to write something similar about Bluesky leadership, who have fumbled hard multiple times since peaking, and have now "raised funding" from Bain Capital (private equity).

[ixtli]

its so strange to see so many people who will never be handed 5 million dollars to write a vm jumping in front of criticism for one guy that did. sorry but when you become a public figure in this way you should expect to be subjected to a different sort of public scrutiny than, say, a rank and file employee who they pay.

i will begin to care about a CEOs feelings when they put the wellbeing of their employees before their own. not saying that the Deno CEO has done anything on the order of the raw aggression we see from other CEOs in our industry but, as they say, if you cant take the heat stay out of the kitchen.

[phpnode]

These things are easy to say but just because someone has the title CEO doesn't mean they're automatically void of human feelings. I'm sure you understand there's a big gap between a Ryan Dahl and a Satya Nadella, despite them sharing the same job title.

[atherton94027]

Well the people who get laid off also have feelings, not sure why we should care more about the ceo's feelings so much that we shouldn't criticize them

[phpnode]

I'm not saying that we should care more for the CEO, but that we should have empathy for someone who is, ultimately, an engineer who built something and gave it away for free, watched everyone else around him get rich off the back of his hard work, and then tried to do something worthwhile again and still chose to give it away for free. There's a lot of immoral CEOs out there, I'm yet to see evidence that Dahl is one of them.

[verdverm]

> There's a lot of immoral CEOs out there, I'm yet to see evidence that Dahl is one of them.

I don't see any such claim in the post. The criticism is about Ryan the CEO, not Ryan the person.

Besides the title, from the end of the post:

> I’m not trying to hate on Dahl but c’mon bro you’re the CEO. What’s next for Deno? Give ~me~ ~users~ anyone a reason to care.

Perhaps you know Ryan and read too much into the criticism?

[verdverm]

> void of human feelings

What if we reframe this about how the CEO treats their users and employees? Why does Ryan deserve to be free from criticism?

[phpnode]

Do you have any special insight here or are you speculating? I'm not saying that he should be free from criticism, but that we should try and have some empathy for people who try things even if they fail, particularly when they've offered their services to the community for free for the last 5+ years (much longer when considering node.js)

[verdverm]

> Do you have any special insight here or are you speculating?

I'm trying to understand why you carve an exception for this one individual.

When I worked in restaurants, the owner and I had a very interesting conversation after hours, and with beers, about his thoughts and feelings being responsible for the well being and livelihood of everyone that worked there. It was a positive moment, I thought I had a great boss, I work my ass off for him.

A year later I found he was trimming hours off of my paycheck. I quit on the spot. Months later I heard he did the same to the waitstaff tips and it wasn't much longer before it all fell apart.

People can appear very different publicly than privately, and they can change over time.

[abnercoimbre]

The reverse is true: asshole bosses who do right by workers quietly. Sometimes they're public assholes and privately terrible though. But sometimes (perhaps very rarely) they're openly caring AND do the right thing behind curtains.

I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here. Humanity is complex and varied.