They should have asked him to take it down, or re-phrase it to be more polite about it. Booting someone over that seems kafkaesque, like there's a lot to hide.
Especially if he was being factual, there's an element of legit whistle-blowing there, it's a bad look, YC.
I’m also surprised how many people bragged about jumping ahead in line when elderly people with much higher mortality rates were still waiting for theirs. At least keep it to yourself.
Agreed. When eligibility opened up, we drove 100 miles just to avoid potentially taking doses from people at risk in the metro area. Seemed like a good excuse to get out of the house for a road trip, as well as being the right thing to do.
We were able to schedule immediate appointments in an adjacent county populated by hardcore Trumpers. Upon arriving at the drive-through vaccination site, there was only one other car in the lot. No danger of cutting the line in that county.
We don't have full information about this story though. It may well be the case that the YC founder called out for lying about his qualifications for the vaccine was at a vaccination location where there were zero lines and poor community uptake of the vaccine. Idle doses sitting around doing nothing. At this point, the US has so many extra doses that it is shipping millions overseas. Depending on the location and timing of the founder who lied, he may be ethically doing a moral good by reducing his own potential to transmit the virus amidst a population of people who refuse to get inoculated anyway.
My point is only, it's sometimes dangerous to throw stones without asking questions or getting the full picture first. Taking doses when you aren't qualified for them is overall a bad thing I think we can all agree.
I live in Oakland. This incident seems to be back in early March. Back then the large vaccination sites were all listed on myturn.ca.gov (ie the Oakland Coliseum). They'd post new batches of appointments and they would be all booked really fast (within minutes or hours). But Curative was also running vaccinations sites in Oakland and Berkeley. They weren't listed on the myturn website, so people didn't know about them. They would post new appointments and they would be available for days, sometimes even available right up until the appointment time. This was during the time when you had to be 65+ or have a health condition. In my social circle there were many ineligible people sending links around for the Curative appointments. There was definitely a mentality of "there are so many open appointments, they're just going to go unused." Whether that was true or not I don't know, but there was definitely a reality that certain vaccine sites that were not integrated into the central database had tons of openings, while people who didn't know how to find the secret links were left to reload myturn.ca.gov constantly hoping to find appointments. It was also public knowledge that nobody ever checked that you qualified with a valid medical condition. So getting a vaccine appointment at that time for a totally healthy 25 year old was as simple as someone texting you a link and clicking a single checkbox to say you had a medical condition. In my small social circle, I know of that happening at least a few times.
Hm. I'm not sure where the calculus lies on having a dose go slightly more slowly to populations that are more likely to get covid and/or die from it than quickly to young, affluent populations who are much less likely to die from it or get it.
I am sure that those decisions should be made by the state, not the individual 25-year old who decides that they are deserving of the vaccine now.
Also, many of those links that were floated around had equity codes embedded that were not supposed to be used by the general public, so would show appointments made available specifically for high-risk populations.
My general opinion is that people who skipped ahead in their 20s, especially in the Bay Area, were in the moral wrong.
The government, well in this case multiple levels of state/federal/city/tribal governments all made up their own decisions on what defined one as eligible for the vaccine, and then randomly changed them. The government should not be the arbiter of one’s morality.
It was a mess and IMO difficult to assign anyone in the moral right in the distribution of vaccines.
For example, looking at the vaccine distribution from a utilitarian perspective and not a political-agenda perspective it would have made sense to give the vaccine to healthcare workers first and then grocery workers next, as society in general will collapse if people are not able to get groceries. In a strictly calculative sense society doesn’t care if a few more old people in a nursing home die, but if grocery stores are closed there will be food riots/massive problems in a few days.
But politicians know that old people vote. So we had the age-tiered system.
IMO both if these perspectives were misguided and the optimal way to handle it would have been to had over vaccine logistics to Amazon who could actually make a web app that doesn’t crash to register for vaccines and just go first-come first-served.
Instead we had to try to register via Kroger (I think) who was using a chatbot to register people which was not very effective or high throughput. Costco had spaghetti code and had embedded way too much information in the page source, no idea who designed their signup page either.
This incompetence and unneeded beauracracy by the government literally cost lives.
> The government should not be the arbiter of one’s morality.
If people vote and decide that this is the way that it is being done, then people should respect that. Circumventing rationing because you feel like you are more deserving in that context is unethical.
> utilitarian perspective and not a political-agenda perspective it would have made sense to give the vaccine to healthcare workers first and then grocery workers next, as society in general will collapse if people are not able to get groceries
Not at all clear that this is the conclusion to reach. Grocery store workers are much more likely to spread, but are also very unlikely to be killed by it. Elderly people are likely to be killed by it. Most epidemiological modeling showed that vaccinating the elderly first and as quickly as possible was the fastest way to mitigate deaths, not vaccinating coronavirus.
This is exactly why it is better to come to these decisions as a society, not let individuals who may very well come to incorrect judgements about what the socially optimal thing to do is.
> IMO both if these perspectives were misguided and the optimal way to handle it would have been to had over vaccine logistics to Amazon who could actually make a web app that doesn’t crash to register for vaccines and just go first-come first-served.
This is classic HN backseat driver-ism. First-come first-served would have been ineffective, because again, there were ample reasons why vaccinating the elderly first made sense.
> Hm. I'm not sure where the calculus lies on having a dose go slightly more slowly to populations that are more likely to get covid and/or die from it than quickly to young, affluent populations who are much less likely to die from it or get it.
You went from two groups ("populations that are more likely to get covid and/or die from it than quickly to young") to one ("young, affluent populations who are much less likely to die from it or get it") whereas the latter group overlaps with the group who is more likely to get Covid. People who have work with human contact are more likely to get it, whereas people who live sheltered are not likely to get it, nor spread it (which overlaps with elder group).
Anyway, none of this warrants skipping the queue. The queue is there for a reason, and we could draw a parallel with responsible disclosure. Sharing a vulnerability with your co employees so they can exploit it as well is not responsible disclosure. However, the guy responded in this thread and I am not convinced based on that post that it is a vulnerability. It seemed to be just open for 18+.
The latter group "young, affluent" in the Bay Area, typically do not work jobs with extensive human contact. Most jobs with extensive human contact were prioritized in the Bay by March, so skipping ahead implies people whose jobs did not require human contact.
The only point I'm trying to make is that it was morally wrong to lie to skip ahead in the eligibility lines in March.
Ah right. I am not familiar with the Bay area in these regards. Makes sense though. For example here in The Netherlands, only the elder, disabled (certain disabilities), and the medical employees got ahead. Then the police wanted to get ahead of line, which is IMO justified (but I get that its fuel for people who are against vaccins or the Covid regulations in general). Btw, I edited my post while you replied to it, sorry. I added a parallel I see with responsible disclosure.
The situation in Oakland was even more bizarre at the time. The state had generated certain “equity” access codes which would allow you to book non-public reserved appointments. The idea was that these codes could be used by members of otherwise hard to reach communities. Instead, they were shared by a bunch of local arts groups on Instagram. I’m sure they were abused. Witnessing that debacle made me lose a lot of faith in the prioritization as practiced at the time.
Alameda County wasted more doses than any other county in California, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a link between this fact and all the open appointments. It is true that if appointments were open, doses could go unused (and spoil because they were thawed in a batch).
If we continue using mRNA vaccines in the future, I hope some of these logistics issues can be solved. I'd rather the system prevents this, or allows it to occur in an unambiguous way that doesn't cause people to hate each other, question each others' morals, rat each other out, etc. I wouldn't say people skipping the line were doing the right thing, but I'm even less convinced that it was wrong. This was a gray area unaddressed by public health officials.
We should make those moral decisions as a society, not as individual apes who have incredible vested interest in tricking themselves into thinking that they are doing the world a solid by advancing their interest.
Your story doesn't sound that different from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221, tbh, other than the driving 100 miles and the Trumpian bits, which aren't relevant to the ethical question.
It seems to me that the important information would be: did anybody who was eligible fail to get vaccinated as a result of the extras dropping in? In your story the answer is no. In the other dude's story, it seems like we don't know. If his story is accurate then the answer is probably not because otherwise the people running the site would have told him "please don't do that because it might take doses away from the eligible". But who knows.
There’s so many more factors though than just the mortality rate by age group.
Will they really wait until all elderly are vaccinated first? This would never work.
Just give it to everyone and it goes faster. While we wait for old people to get vaccinated it still circulates among young, who come into contact with old and unvaccinated, hence not helping things.
