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mildbow

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Long time HN user starting a fresh account: it's always nice to start from scratch every so often.

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That's a good point. Thanks for bringing it up so I can clarify my position :)

It's not about calling one person a liar vs the other. Rather, it's about accepting that there are multiple sides to every story. Without an unbiased third party, it devolves into he said/she said.

If formal charges aren't brought forward (which would allow for more facts/third party analysis), then why should one person be denigrated? Should a hint of an accusation, sourced by third parties, be enough to fire someone over? If so, what does that firing actually solve?[0]

Anyway, I understand this is a trigger issue, esp. after Susan's post, but to over-react is as bad under-reacting: you want to fix the problem, and you can't do that when you are busy scapegoating.

[0] I'm talking about this specific case, not sexual harassment cases in general.

It's not just for the courts: I do believe in innocent until proven guilty.

Why? Golden rule: given a role reversal, I would like the same consideration.

Please note that the "headache" this seems to have caused is purely an external optics one. Not sure how great of a team you would have if you cut off members at first sign of issues.

Maybe the sort of dysfunctional mess Uber seems to have.

Internal, not external, optics are vastly more important in a company.

Yeah, I agree it should have been mentioned (literally my 2nd and 3rd lines)

But, this firing has the smell of being one for appearances, rather than actual culpability.

But then again, I don't know the actors so if anyone with additional info confirms that it's a fair firing, I would be happy to listen.

idk.

Should he have disclosed it? Of course, because that would have lessened the impact when it did come out.

Maybe he thought it was over and done with. And, since it was an allegation vs proven maybe he didn't want to muddy waters.

However, to say that an allegation must be reported when taking a new job is pretty harsh. Innocent till proven guilty surely?

> "Uber execs found out about the situation after Recode informed them of the chain of events between Singhal and the search giant this week."

Punish the person responsible in Susan's case. If anything, this feels like a person's career was taken down due to a witch hunt.

To me, this action by Uber's executive team is not one of cleaning house: it shows a lack of spine.

Problem is those staff are seen as fungible and the onus is on them to show up. Didn't show up enough times? Well, you are fired. That's a pain point.

A colleague didn't show up: well crap now you have to be a team player and cover for them. That's a pain point.

A staff member didn't show up? That's an annoyance.

There are a bunch of competitors and SMBs very much care about the price tag so 100s of dollars is a massive stretch[0].

Note that this alleviates the pain of the staff, not the business ie vitamin for the entity paying for it, but pain killer for their part-time workers.

But, I do agree pricing is out of whack. I would probably try to charge directly based on the number of staff managed (eg: $1/staff member/month).

[0] I run a startup selling to SMBs in the service sector. Upfront dollar amount is a massive hurdle. However, upsells/elastic pricing based on users is easier.

It's not about saying everyone or even most people in the US are racist. It's about considering whether a visit would be marred by the current miasma of (institutional?) racism/anti-immigrant sentiment.

For example: would you, as a US citizen, choose to visit Iran vs going somewhere else?

You need to be a special kind of idiot to actually think that increases safety.

Is the fix to some countries having nuclear weapons that everyone has the right to nuclear weapons?

Or, have we come to the conclusion that non-proliferation is the answer?

This is one of the benefits of being a founder with YC/well-connected VCs.

Even if you burn though millions without figuring out a market, you will land on your feet (if you are on the executive team). Your employees? Not so much.

My words may sound negative, but my point is: most people who are working at startups should seriously consider starting one instead.

1. Why do they hate her?

2. Do they consider him not racist/sexist because they are a little bit too? (Not trying to be inflammatory)

3. I hate it too.

4b. Why are they hurting? Why is median household income so low?

I might be missing the point, but a lot of the responses sound emotion driven, with the overwhelming emotion being the fear of change. So, it seems patronizing to attribute any sort pro/con formalism. Basically, Trump has a lot of fear driven rhetoric, and if you heard one of your fears, then regardless of the validity, you felt that someone was taking your side.

I think GPS is secondary: you can easily get a mount for it.

Based on experience, the most likely explanation is texting or voice calls. When I got a new car with bluetooth calling, all of a sudden I was fumbling a lot less. A call is now about the same level of distraction as having a passenger or 2.

Texting however, I have no idea. Maybe something that moves texting to voice, but I haven't seen anything actually make that work. And, it's distracting enough that I just don't text while driving: sending ETA updates or w/e isn't worth risking my life over.

The problem is some people give good feedback, other people don't.

Even if you pay the $5, it doesn't mean the person giving you feedback is any good at it.

Made-up feedback is worse than no feedback.

Hahaha.

I think you would be selecting the exactly wrong applicant. Why would one pay for a chance to make you money?

Anyone you want to hire probably has enough other places where application is free.

If anything, you should be paying people for the time they spend interviewing. That would 1) make sure you are incentivized to only bring in people who have a good chance, 2) give you a chance to woo great people who might already be happy where they are.

Algorithms 9 years ago

Recursive might be harder to grok to someone new because of the implied stack.

However, once you understand the iterative version, it's probably easier to understand how the recursion is actually working.

From the outside, it seems like the founder saw a bigger opportunity and decided to move on.

So, the primary motivation isn't shutting down this startup. The primary motivation is moving on to the next startup which they believe is a bigger opportunity.

Not too awesome for current employees: hope they are getting taken care of.

I've been considering a training board, but it's too much hassle to put up. So, I've been using towels over my pull-up bar, but this seems great for $30.

Thanks. Bought!

Guinness? Are you calling them stout? :)

Anyway, the point should be you want to get people who are skilled. Maybe/maybe not that means English fluency. But, that's another matter.

It seems most abuse[0] happens due to random Indian body-shops. Since Trump is so carte-blanche maybe he can just blacklist the ones we know to be obvious abusers.

Maybe a better answer is to require all H1-Bs be actual full-time employees of the company, rather than being under contract through a third party?

[0]I define abuse as using H1-Bs primarily for cheap labor vs skilled labor.