from what that article makes it look like, its simply Pierce's word against the company's. both have their share of things to "fight for". Pierce has his game and public image and OMGPOP has PR and it's recent sale to zynga.
It dumbfounds me when alleged journalists print anonymous slander like this. Whatever one thinks of Shay Pierce's editorial, he signed his name to it and is answering questions about it.
Can't help but think this whole controversy must be (at least in part) motivated by that $30-million for "employee retention" mentioned in the article. I suspected as much when I first saw the uproar on Twitter, but didn't know if the Zyna/OMGPOP deal had any such incentive.
Does anyone know how those retention clauses usually work?
The subject misquotes the tweet. It did not say "Shay Pierce". It just said it was the one employee who turned down going to Zynga.
However, there was a second tweet that did explicitly mention Pierce. Here's a screenshot showing both: http://i.imgur.com/Dob8n.jpg
The text of the other tweet is "What's so interesting about success is the number of failures who try to ride on your back. Shay Pierce is just one of many...".
These tweets were on March 30, so they are not April fools jokes.
Shay Pierce was the only employee not to go to Zynga [1]. Even though the tweet doesn't explicitly mention Shay Pierce I'd say that the subject is still fairly accurate.
I know this is pedantic but the subject is a quote, so your parent is correct. It really should have either used square brackets around the name, or been written differently. Personally, I feel that once you open a double-quote there's a certain responsibility.
The adjacent tweet from the CEO mentions Shay by name. I'm usually a stickler for this kind of thing as well, but this one reads as entirely unambiguous to me.
Our window for reaching its peak was gone. I sat in our tent, unable to do anything, while my dream of climbing Mount Everest faded
It's wrong to quote them as saying
"Our window for reaching Mount Everest's peak was gone"
Even though the "its" is clearly referring to Mount Everest. There are a couple options, the simplest being:
"Our window for reaching [Mount Everest's] peak was gone"
What worries me is that people don't know this. That you can just substitute/fill in a quote because it's obvious that's what the person meant. Rather, it should be thought of as a recording device that can only play back exactly what the person said.
And if I were the acquirer I'd be wondering just how bad he thinks his team is, and why he didn't do anything about it before I made offers to all of them.
And this seems bizarre behaviour on OMGPOP's part - he was entirely complimentary to OMGPOP and he publicly disclaimed credit for Draw Something. Even if you did hate him and the press he stirred up, the best way to make it go away is to completely ignore it. Why on Earth would you make this the story?
It was a poor decision, but I can see being furious/frustrated that the story of your company's success had mutated into one on how your new parent owner was evil.
True, but he shouldn't blame Shay Pierce. Porter's the one who decided to do a deal with Zynga. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Further, Porter's the one who set up the retention process in a way that forced somebody out the door over a perfectly reasonable issue. A manager who's first instinct for a problem is to blame others has a big problem. One who does it publicly is a fool.
Like Notch said... "you are an insane idiot!". What did the CEO of OMGPOP had to gain from making those remarks ? He surely didn't expect the world to take his side.. Even if Shay Pierce really was "the weakest link of the team", you just don't say that.
You just got bought for $200 million, now it's the time to show that you deserved to be the CEO of that company, by being diplomatic, respecting those around you (or who used to be around you) and now calculating your every move. Your opinion no longer just affects yourself, it affects your whole company, as well as (in a lesser extent), the company that just bought you.
True. It is indeed very unprofessional. But how come people like him are held up to such high standards? When you're not anyone important you can be brutally honest and say what you want like everyone else does. But as soon as you're in the public eye you're put on this pedestal. This is what scares the hell out of me. I'm a very uncensored person who says what he means and means what he says (and am an asshole sometimes). So the thought that one day IF I'm successful in getting my business off the ground a life of censorship awaits me. :(
Then I see celebrities like Snoop Dog (who owned a porn company), Sarah Silverman (who has some of the most offensive jokes imaginable), lil john (self explanatory), Colin Farrel, Charlie Sheen, Lindsey Lohan, and other well known figures who say and do anything they want yet still have successful careers, keep starring in movies, and even get in on really good business deals and endorsements. Lets not forget the Lady Gaga / Polaroid event where during the unveiling she said "smile you're fucking famous" and other unprofessional phrases.
It's like there's absolutely NO consequence for them. I guess because it's their "image" and it's "expected". So I guess the moral of the story is, become an offensive comedian /or/ celebrity known for being crazy and work your way up towards serious entrepreneur. That way you can talk shit and get away with it. OR start out as the well spoken guy, and just 1 accidental F-bomb later, show up on the news as the bad guy and get thrown out by your company board.
EDIT: ALSO, wtf did Notch gain by saying "You're an insane idiot"?! What did he gain from his remark?
People like him are held up to high standards because they have responsibilities and are paid accordingly. It's called leadership. Leaders watch what they say.
As for celebrities acting badly, this doesn't make it particularly admirable. I should point out that no F-bomb was used by the CEO in question - he merely showed a complete lack of class. There really was no upside. A lot of people wouldn't have known, or perhaps wouldn't have cared, that Shay didn't join the new company.