I was also surprised at some people I know going to great lengths to get the vaccine earlier. Maybe they have some risk factor I don’t know about, but as young stay at home workers, the risk of the virus is not high.
I just waited till it was generally available and the local website had appointments available. Added bonus is by waiting the vaccine trials run that much longer so you have more data that it is safe.
I’m the type of guy how likes to go to mediocre restaurants to avoid waiting in line for good ones, so maybe I’m just weird.
By "design" of human nature the only really confidential communication is 1:1 verbal. And even that can be easily recorded. Kinda funny to see people not understand this simple fact over and over again.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
You have no expectation of privacy if you announce (let alone advocate for, or instruct how-to) behaviour against public health policy _during_a_pandemic_.
The contrast with people who have been working hard to match people with appointments couldn't be more stark.
It does indeed have that vibe, and irrespective of what actually happened - it makes him look bad.
If he was indeed talking about inappropriately skipping the line, then this guy is a bad actor. But I should point out that we don't have any idea - the situation could have been very misrepresented - and he could have done nothing wrong.
But given the public information ... this Tweet is going to come of 'Snitches Get Stitches' in a 'lacking in self awareness' kind of way, as opposed to the 'I was slandered and misrepresented publicly, and that can be very damaging, I'm glad this issue is behind us" kind of way.
Why are adults in the US using Twitter/GIF memes instead of finding thoughtful and mature ways of communicating this stuff? I don't like this evolution.
> Why are adults in the US using Twitter/GIF memes instead of finding thoughtful and mature ways
This way they evoke more emotion, so, more of the unthinking (feeling-based) approval: retweets, reposts, just being remembered. When it's funny, it makes people happier along the way, when it's angry, it may make people also feel anger, but a righteous, just anger.
It's a potent drug which is very hard to stop taking recreationally, and also for a just cause. Not as a poster, but most importantly as a reader.
Memes pack more information and context into less content.
We're basically going through a mini printing press style communications revolution right now.
Before (say 1999) you had print which was cheap and audiovisual which was expensive/time consuming. Now thanks to tech audiovisual content is something the masses can use to communicate and it's affecting culture greatly.
'Images' can communicate some things, like emotions, in a better way.
But 'memes' are things which are pushed onto situation that probably call for more nuance i.e. 80% of the 'Karen' memes I see are not actually 'Karen' memes.
But they don't necessarily communicate 'more' information, and more often than not, they're just used to put an emotive 'playround' spin on something. If the issue is important, words are almost always a better choice.
Irrespective of what happened, a GIF response to something semi-serious I think is bad form. If people aspire to assume responsibility for some important thing ... like processing payments ... then they can assume responsibility for making basic, conscientious communications.
Almost. Tamarians were using references to shared cultural stories. Many, but not all, memes work like that. This meme is of a different kind - it packs emotional payload mostly directly, with only a reference to a simple activity and related concept (popcorn + Internet drama).
Put another way, if you consider a story to be a collection of handles (in programming sense, like a pointer) to concepts and emotions, then Tamarians communicate by speaking handles to stories. That's one level of indirection extra over this meme, which itself is a (simple) story - a collection of handles to concepts and emotions.
I almost agree. I think it's not information and context that's being packed, it's emotional load.
As any writer or poet knows, words are handles to emotions. Choose a slightly different word, and your readers will tend to feel very differently after reading a line containing, otherwise, the same information. It's a wetware equivalent of RPC API.
Memes are this, but taken up to 11. They transmit a much more complex and powerful emotional payload, in readily digestible form.
Like in this case, I could write a whole paragraph listing the kind of emotions that little GIF communicated. Calm distancing, depreciation, disrespect, feeling safe, ... Written out as words, it wouldn't fit in a Tweet, and wouldn't be as powerful a message.
I kind of miss the old days when I could go through life without ever knowing that some guy in North Carolina got in a fight with his brother-in-law over a borrowed lawnmower. My solution is to stay off social media altogether.
At this point in the US, anyone who wants to get a vaccine can get one. That makes getting it a personal choice.
Then you have this person try to damage Ycombinator because one of their founders spoke internally about the matter. Absolutely tactless. You'd expect future founders to be able to consider potential repercussions for biting the hand that's serving them.
Bingo. He uses the announcement of vaccines opening up to all in May as "proof" that it was allowed, but I can't see anything in the announcement that indicates that.
It's a divisive political topic, and he associated an individual post made on an internal Ycombinator forum with Ycombinator itself. Comments of individuals don't represent the company, and by framing it like he did, he publicly dragged Ycombinator right into the middle of a contentious political debate.
All I've been hearing on HN for the last 6 years is how so many things are inherently political, that to not act is to condone, and that organizations should be made to take a stand by their employees/students/passers-by. Why does YC get an exception?
That's like saying students at a university don't represent the university, and yet they do and don't, both in the eyes of the people and the institution. It's difficult to say how attribution will be finally concluded in society, no?
In this case the relationship between member and institution is even tighter, and the desperation of sink or swim is more palpable.
Why would alleged poor behavior among a handful of YC founders damage its reputation, unless it’s either endorsed by YC leadership or widespread enough that it’s unfortunately representative?
If anything, criticism of poor behavior within the cohort would reflect well on a culture that values sharp contrarian takes and productive disruption.
Postscript: the person in question states that this was an open site with no restrictions, and I am pleased to read that. However, it is still unclear if this was because of a special campaign to reach at risk populations (like undocumented people) and I can't help but think there was a naive element of playing the system here.
Regardless, they or YC should have addressed this publically at the time, rather than waiting and staying silent. The YC brand is damaged because we don't know if they acted ethically, or enforced the omerta. Everyone's reputation is taking an acid bath because of unclear communication.
The post specifically told others how to skip the line, which was lying about their profession to say they were one that was qualified but that then people on site couldn’t prove.
It's like these two people are competing for the worst self-own. From what I can tell (and the communications on this are very confusing), Biggar goes after Prafulfillment without having his facts straight enough to avoid issuing a nearly immediate correction. Then when Biggar gets canned, Prafulfillment gloats in a way that draws attention to their identity, without clarifying what actually happened, leaving Biggar's version as the only account of events. Additional tidbits of information are coming out, mainly in responses to responses to tweets... but this is a ridiculous way to conduct public relations.
> Prafulfillment gloats in a way that draws attention to their identity, without clarifying what actually happened, leaving Biggar's version as the only account of events. Additional tidbits of information are coming out...
I agree that it’ll get more attention than it otherwise would, but I think that is a desirable outcome for YC. The more people who see the message “if you publicly badmouth us, you will be punished” the better for them.
When did public denunciations become popular in the US? I know they've been a part of the Chinese internet since the early days. It wasn't always so intense in the US.
This is getting off-topic, but the US is like the motherland of telling other people how they should behave. Look up any of the "public freakout" videos, they're 80% each side trying to explain why what the other side did was wrong, all the while not realizing that pretty much nobody cares about their opinion and is just there to watch the drama for a few minutes. Every single "Karen" video is full of self-righteousness, that's what makes them so hilarious (until you get bored, which happens rather quickly).
Whatever else was true of the early years, when internet use was a niche thing it wasn't representative of broader US culture sort of by definition. Now it is, or at least much more so.
Your point is well taken, but ephemeral nyms aren't new. I actually like knowing they are out there. You need to evaluate what you read on its own merits. And there's an aspect of rebelling against the logic of accumulation.
They did exist, but a lot of us filtered them out with our newsreaders.
I don’t have unlimited time to read comments so I prioritize ones from the patio11, cperciva, and ChuckMcMs of the board. Not because who they are IRL but because a history of posts I found interesting, informative, etc. makes it more likely the next one will be too.
In 1627 they got on Thomas Morten's case for a whole bunch of nothing that basically amounted to being too friendly with the natives.
There's a reason "puritanical" has a derogatory connotation. I'm gonna stop short of calling them the Christian Taliban but only because the Taliban haven't yet gotten onboard with female literacy. It suffices to say that there were good reasons the Puritans were unwelcome in Europe. Rhode Island basically popped up overnight because there were just that many people that wanted out and were willing to throw in their lot with the first guy to flip everyone the bird on his way out. These weren't good people. The OG Pilgrims were a tiny bit better but not much.
The early history of New England is a good read. Amazing how quickly the cultural differences between the various regions developed and how little things have changed since.
It's a bit distressing how organizations try so hard to keep a good reputation all the time. I mean, is it really that bad to publically admit that you are composed of people with questionable morals?
