The behavior he's calling out is obviously abhorrent. But isn't this more due to him airing dirty laundry in public? If this is his last recourse after consulting internally to try and deal with this, then I get it. But there is definitely a trend (maybe not by him) of people running to social media with their complaints before discussing them with those involved. If that is the case i would understand his being sanctioned.
Yeah, it reads that way to me -- this post was a public leak, not just criticising one founder but also implicitly repudiating the culture and governing processes of the forum. If the forum and trust in the forum being a private space are important to the program, I think being asked to leave sounds reasonable.
I'm not saying that the internal processes were satisfactory -- I don't know either way, and I think this position is consistent with both cases. I think the two options available are,
1. Criticise publicly and leave, and
2. Work within the system, and accept outcomes that go against you.
I guess it would be important to know if anyone internally commented how jumping the queue wasn't a cool thing to do. Leadership internally needs to set good examples and question questionable behavior so folks know the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
Shooting the messenger, if the messenger went through all of the proper channels and made every effort to rectify the matter appropriately internally, would then be counterproductive because it magnifies the issue by creating a martyr.
It's difficult to know what actually transpired, but I don't think a reasonable person would air dirty laundry without trying every possible avenue and appealing to leadership to take a position. So either they're unreasonable or YC let them down, it's impossible to say without independent observers in the know stating their impression.
Given that the people in question lack apparently any sort of civic virtue or else they wouldn't be engaging in this behaviour in the first place, where else do you propose one exposes dirty laundry other than in the public?
This is exactly why people in positions of power are afraid of transparency and why there is such a anti-media bias in the tech industry.
This is the umpteenth time I've seen this "But we don't know anything about it!" argument, and besides surprising me it's beginning to piss me off. We know quite a bit. Why do people keep claiming we don't -- just too lazy to read the thread where this stuff is repeatedly linked, or trying to promote some agenda?
People have all sorts of reasons to air dirty laundry; publicity, for one. Assuming you know the whole story based on the retelling of one side in a tweet is a mistake.
At least we have a good example answer to “Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage”. Lie about eligibility to the health system, in order to get an advantage in the vaccine line! In a way, this behavior is kind of consistent with the “disruption” ethos of tech startups.
