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On March 22, 2012, I was working at one of the VC-darling startups (Peter Thiel is an investor) and brought in to a meeting with my 26-year-old "tech lead", the VP of Finance, and the CTO, then told that if I wanted to keep my job, I'd have to sign papers disparaging the performances of 10 of my colleagues. I'd been promised a leadership role (VP/Eng "unofficially", the title becoming official after 6 months) and this would have been my first official duty: fucking over some seriously capable engineers. Reasons for this were not given to me. It was just "something you have to do if you want to lead". Seriously, WTF? Since when is leadership about fucking innocent people over? The back story is that the CTO was leaving and the "tech lead" was a protege who wanted to take some shots before the CTO left, in order to cement his position until the next CTO came in. How he managed to convince the real execs that this was a good idea, fuck if I know. My guess (which I can't prove) is that some of these people had "too much" equity and the firm was looking to manage them out, and that having a 28-year-old, who knew nothing about their work, sign horrible performance reviews would disgust them enough to quit. I didn't sign the papers. After I refused to cave when they extorted me out of a promised severance, the CEO embarked on a months-long campaign to ruin my reputation after I was gone. I bounced back with a bit more resolve. When I build a company, I want to make sure that kind of nonsense never fucking happens. Yes, there will be disagreements and "politics" related to which ideas are more important. Fine. That's okay. But if I am running a company, extortion and sabotage will never happen on my fucking watch. After that experience, I don't judge people for how they make money. Domain squatting is not my favorite activity, but it's an honest living compared to a lot of the stuff I've seen in the supposedly legitimate white-collar world. |