For example, in the first company I used to work, I was always bitching about how things could improve. I got fired because I was "bringing the moral down" and was "working against the company". I could see why they would think that, but in my mind this kind of loyalty that is required is very immature: very good things arise from conflict, why would you keep that from coming?
Or maybe I am being naive and a good reputation is much more important than everything else. I don't know.
One example would be a food critic. They give an honest description of a restaurant so readers can decide if they want to go there. The article doesn't need to be helpful for the restaurant.
But I can't think of an example where a company keeps unconstructive critics on the payroll.
Food critic is a third party. If the description is honest and contains reasoning it can be constructive to readers (potential/current customer(s) and/or the restaurant(s)). Something along the line of "sucked, bad taste" contains no substance whereas "food was burned and flavor X and Y was a bad combination" does contain substance.
I obviously don't know your situation, but there's a difference between giving useful feedback and just constantly bitching about everything. You also have to consider that maybe you didn't have the full picture, and there actually was a good reason for what was being done, even though that would be a management failure to not convey why something needed to be done.
I was always ready to be part of the solution, so I don't think I was being empty when complaining about things. But I have to add that I wasn't maximizing for appearing polite. I never cross the line of not being respectful, though.
Indeed, the management could have a different idea of what was an ideal direction. I just happened to disagree. It was a very small company, so I don't think I had a lot of different information. But even if that was the case, this was a good opportunity to have a perhaps heated but interesting discussion.
During these conversations, there were never clear signs that the "decision was made and the path was chosen". My concerns were usually replied with "huh, ok". Therefore, I continually brought it up, since it was my interpretation that people were not convinced yet.
Honestly it sounds likely that management didn't handle this well, but possibly you pushed things further than you should have because you hadn't received a clear (to you) signal to stop.
Not exactly the same as orgs but it reminds me of the very very difficult skill of "criticizing the king". It's possible, but it requires a lot of finesse and skill, and even then you might get beheaded.
And it goes without saying, overtly criticizing the king is pretty obviously a bad idea.
I guess you are right. After that experience, I was very cautious to work for another company, because I find it very difficult to keep my mouth shut. I love to discuss how things are wrong and how I had an idea of how to improve things. Now, I am building my own company and will try to walk that walk when bringing my own employees.
People don't know how to disagree anymore. It's disheartening, because I like a good disagreement and the deep debates that can come out of them ... that is, as long as the conversation is void of emotional temper-tantrums (and in a lot of cases these days, fear of cancel-culture.)
What I find interesting is that Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936 covering this topic. Maybe that was the "beginning of the trend"... not really sure.
Sorry buddy but if you don't accept my truth and also check your privilege and agree that hearing things I don't agree with causes me harm, how could we possibly discuss anything?
On the internet, anyone can drop in and out of any conversation they want. Combine that concept with anonymity/the ability to disparage people you will never meet, and you've got a recipe for disagreements starting from positions of extreme toxicity.
I agree with you, but this is where it's worth pointing out that really ugly conversations occur on Facebook between people who are clearly identifiable and in many cases acquaintances.
There needs to be trust for this. And there is always a power dynamic at play. Manager to employee. Or even employee to employee where one will eventually get promoted above the other.
Its actually really hard to agree to disagree. You need to have a situation where each person has the same propensity to concede an argument. Like a code review - just do what the other person suggests instead of arguing about it if it really doesn’t matter that much.
Founders, executives and managers are all emotional beings. They can only handle so much criticism, regardless of if it is the right criticism they need to hear.
Imagine giving a speech to your team, and there is one employee who is rolling their eyes and smirking at things you say, and who you know disagrees with you. It’s very difficult to block out - and their are few who can handle that. You may be 100% onboard after a heated discussion and not making any outward gestures, but your mere presence will leave the person imagining you are rolling your eyes. And this festers.
You need to find a way to put yourself in their shoes and really feel what it’s like to have someone very critical of things around.
Yea, reputation is everything and you should never be completely open and it’s why people water down everything they say and end up kissing ass.
Even people who say they can take any criticism can’t. This is the best lesson you can learn.
Because organizations are composed of people with questionable morals they'll happily eat the weak by using public admissions of culpability to tank competitors or just randos for the lulz if nothing else.
I'm also confused. But it seems like the tweet in question is a false story that could be libel/defamation or something?
He later issues a 'correction' (why not delete the original wrong tweet?) that says that the story about "advocating for lying to skip lines" is false. [1]
I don't have any part of this and I'm confused and don't know what's going on here. But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know.
>But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know.
It's still partially true - the allegation of lying was wrong, but the allegation of instructing others how to lie is still being made. This is clarified by the tweet that you linked.
I didn't quite read it that way. The accusation is that both told other people how to skip the line. My assumption is that the both founders told other people how they could get the vaccine. A more charitable observation would be that the second founder told people how they could get it without waiting in line or lying.
The accusation still sounds gross. Though vaccine rollout wasn't great in the bay area. I got an email from my doctor about appointments being available. The ones in the bay area were taken really quickly. Availability was much better in other counties. There were also a couple other replies. One mentioned you could get vaccinated for volunteering for 4 hours. Another mentioned some sites were doing first come first serve.
>The accusation is that both told other people how to skip the line. My assumption is that the both founders told other people how they could get the vaccine. A more charitable observation would be that the second founder told people how they could get it without waiting in line or lying.
You're being charitable in the wrong direction, because you're not interpreting the allegations in good faith. What would be the point of taking to Twitter if all the second founder did was instruct people how to get a vaccine, without the component of lying to bypass the queue?
Since there would be no point to such an outrage, it's uncharitable to pre-emptively dismiss the contents of the allegations. Whether or not they are eventually shown to be true, they should still be interpreted in the most serious and direct way.
Why is that confusing? If you condemn the in-group publicly, it's a sign of betrayal, and they kick you out. Monkeys strong together, that's all there is to it.
(as an outsider looking in) I think, for YC, who pride themselves on their tight-knit alumni network and reach of their partners, in-group bias was always going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There are no rules about these kinds of things in private organizations, so it defaults to the instinctive human behavior.
Whenever you hear about the "greats" of the industry, you can be aware that they rose to prominence through navigating power structures built on such principles.
1. Skipping vaccine line and talking about it is not actually against BookFace/YC ToS, or it would be a stretch to apply ToS.
2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS since it breaches privacy. In a way that paints the group negatively, nonetheless.
Pretty straightforward. It doesn't really matter *to YC* whether anyone skipped a line or not, what matters are private forum matters getting blasted to hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter users.
Edit: before you get angry, I'm presenting this from the most plausible perspective of YC, not my own feelings on the matter (which are irrelevant).
Edit2: what are people seeing that I'm not seeing here? Clearly I'm missing something, because wow I've never gotten piled on like this on HN.
And it’s why YC doesn’t have the reputation it once did. Letting Sam bro up the institution wasn’t the best decision in hindsight as this incident demonstrates.
That's a really disingenuous take from a single line in an essay that is not about the subject.
If we could say "The Civil War was about slavery" and be done with the subject, I'm pretty sure so many books, studies, and histories about the subject would not have been made.
I mean, we can say that and be done with the subject. For instance, just look at the seceding states' articles of secession: they quite plainly spell out that they are seceding because of slavery and to join the other slaveholding states.
But there are a whole lot of Americans who wish to believe that the South had a noble cause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy), and they are more than happy to buy books and watch TV shows explaining what that cause is, so such books and TV shows get written.
The Civil War was just a couple of generations ago, and involved a huge chunk of the country. The various organizations attempting to rehabilitate their legacy (e.g., the Daughters of the Confederacy) are younger still, and active today. It's not actually surprising that there are a large number of Americans who for whatever reason wish to believe that there was a better reason for the Confederacy to do what it did than slavery - the Daughters, for instance, are quite literally descended from Confederate soldiers, so there is a natural desire to believe that they fought for a worthy cause. But the number of people who believe it is hardly evidence that it's true.
What is noteworthy that Paul Graham (who wasn't even born in the US!) is one of those people, and moreover doesn't simply believe (as you're claiming) that there's a legitimate debate about what the Civil War was about - he believes that the possibility that the Civil War was about slavery is a "cartoon version" which can't possibly be true.
And yes, it's a throwaway line in an unrelated talk. But he still said it as if he believed it, and the alternative interpretation - that he doesn't really believe it and said it anyway because he thought it would please his audience - is that he is a man of poor judgment and a loud mouth in things he should judge less and speak less on, which goes to my point that Sam did not "bro up" YC, it was already rotten.
I think you are attributing a lot of things to Graham that he didn't say.
He did not say that it was not about slavery. Again, if it was an issue that could be expressed in a single sentence, it would not have inspired the many studies that it has. That is not to deny that the Civil War was about slavery, which I am certainly not. As to what Graham believes, a single sentence means only that. And does not mean he thinks its opposite is true. Not everything is an either/or proposition. Quite often things are more a both/and situation.
> If we could say "The Civil War was about slavery" and be done with the subject, I'm pretty sure so many books, studies, and histories about the subject would not have been made.
"We" can. Apparently some people can't. There's a difference.
I'm under the impression that any public commentary about what goes on inside that forum is generally discouraged, but that's just what I've seen. Although this is an interesting point, for sure.
That wouldn't surprise me. Don't worry about the downvotes, it's not unusual for votes on a post to oscillate wildly in any sort of hot topic because people often revert to tribalism as they first scan the thread.
You are correct. YC emphasizes regularly that the forums are private and otherwise the people wouldn’t share as much or give blunter truth.
Having seen screenshots of the post in question, it was bad, but it also would have been strange to kick someone out for that. The poster is an asshole and proud of it, but the community seems to have responded directly.
> I'm under the impression that any public commentary about what goes on inside that forum is generally discouraged
When private organizations in their internal culture and functioning deviate too far away from common social norms, you kinda hope that a whistleblower or the press calls them out for it.
Read the Paul Graham essay on “What You Can’t Say” and realize that YC culture has things you can’t say.
YC culture allows you to say ‘here is how to marginally undermine a public health effort for your own benefit”, but YC culture does not allow you to publicly say “people at YC teach each other how to undermine a public health effort for their own benefit”.
Anything that is critical of YC or Paul is heresy. Anything that prioritizes society over a YC participant is heresy. These things can’t be done publicly, or you’ll be cast out of YC.
FWIW I don't think that would much affect the decision. In past similar cases, where the startup wasn't defunct, YC has divested.
I've never been part of any such decision, but I do know YC and the people who have to make such decisions, and from what I've seen they'd be reasoning from first principles or at least trying to.
I'm guessing he broke an internal rule about talking of what's said in the founders forum, while the founder is breaking unrelated outside rules and being a dick, which isn't as fireable.
Why is it not though? Intentionally misleading people is how you get Theranos. Being a dick is how you get a TK@Uber as a leader. Neither of those are examples one should follow of "how to be a leader"
That's a very sad commentary on the human condition if you think anything about Theranos would have been "fine". If anyone involved knew what was going on and still pushed for the IPO to get their money, then they need to be hit for fraud.
As a collective, we've lost our humanity. I used to think we were losing it, but over the past few years I feel like we've moved past losing and now just lost it completely.
Priority groups don’t even make sense. It’s some egalitarian crap for the sake of it and more so for buying votes from older ppl.
Then we are left with: it’s simply against the rules. And as if people in SF care about that.
Why r so many people in SF on these moral crusades anyway. Getting high off enforcing rules and looking down on others.
Everyone should be equal…as long as I get my ridiculous salary and elite network. It’s like imposter syndrome for the privileged…so they need to pretend they are for the common man.
But he didn't lie. Many clinics are opening up to first-come, first-served because vax rates are dropping and they still have inventory. Feels like drama?
Sites that were not getting enough people coming in to use all the doses they had available were doing that in my area. It was not all sites all the time but at a certain point, lots of places switched priority to getting doses to people regardless of demographic so that they didn't spoil. And lots of that info was word of mouth or social media posts, because there was little way to centrally coordinate it.
It makes sense because in some states its been basically any adult can walk in and get a shot for months already. I'm surprised there is anywhere in the country left where that is not the case.
This is really distressing, especially considering the ongoing public behavior of the original founder. Kicking out Paul seems like the opposite reaction for YC to have. It would be helpful to hear a public comment from them about this situation.
I'm not going to necessarily trust that reddit comment, especially when I know there were plenty instances of people lying about eligibility, and I think it is largely unlikely that most YC founders would have been eligible for this mobile clinic in west Oakland in mid-March.
Might be a letter of the law vs. spirit of the law sort of a situation.
AFAIK, the FEMA mobile clinics were meant to boost vaccinations in underserved communities. So they go to one of those communities, set up shop and then jam the needle in as many arms as they can find.
I don't know but it's completely possible that as long as you are there and you are 18+, you will be eligible for it. However, since it's meant to vaccinate underserved communities, you were probably not supposed to be there if you live somewhere else.
- Lying to jump the queue, ahead of people who need it more is trashy, selfish, should be not just discouraged but heavily reprimanded.
- A lot of the vaccine distribution is awful and disorganized. This often leads to vaccines being thrown away.
- SHOTS IN ARMS. A vaccine in someone is better than a vaccine thrown away, even if it's not optimally distributed.
"Just showing up" is a thing here in Belgium as well, and I expect many countries. Here in Brussels for example for a while the major vaccination center had time and stock for 1000 shots a day, and so would plan for 1000 shots distributed per day and invite … 1000 people for that day, not one more. Over snail mail or SMS depending on where you lived. And 75% were going unused, and they were wondering why.
So yeah, we can spend time talking about how they should know better, overbook, etc but in the mean time vaccines were being thrown away and the distribution was slowing down. So people just showing up speeds that up, and is a net gain.
And yet, people complain and are outraged, claim the people showing up are skipping the queue, and I frankly wish they'd shut the fuck up about it.
If indeed Paul was denouncing someone who was bragging about jumping the queue or encouraging people to do so by revealing how they're Hacking Society™, that's just absolute trash and it's completely disgusting.
If he's complaining about an instance of someone saying "There's unused vaccines in centers, show up at the end of the day and you can get one", then have at it.
I'm not in YC / the forum in question, I've no idea, can't form an opinion. But yeah, needinfo.
The only problem with the three points you list is that the first and third are contradictory. We were literally throwing away vaccines here in the United States if they could not find anyone eligible to vaccinate.
They're not. To be honest I'm kind of baffled why people keep equating the two in their heads. I don't want to be "that guy", but use your imagination.
Example 1: Low-risk person forges papers to claim they're high risk or in a situation that justifies getting a vaccine Right The Fuck Now, subsequently jumping through a bunch of hoops to get a spot in a highly crowded queue.
Example 2: Person shows up at the end of the day in a vax center that is throwing away 50 doses if they can't get them in arms before people go home.
Example 1 is someone being trashy and selfish, stealing a vaccine from someone who might be able to get it today, result mostly negative. Example 2 is not stealing anything, but rather preventing a vaccine from being wasted and thus a net positive result.
Again, i don't have any more facts than before, it's still his word against the other's. But jumping on anyone's defense here is absurd unless you actually do know more (eg. You saw it unfold in the forum)
It is unclear what the tweet is discussing. I don't see any clear statement from Paul as to what exactly he is alleging was done.
One the the people who Paul is posting these allegations about did reply here and notes that they informed the staff they qere not CA eligible, waited 4 hours, then got the shot.
It was not explicitly stated that these were shots that would have been wasted, but the 4 hour wait (if true) would seem to imply that.
> the 4 hour wait (if true) would seem to imply that.
To me, it implies extremely high demand - and likely the shots would not have been wasted.
I’m assuming you aren’t familiar with how these walk up sites in the Bay worked? Multiple hour long waits were common because of how high demand was in the area.
I think getting vaccines to the elderly at a slightly slower rate at that time was deemed better than getting vaccines to exclusively much younger people at a somewhat faster rate.
As a fraction of the whole, there were not that many wasted doses (Oakland wasted ~0.39%, and most of those were not in these mobile clinics).
> If he's complaining about an instance of someone saying "There's unused vaccines in centers, show up at the end of the day and you can get one", then have at it.
Absolutely agreed, there were plenty of people doing this, it's totally ethical, but I don't think that was what he was referencing, as it was quite accepted in the Bay at the time.
Glad to see ycombinator shut down these outrage trolls.
I drove someone to what I suppose was one of these clinics. Was pouring rain. They had shots left over. Clinic staff said please get a shot. The one problem - their form didn't have a spot for leftover shots, so they had to lie about my eligibility.
These doses are ones that otherwise be thrown away. At that point, it is more ethical to give a shot than not. The situation others are discussing is not that.
Giving context as someone who has worked on COVID vaccination sites. The above isn’t common knowledge so can be misconstrued.
YC isn’t the moral police of when one should get a vaccine (nor should they be). YC are the police of other YC community norms, they owe nobody an explanation.
People have been kicked out of other important things for less. I wish they put a warning label on social media... don't post unless you want your words used against you in a future you haven't envisioned.
It may be too late but I would advise anyone to delete anything you wrote under your real name now. In 10 years you are going to get buried for what is normal today. They are coming for you.
What he did was wrong but in the 80s the info would have passed on to a small group at a pool party.
What are the rules for YC's private forum? Is it more restrictive than Chatham House rules? Is it permitted to leak internal conversations and denounce other YC members on Twitter?
Is Paul B getting kicked out the same thing as "cancel culture"? It seems like he's violated a rule of a voluntary group he was in, and was kicked out of that group. I know its subjective, but I don't think that's "being cancelled" in the sense that it's usually used. Its more like if you lost your diving license for speeding.
Article mentions various music artists such as The Beatles being cancelled in 1966 and Sinéad O’Connor in 1992 (both in conflict with the mighty Catholic Church) and The Dixie Chicks in 2003. More examples here [1]. Pre-internet, it's as old as Rome^H^H^H^HAthens.
Paul Graham claims the person who popularized the term in the USA is anything but a rightist. According to their Wikipedia page they see themselves as centrist. It doesn't matter who popularized the term though. The phenomenon pre-internet is older, and you arguing it is good or evil or neutral or whatever is like a discussion on ethics. Or politics. Ie. opinionated, without a clear (scientific) answer to it.
How do you hear it being used? Basically every time I’ve encountered the phrase, it’s referred to someone getting fired, kicked out of school, uninvited from a speaking engagement or something similar.
For the most part though, it means getting fired/etc. over something that is unrelated to your work, rather than breaking a (literal or assumed) work rule.
I think it'd be more cancel culture to fire the other guy. He did something bad that isn't related to YC's rules, but maybe shows poor morals.
That’s not a distinction I hear a lot of people make. Andrew Cuomo used “cancel culture” to describe calls for his resignation in the wake of sexual assault allegations. The owner of a horse also used it to describe his suspension after the horse failed a drug test. People said it was “cancel culture” when the estate of Dr. Seuss decided to stop publishing some of his books.
But even if there is a line, it’s really blurry. A lot of people said it was “cancel culture” when Blake Bailey’s publisher decided to pull his biography of Philip Roth. The sexual assault allegations are ostensibly unrelated to his contract. But they gave him that contract with the expectation that publishing him would be profitable; is it “canceling” to renege when that’s no longer the case?
Sure. Once words have the kind of buzz that cancel culture does, they get used tactically and the meaning blurs... or evolves. "Fake news" was used very differently circa 2015-2016.
I don't think we're quite there yet though. The horse guy was also widely ridiculed for calling it cancel culture. In any case, I don't think the expanded usage is what pg had in mind, and that's what's relevant here.
Kicking out paul might be too severe, but it's not "cancel culture," in the reevant sense of the term.
If a firing or whatever is described as an example of ‘cancel culture’, that usually means it was driven by some kind of orchestrated pressure from third parties.
Typically it means those third parties (usually online activists, the ‘cancellers’) have gone out of their way to get the person fired/disinvited/whatever, with the specific motivation of diminishing their public standing. This may involve techniques such as deliberately fomenting online outrage with the aim of creating a negative PR situation for their employer that will go away when they fire the the targeted person.
(Just explaining what I think the term usually means; not saying anything about any specific claimed instances of it.)
I have worked for YC founders that have shared far more disturbing things from the YC forum to non-members. If the banning is for violating privacy or public mocking (no matter how small of a “public” it might be), the YC moderation here is pretty biased. The internal forum is pretty huge now, I guess they’re Doing Things That Don’t Scale (TM).
What an excellent demonstration of what values/norms a group really cares about.
Biggar violated the all time favourite in-group rule: Don't talk out of school. Don't talk about fight club. Don't snitch.
The other founders violated a norm against pushing yourself ahead and taking advantage of others that doesn't even seem to hold in many groups, especially upper class/wealthy ones.
Here's an analogy. You can get fired for always being late to work, but not get fired for bad behaviour (even crime) outside of work... say drunk driving.
This doesn't mean that being late to work is worse than drunk driving, or that person A is worse than person B. Not everything is a general judgement on worth or character.
I don't think that analogy applies. Both parties in this story did things in a 'work' context.
If I go on a work forum and describe my bad behaviour, behaviour that is harmful to others, and advocate for others to do it, I'm going to get in trouble, and possibly fired.
If I publicly discuss private work information, I'll definitely get fired.
If I mention the bad behaviour of someone at work publicly, without naming names, I might get a talking to, but probably won't be fired.
How a group reacts to those different things over time defines the norms and culture of the group.
I still think the conclusion applies though. Not everything is a judgment on overall worth or character. Most rules exist for banal reasons. Arrive on time, so we can open on time. Maintain confidentiality, so that we can have a non public forum. If heated arguments are settled by going to twitter, that's a cultural norm that negates private forums. It's not a moral norm, necessarily, but an operational one.
Very few things are absolute though. If someone brags about murder, and that confidentiality is maintained then it certainly does say something about norms and culture of a group. That said, naughtiness is an explicit part of YC culture, for better or worse.
In any case, sometimes there are choices. Civil disobedience can lead to consequences, to make another analogy. People participating in it accept that.
IDK what actually happened on the private forum, but I imagine this is an argument that spilled out from private to public. If Paul considered this a "the world must know" situation, then maybe he considers the price worth paying.
That is not a good analogy because most people's employment is "at will", meaning that they can be fired at any time for any reason other than discrimination against a protected class or retaliation for some protected activity (e.g., being a government whistleblower). If an employer wants to fire an employee who got arrested for drunk driving outside of work, that's usually not a problem.
I waited until I was eligible, which was about a month ago. Anyone could have lied about their eligibility and gotten shots early, and although I wasn't comfortable doing so, I also don't begrudge people who did. Frankly, the vaccine should have been distributed more widely from the beginning. It was disheartening to watch the politics play out where only the "most deserving" people were granted vaccine, which quickly turned into "hospital executives, their families, & high ranking admin" before they got around to the most deserving.
I certainly wouldn't have encouraged a group of wealthy or soon-to-be wealthy tech founders to lie for vaccine. "Hacking the system" has always implied a sort of robinhood ethos, at least to me, not just greed purely for its own sake. I guess it's easy to be confused when you were raised inside the bubble and everything is monopoly money.
Actually at least in Massachusetts there was some rhyme and reason to vaccine priorities: the elderly and immune-compromised, frontline health workers, first responders, food service, teachers.
I thought it was pretty much the same in most states.
Anyway, the vaccine is pretty much generally available today, comparable to getting a flu shot. In some places, you don't even need an appointment; just walk in.
Good for YC. I don't understand why someone would assume that publicly causing drama for the company that is supporting them would be tolerated.
People think that because some opinion of theirs is justified, all consequences related to any public behavior based of that opinion should be nullified. Well, reality seems to frequently think otherwise.
> I don't understand why someone would assume that publicly causing drama for the company that is supporting them would be tolerated.
his YC company is defunct so his risk tolerance is higher. getting social media points was probably the last bit of value he was able to extract from his YC association.
I’d immediately sack anyone leaking private conversations like this. This isn’t whistle blowing. It’s violating the norms of communication like sharing things said in confidence as gossip.
This expression comes from the getto's of America and it means anyone who tells the police anything will get hurt badly or their family hurt or killed.
Anyone who airs dirty laundry is called a gossip not a snitch.
It literally means that people that tell, even if they report a rape or something truly disgusting, will get stitches (beat to the point of needing stitches) for telling on someone else.
662 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 297 ms ] threadEspecially if he was being factual, there's an element of legit whistle-blowing there, it's a bad look, YC.
We were able to schedule immediate appointments in an adjacent county populated by hardcore Trumpers. Upon arriving at the drive-through vaccination site, there was only one other car in the lot. No danger of cutting the line in that county.
My point is only, it's sometimes dangerous to throw stones without asking questions or getting the full picture first. Taking doses when you aren't qualified for them is overall a bad thing I think we can all agree.
I am sure that those decisions should be made by the state, not the individual 25-year old who decides that they are deserving of the vaccine now.
Also, many of those links that were floated around had equity codes embedded that were not supposed to be used by the general public, so would show appointments made available specifically for high-risk populations.
My general opinion is that people who skipped ahead in their 20s, especially in the Bay Area, were in the moral wrong.
It was a mess and IMO difficult to assign anyone in the moral right in the distribution of vaccines.
For example, looking at the vaccine distribution from a utilitarian perspective and not a political-agenda perspective it would have made sense to give the vaccine to healthcare workers first and then grocery workers next, as society in general will collapse if people are not able to get groceries. In a strictly calculative sense society doesn’t care if a few more old people in a nursing home die, but if grocery stores are closed there will be food riots/massive problems in a few days.
But politicians know that old people vote. So we had the age-tiered system.
IMO both if these perspectives were misguided and the optimal way to handle it would have been to had over vaccine logistics to Amazon who could actually make a web app that doesn’t crash to register for vaccines and just go first-come first-served.
Instead we had to try to register via Kroger (I think) who was using a chatbot to register people which was not very effective or high throughput. Costco had spaghetti code and had embedded way too much information in the page source, no idea who designed their signup page either.
This incompetence and unneeded beauracracy by the government literally cost lives.
If people vote and decide that this is the way that it is being done, then people should respect that. Circumventing rationing because you feel like you are more deserving in that context is unethical.
> utilitarian perspective and not a political-agenda perspective it would have made sense to give the vaccine to healthcare workers first and then grocery workers next, as society in general will collapse if people are not able to get groceries
Not at all clear that this is the conclusion to reach. Grocery store workers are much more likely to spread, but are also very unlikely to be killed by it. Elderly people are likely to be killed by it. Most epidemiological modeling showed that vaccinating the elderly first and as quickly as possible was the fastest way to mitigate deaths, not vaccinating coronavirus.
This is exactly why it is better to come to these decisions as a society, not let individuals who may very well come to incorrect judgements about what the socially optimal thing to do is.
> IMO both if these perspectives were misguided and the optimal way to handle it would have been to had over vaccine logistics to Amazon who could actually make a web app that doesn’t crash to register for vaccines and just go first-come first-served.
This is classic HN backseat driver-ism. First-come first-served would have been ineffective, because again, there were ample reasons why vaccinating the elderly first made sense.
You went from two groups ("populations that are more likely to get covid and/or die from it than quickly to young") to one ("young, affluent populations who are much less likely to die from it or get it") whereas the latter group overlaps with the group who is more likely to get Covid. People who have work with human contact are more likely to get it, whereas people who live sheltered are not likely to get it, nor spread it (which overlaps with elder group).
Anyway, none of this warrants skipping the queue. The queue is there for a reason, and we could draw a parallel with responsible disclosure. Sharing a vulnerability with your co employees so they can exploit it as well is not responsible disclosure. However, the guy responded in this thread and I am not convinced based on that post that it is a vulnerability. It seemed to be just open for 18+.
The only point I'm trying to make is that it was morally wrong to lie to skip ahead in the eligibility lines in March.
It's was wild seeing rationalizations for bad behavior being invented before your very eyes in March.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article251823018.htm...
If we continue using mRNA vaccines in the future, I hope some of these logistics issues can be solved. I'd rather the system prevents this, or allows it to occur in an unambiguous way that doesn't cause people to hate each other, question each others' morals, rat each other out, etc. I wouldn't say people skipping the line were doing the right thing, but I'm even less convinced that it was wrong. This was a gray area unaddressed by public health officials.
Not true if you look at per capita numbers. Alameda had 0.39% spoiled.
It seems to me that the important information would be: did anybody who was eligible fail to get vaccinated as a result of the extras dropping in? In your story the answer is no. In the other dude's story, it seems like we don't know. If his story is accurate then the answer is probably not because otherwise the people running the site would have told him "please don't do that because it might take doses away from the eligible". But who knows.
Will they really wait until all elderly are vaccinated first? This would never work.
Just give it to everyone and it goes faster. While we wait for old people to get vaccinated it still circulates among young, who come into contact with old and unvaccinated, hence not helping things.
I just waited till it was generally available and the local website had appointments available. Added bonus is by waiting the vaccine trials run that much longer so you have more data that it is safe.
I’m the type of guy how likes to go to mediocre restaurants to avoid waiting in line for good ones, so maybe I’m just weird.
They're already taking down the mass vaccination sites.
This is all more liberal drama.
I wish someone would drop a nuke on SF.
But being banned from YC is a fairly extreme measure - especially for an activity that has a hint of moral impetus.
Both 'skipping vaccine lines' and 'immediately naming and shaming private conversations to the entire world' are kind of selfish and toxic signals.
If I were the King of YC I would have had condescending words with both of them and told them to grow up and then that would be the end of it.
Note however, we don't really know what happened behind the scenes.
I don't know if it was immediate, but I'm pretty sure there was no naming.
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.
https://twitter.com/SarahBelleLin/status/1370071520953835520
https://archive.is/Z55Oe
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.
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.
https://twitter.com/Prafulfillment/status/140093402468041523...
EDIT: Reply on HN by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221
You have no expectation of privacy if you announce (let alone advocate for, or instruct how-to) behaviour against public health policy _during_a_pandemic_.
The contrast with people who have been working hard to match people with appointments couldn't be more stark.
If he was indeed talking about inappropriately skipping the line, then this guy is a bad actor. But I should point out that we don't have any idea - the situation could have been very misrepresented - and he could have done nothing wrong.
But given the public information ... this Tweet is going to come of 'Snitches Get Stitches' in a 'lacking in self awareness' kind of way, as opposed to the 'I was slandered and misrepresented publicly, and that can be very damaging, I'm glad this issue is behind us" kind of way.
Why are adults in the US using Twitter/GIF memes instead of finding thoughtful and mature ways of communicating this stuff? I don't like this evolution.
This way they evoke more emotion, so, more of the unthinking (feeling-based) approval: retweets, reposts, just being remembered. When it's funny, it makes people happier along the way, when it's angry, it may make people also feel anger, but a righteous, just anger.
It's a potent drug which is very hard to stop taking recreationally, and also for a just cause. Not as a poster, but most importantly as a reader.
We're basically going through a mini printing press style communications revolution right now.
Before (say 1999) you had print which was cheap and audiovisual which was expensive/time consuming. Now thanks to tech audiovisual content is something the masses can use to communicate and it's affecting culture greatly.
But 'memes' are things which are pushed onto situation that probably call for more nuance i.e. 80% of the 'Karen' memes I see are not actually 'Karen' memes.
But they don't necessarily communicate 'more' information, and more often than not, they're just used to put an emotive 'playround' spin on something. If the issue is important, words are almost always a better choice.
Irrespective of what happened, a GIF response to something semi-serious I think is bad form. If people aspire to assume responsibility for some important thing ... like processing payments ... then they can assume responsibility for making basic, conscientious communications.
Put another way, if you consider a story to be a collection of handles (in programming sense, like a pointer) to concepts and emotions, then Tamarians communicate by speaking handles to stories. That's one level of indirection extra over this meme, which itself is a (simple) story - a collection of handles to concepts and emotions.
As any writer or poet knows, words are handles to emotions. Choose a slightly different word, and your readers will tend to feel very differently after reading a line containing, otherwise, the same information. It's a wetware equivalent of RPC API.
Memes are this, but taken up to 11. They transmit a much more complex and powerful emotional payload, in readily digestible form.
Like in this case, I could write a whole paragraph listing the kind of emotions that little GIF communicated. Calm distancing, depreciation, disrespect, feeling safe, ... Written out as words, it wouldn't fit in a Tweet, and wouldn't be as powerful a message.
Then you have this person try to damage Ycombinator because one of their founders spoke internally about the matter. Absolutely tactless. You'd expect future founders to be able to consider potential repercussions for biting the hand that's serving them.
Pretty sure when this actually happened, vaccines were not actually open to anyone that just wanted one.
In this case the relationship between member and institution is even tighter, and the desperation of sink or swim is more palpable.
If anything, criticism of poor behavior within the cohort would reflect well on a culture that values sharp contrarian takes and productive disruption.
Or at least, it could...
But since this all happened in March, when not anyone who wanted to get the vaccine could get any, your comment is irrelevant.
Regardless, they or YC should have addressed this publically at the time, rather than waiting and staying silent. The YC brand is damaged because we don't know if they acted ethically, or enforced the omerta. Everyone's reputation is taking an acid bath because of unclear communication.
He's now denying that he instructed others on how to skip the line, although it's not really that clear of a denial.
Tidbits which, AFAICS, slowly tilt the balance back over in favour of Biggar having been more right than wrong: https://twitter.com/SarahBelleLin/status/1370071520953835520
We know who always loses when the Streisand Effect becomes in action.
But US internet culture has changed dramatically in the past few years. And it's not just "eternal September".
I miss the early years. There are still vestiges left. Some public intellectuals still respond to unsolicited email from strangers.
Fauci is on that list, isn't he? I was kinda surprised to learn that from the email dump. I figured his email would be thoroughly filtered.
Of course, whether he actually qualifies as an intellectual seems up for debate these days.
Whatever else was true of the early years, when internet use was a niche thing it wasn't representative of broader US culture sort of by definition. Now it is, or at least much more so.
People used stable nyms. Mote, beam and all that.
I don’t have unlimited time to read comments so I prioritize ones from the patio11, cperciva, and ChuckMcMs of the board. Not because who they are IRL but because a history of posts I found interesting, informative, etc. makes it more likely the next one will be too.
If you are on a throwaway because you want to talk about being a functional alcoholic without your colleagues knowing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27363003
that’s perfectly reasonable. But if you are on a throwaway because you want to attack the concept of reputation, that’s a pretty negative signal.
There's a reason "puritanical" has a derogatory connotation. I'm gonna stop short of calling them the Christian Taliban but only because the Taliban haven't yet gotten onboard with female literacy. It suffices to say that there were good reasons the Puritans were unwelcome in Europe. Rhode Island basically popped up overnight because there were just that many people that wanted out and were willing to throw in their lot with the first guy to flip everyone the bird on his way out. These weren't good people. The OG Pilgrims were a tiny bit better but not much.
The early history of New England is a good read. Amazing how quickly the cultural differences between the various regions developed and how little things have changed since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Morton_(colonist)#Mount...
I'm curious why it didn't happen here immediately, but did elsewhere.
And that’s a bit of a subjective call
But I can't think of an example where a company keeps unconstructive critics on the payroll.
Indeed, the management could have a different idea of what was an ideal direction. I just happened to disagree. It was a very small company, so I don't think I had a lot of different information. But even if that was the case, this was a good opportunity to have a perhaps heated but interesting discussion.
Did you continue to disagree after the issue had been aired and a decision had been made? That could definitely end up in the territory you describe.
And it goes without saying, overtly criticizing the king is pretty obviously a bad idea.
Its actually really hard to agree to disagree. You need to have a situation where each person has the same propensity to concede an argument. Like a code review - just do what the other person suggests instead of arguing about it if it really doesn’t matter that much.
Imagine giving a speech to your team, and there is one employee who is rolling their eyes and smirking at things you say, and who you know disagrees with you. It’s very difficult to block out - and their are few who can handle that. You may be 100% onboard after a heated discussion and not making any outward gestures, but your mere presence will leave the person imagining you are rolling your eyes. And this festers.
You need to find a way to put yourself in their shoes and really feel what it’s like to have someone very critical of things around.
Yea, reputation is everything and you should never be completely open and it’s why people water down everything they say and end up kissing ass.
Even people who say they can take any criticism can’t. This is the best lesson you can learn.
He later issues a 'correction' (why not delete the original wrong tweet?) that says that the story about "advocating for lying to skip lines" is false. [1]
I don't have any part of this and I'm confused and don't know what's going on here. But it does not seem like the tweet everyone is focusing on was even true. So the story becomes possibly, that YC kicked someone out for spreading lies about people in their internal community? I don't know.
[1] "I was incorrect in saying the 2nd founder lied, and would like to apologize." https://twitter.com/paulbiggar/status/1370144350861135881
It's still partially true - the allegation of lying was wrong, but the allegation of instructing others how to lie is still being made. This is clarified by the tweet that you linked.
The accusation still sounds gross. Though vaccine rollout wasn't great in the bay area. I got an email from my doctor about appointments being available. The ones in the bay area were taken really quickly. Availability was much better in other counties. There were also a couple other replies. One mentioned you could get vaccinated for volunteering for 4 hours. Another mentioned some sites were doing first come first serve.
You're being charitable in the wrong direction, because you're not interpreting the allegations in good faith. What would be the point of taking to Twitter if all the second founder did was instruct people how to get a vaccine, without the component of lying to bypass the queue?
Since there would be no point to such an outrage, it's uncharitable to pre-emptively dismiss the contents of the allegations. Whether or not they are eventually shown to be true, they should still be interpreted in the most serious and direct way.
Whenever you hear about the "greats" of the industry, you can be aware that they rose to prominence through navigating power structures built on such principles.
1. Skipping vaccine line and talking about it is not actually against BookFace/YC ToS, or it would be a stretch to apply ToS.
2. Publicly talking about matters inside the private group is against ToS since it breaches privacy. In a way that paints the group negatively, nonetheless.
Pretty straightforward. It doesn't really matter *to YC* whether anyone skipped a line or not, what matters are private forum matters getting blasted to hundreds (thousands?) of Twitter users.
Edit: before you get angry, I'm presenting this from the most plausible perspective of YC, not my own feelings on the matter (which are irrelevant).
Edit2: what are people seeing that I'm not seeing here? Clearly I'm missing something, because wow I've never gotten piled on like this on HN.
If we could say "The Civil War was about slavery" and be done with the subject, I'm pretty sure so many books, studies, and histories about the subject would not have been made.
But there are a whole lot of Americans who wish to believe that the South had a noble cause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy), and they are more than happy to buy books and watch TV shows explaining what that cause is, so such books and TV shows get written.
The Civil War was just a couple of generations ago, and involved a huge chunk of the country. The various organizations attempting to rehabilitate their legacy (e.g., the Daughters of the Confederacy) are younger still, and active today. It's not actually surprising that there are a large number of Americans who for whatever reason wish to believe that there was a better reason for the Confederacy to do what it did than slavery - the Daughters, for instance, are quite literally descended from Confederate soldiers, so there is a natural desire to believe that they fought for a worthy cause. But the number of people who believe it is hardly evidence that it's true.
What is noteworthy that Paul Graham (who wasn't even born in the US!) is one of those people, and moreover doesn't simply believe (as you're claiming) that there's a legitimate debate about what the Civil War was about - he believes that the possibility that the Civil War was about slavery is a "cartoon version" which can't possibly be true.
And yes, it's a throwaway line in an unrelated talk. But he still said it as if he believed it, and the alternative interpretation - that he doesn't really believe it and said it anyway because he thought it would please his audience - is that he is a man of poor judgment and a loud mouth in things he should judge less and speak less on, which goes to my point that Sam did not "bro up" YC, it was already rotten.
He did not say that it was not about slavery. Again, if it was an issue that could be expressed in a single sentence, it would not have inspired the many studies that it has. That is not to deny that the Civil War was about slavery, which I am certainly not. As to what Graham believes, a single sentence means only that. And does not mean he thinks its opposite is true. Not everything is an either/or proposition. Quite often things are more a both/and situation.
What you are saying is just simply quite literally not true. He said exactly that:
> "Better stick to the standard cartoon version that the Civil War was about slavery"
-- http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html
"We" can. Apparently some people can't. There's a difference.
Biggar tweeted about his unhappiness about the behavior of a person in the private group.
He received a public response fromt he person in question with a dismissive meme.
He in turn responded to that.
So, one could argue that the line-jumping-advocate relinquished his privacy in the first place.
Having seen screenshots of the post in question, it was bad, but it also would have been strange to kick someone out for that. The poster is an asshole and proud of it, but the community seems to have responded directly.
When private organizations in their internal culture and functioning deviate too far away from common social norms, you kinda hope that a whistleblower or the press calls them out for it.
YC culture allows you to say ‘here is how to marginally undermine a public health effort for your own benefit”, but YC culture does not allow you to publicly say “people at YC teach each other how to undermine a public health effort for their own benefit”.
Anything that is critical of YC or Paul is heresy. Anything that prioritizes society over a YC participant is heresy. These things can’t be done publicly, or you’ll be cast out of YC.
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
So never mind their high-falutin' ideas of Founders being A Better Class Of People; in the end it's just frickin' Fight Club after all.
I've never been part of any such decision, but I do know YC and the people who have to make such decisions, and from what I've seen they'd be reasoning from first principles or at least trying to.
Theranos would be fine if they weren’t caught out before their IPO.
As a collective, we've lost our humanity. I used to think we were losing it, but over the past few years I feel like we've moved past losing and now just lost it completely.
Priority groups don’t even make sense. It’s some egalitarian crap for the sake of it and more so for buying votes from older ppl.
Then we are left with: it’s simply against the rules. And as if people in SF care about that.
Why r so many people in SF on these moral crusades anyway. Getting high off enforcing rules and looking down on others.
Everyone should be equal…as long as I get my ridiculous salary and elite network. It’s like imposter syndrome for the privileged…so they need to pretend they are for the common man.
Good riddance to such crusaders. PG is a boss.
It makes sense because in some states its been basically any adult can walk in and get a shot for months already. I'm surprised there is anywhere in the country left where that is not the case.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/m4bqx9/comment/gqu...
AFAIK, the FEMA mobile clinics were meant to boost vaccinations in underserved communities. So they go to one of those communities, set up shop and then jam the needle in as many arms as they can find.
I don't know but it's completely possible that as long as you are there and you are 18+, you will be eligible for it. However, since it's meant to vaccinate underserved communities, you were probably not supposed to be there if you live somewhere else.
- Lying to jump the queue, ahead of people who need it more is trashy, selfish, should be not just discouraged but heavily reprimanded.
- A lot of the vaccine distribution is awful and disorganized. This often leads to vaccines being thrown away.
- SHOTS IN ARMS. A vaccine in someone is better than a vaccine thrown away, even if it's not optimally distributed.
"Just showing up" is a thing here in Belgium as well, and I expect many countries. Here in Brussels for example for a while the major vaccination center had time and stock for 1000 shots a day, and so would plan for 1000 shots distributed per day and invite … 1000 people for that day, not one more. Over snail mail or SMS depending on where you lived. And 75% were going unused, and they were wondering why.
So yeah, we can spend time talking about how they should know better, overbook, etc but in the mean time vaccines were being thrown away and the distribution was slowing down. So people just showing up speeds that up, and is a net gain.
And yet, people complain and are outraged, claim the people showing up are skipping the queue, and I frankly wish they'd shut the fuck up about it.
If indeed Paul was denouncing someone who was bragging about jumping the queue or encouraging people to do so by revealing how they're Hacking Society™, that's just absolute trash and it's completely disgusting.
If he's complaining about an instance of someone saying "There's unused vaccines in centers, show up at the end of the day and you can get one", then have at it.
I'm not in YC / the forum in question, I've no idea, can't form an opinion. But yeah, needinfo.
Example 1: Low-risk person forges papers to claim they're high risk or in a situation that justifies getting a vaccine Right The Fuck Now, subsequently jumping through a bunch of hoops to get a spot in a highly crowded queue.
Example 2: Person shows up at the end of the day in a vax center that is throwing away 50 doses if they can't get them in arms before people go home.
Example 1 is someone being trashy and selfish, stealing a vaccine from someone who might be able to get it today, result mostly negative. Example 2 is not stealing anything, but rather preventing a vaccine from being wasted and thus a net positive result.
Plenty of people were doing the showing up at end of day thing, it wasn't frowned on at all back in March.
And in fact holding judgement may have been the smart thing to do, given this account of the situation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221
Again, i don't have any more facts than before, it's still his word against the other's. But jumping on anyone's defense here is absurd unless you actually do know more (eg. You saw it unfold in the forum)
One the the people who Paul is posting these allegations about did reply here and notes that they informed the staff they qere not CA eligible, waited 4 hours, then got the shot.
It was not explicitly stated that these were shots that would have been wasted, but the 4 hour wait (if true) would seem to imply that.
To me, it implies extremely high demand - and likely the shots would not have been wasted.
I’m assuming you aren’t familiar with how these walk up sites in the Bay worked? Multiple hour long waits were common because of how high demand was in the area.
As a fraction of the whole, there were not that many wasted doses (Oakland wasted ~0.39%, and most of those were not in these mobile clinics).
> If he's complaining about an instance of someone saying "There's unused vaccines in centers, show up at the end of the day and you can get one", then have at it.
Absolutely agreed, there were plenty of people doing this, it's totally ethical, but I don't think that was what he was referencing, as it was quite accepted in the Bay at the time.
I drove someone to what I suppose was one of these clinics. Was pouring rain. They had shots left over. Clinic staff said please get a shot. The one problem - their form didn't have a spot for leftover shots, so they had to lie about my eligibility.
Giving context as someone who has worked on COVID vaccination sites. The above isn’t common knowledge so can be misconstrued.
It may be too late but I would advise anyone to delete anything you wrote under your real name now. In 10 years you are going to get buried for what is normal today. They are coming for you.
What he did was wrong but in the 80s the info would have passed on to a small group at a pool party.
I'm betting there's more to this story.
https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apaulg%20%22cancel%20cult...
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/dixie-chicks-were-cancelled-...
Paul Graham claims the person who popularized the term in the USA is anything but a rightist. According to their Wikipedia page they see themselves as centrist. It doesn't matter who popularized the term though. The phenomenon pre-internet is older, and you arguing it is good or evil or neutral or whatever is like a discussion on ethics. Or politics. Ie. opinionated, without a clear (scientific) answer to it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture#Origins
For the most part though, it means getting fired/etc. over something that is unrelated to your work, rather than breaking a (literal or assumed) work rule.
I think it'd be more cancel culture to fire the other guy. He did something bad that isn't related to YC's rules, but maybe shows poor morals.
But even if there is a line, it’s really blurry. A lot of people said it was “cancel culture” when Blake Bailey’s publisher decided to pull his biography of Philip Roth. The sexual assault allegations are ostensibly unrelated to his contract. But they gave him that contract with the expectation that publishing him would be profitable; is it “canceling” to renege when that’s no longer the case?
I don't think we're quite there yet though. The horse guy was also widely ridiculed for calling it cancel culture. In any case, I don't think the expanded usage is what pg had in mind, and that's what's relevant here.
Kicking out paul might be too severe, but it's not "cancel culture," in the reevant sense of the term.
Typically it means those third parties (usually online activists, the ‘cancellers’) have gone out of their way to get the person fired/disinvited/whatever, with the specific motivation of diminishing their public standing. This may involve techniques such as deliberately fomenting online outrage with the aim of creating a negative PR situation for their employer that will go away when they fire the the targeted person.
(Just explaining what I think the term usually means; not saying anything about any specific claimed instances of it.)
Biggar violated the all time favourite in-group rule: Don't talk out of school. Don't talk about fight club. Don't snitch.
The other founders violated a norm against pushing yourself ahead and taking advantage of others that doesn't even seem to hold in many groups, especially upper class/wealthy ones.
This doesn't mean that being late to work is worse than drunk driving, or that person A is worse than person B. Not everything is a general judgement on worth or character.
If I go on a work forum and describe my bad behaviour, behaviour that is harmful to others, and advocate for others to do it, I'm going to get in trouble, and possibly fired.
If I publicly discuss private work information, I'll definitely get fired.
If I mention the bad behaviour of someone at work publicly, without naming names, I might get a talking to, but probably won't be fired.
How a group reacts to those different things over time defines the norms and culture of the group.
I still think the conclusion applies though. Not everything is a judgment on overall worth or character. Most rules exist for banal reasons. Arrive on time, so we can open on time. Maintain confidentiality, so that we can have a non public forum. If heated arguments are settled by going to twitter, that's a cultural norm that negates private forums. It's not a moral norm, necessarily, but an operational one.
Very few things are absolute though. If someone brags about murder, and that confidentiality is maintained then it certainly does say something about norms and culture of a group. That said, naughtiness is an explicit part of YC culture, for better or worse.
In any case, sometimes there are choices. Civil disobedience can lead to consequences, to make another analogy. People participating in it accept that.
IDK what actually happened on the private forum, but I imagine this is an argument that spilled out from private to public. If Paul considered this a "the world must know" situation, then maybe he considers the price worth paying.
Unless of course, your job is driving.
I certainly wouldn't have encouraged a group of wealthy or soon-to-be wealthy tech founders to lie for vaccine. "Hacking the system" has always implied a sort of robinhood ethos, at least to me, not just greed purely for its own sake. I guess it's easy to be confused when you were raised inside the bubble and everything is monopoly money.
I thought it was pretty much the same in most states.
Anyway, the vaccine is pretty much generally available today, comparable to getting a flu shot. In some places, you don't even need an appointment; just walk in.
People think that because some opinion of theirs is justified, all consequences related to any public behavior based of that opinion should be nullified. Well, reality seems to frequently think otherwise.
his YC company is defunct so his risk tolerance is higher. getting social media points was probably the last bit of value he was able to extract from his YC association.
I’d immediately sack anyone leaking private conversations like this. This isn’t whistle blowing. It’s violating the norms of communication like sharing things said in confidence as gossip.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/snitches_get_stitches
Anyone who airs dirty laundry is called a gossip not a snitch.
1) whether he was really kicked out over that tweet
2) whether what he said in that tweet was true