I'd suggest that the OMGPOP CEO be very careful about what he says. Saying someone was the "weakest link" in a team with no backup might lead to defamation proceedings.
It's not so much how offensive you are, but whom it's directed at and what the relative power balance is. Powerful or famous people will usually only attack or make fun of those who are more famous or powerful than them.
Celebrities can get away with a lot, but they don't have carte blanche to say whatever they want. For instance, Lady Gaga's comment indicates that she has some business acumen. I guarantee she wouldn't have gotten away with saying something like "Nobody cares about Polaroid. This is about me.", which probably better reflects what she was really thinking. But since she said something that reflects well on her business partner, she can ultimately get away with using a bit of salty language.
I think some of it is the kind of comment it was as well. Negative public comments about specific employees are the kind of thing that would make a lot of people think the CEO was someone you should steer clear of, even if he weren't that high profile. If you saw it in a Tweet from a 10-person startup, it probably wouldn't make news, but it might be a red flag to potential employees. When you add to it that the guy is hugely wealthy, it just gives it an added aura of entitled-rich-asshole-looking-down-on-the-plebs.
Actually it reminds me of the kinds of reactions Sebastian Marshall gets around here for his jerky/arrogant/employee-badmouthing style of blogging, and that guy isn't even wealthy or famous (except HN-famous).
> But how come people like him are held up to such high standards?
Because he is supposed to be a leader. Leaders are held to higher standards. They are supposed to have integrity and good character.
The people you cite are celebrities, not leaders. We do not take them seriously. They are there to entertain us, make a lot of money, do drugs and fade into oblivion. Comparisons are irrelevant. All that you get making comparisons is a race to the bottom.
And it wasn't that he was profane. He wasn't profane in the tweet at all. (No one really cares about profanity anymore anyway).
He went out of his way to demean another human being (who he likely knew and worked closely with) when it was really not necessary. That is the shocking, self-serving, and utterly ugly part about his statement. It shows that he lacks character.
I can't speak for everyone else, but it wasn't the honesty I had an issue with, it was the reckless disloyalty and willingness to publicly burn people who've worked for you.
For sure, this guy called Zynga evil and said he didn't want to work for them, and that's the last thing you want showing up in Mark Pincus's news feed when he's just bought your company. But to shoot back in public and call him a parasite and the weakest person on the team? That's just vengeful and childish.
Forget censorship, it's just about having a shred of professional respect. Maybe he has a fat mother, or erectile dysfunction, or shitty dress sense. If you do something to upset me, what would you want me to post about you on Twitter? There's a line that even DHH-style "I'm funny because I'm callous" can't cross.
Any business relationship carries with it a certain amount of trust, and between a leader and their team most of all. Pierce said he didn't like Zynga (his personal opinion) and he was attacked by someone who had the ability to expose private information about his job performance, and who should have owed him better than that.
Personally, I wouldn't care if Porter said "Shay Pierce is wrong and doesn't know what he's talking about", or even if he said "Shay fucking Pierce is fucking wrong fucking" while hanging out of a porn-funded blimp. It's the intention, not the words, that I find offensive.
You're right. When you fire someone, experience layoffs or people quit in disgust, the best thing to do is to let it go and if some negative publicity comes back at you, the best thing to do is to kill them with kindness, especially when you were actually trying to retain said employee. Which I assume was part of the buyout deal. Yes, the employees, especially the engineers, are company assets.
"Shay is a great engineer who we were unfortunately unable to retain. I'm sure he'll do well wherever he lands." Would have sufficed as a tweet. One comes across as not being pricked by the story and if he's actually the weakest guy on the team and ends up hired by a competitor, you win.
A CEO is always recruiting and promoting, even to employees. To use the petty language that he did only weakens his position amongst his team and outsiders interested in the company.
Ok I get it now. I think being a closed up shy introverted recluse has taken its toll on my ability to understand what's socially acceptable and what isn't.
I grew up around a father that would talk shit but do good things so to me I've always discarded what people say and paid attention more to what their actions are.
Just to be clear, you are comparing two hip hop artists, two comedians, two actors, and an avante garde pop artist to the CEO of a mobile games company? In fact you are comparing a group of individuals who are all famous or infamous in their own way for being edgy and/or a mess, to a company that makes family friendly games. There is a very large difference between the responsibilities of an entertainer and a CEO. The responsibilities of some of the aforementioned celebrities could arguably include being "offensive". Witness the scorn heaped upon Eddie Murphy when he decided to shed his Raw persona and turn to family movies.
If you are worrying about having to censor your public persona in the future, go into a line of business where being edgy is part of the attraction. However, it is never a good move, whether as a CEO or public figure or basic human being to get up on a soapbox and say bitchy, petty, mean spirited things. The OMGPop CEO is not speaking "brutal honesty", he's just acting like a dick most likely because his ego has swollen out of control by the sale and the success of Draw Something and he can't stand that this "little guy" is pissing on his parade. This is the behaviour of a child, not a leader.
Lastly, this isn't about "holding people to high standards", as if it is some sort of conscious thing we participate in. In societal interactions there is a implicit understanding of the range of acceptable behaviour for a public figure, it is unconscious and breaching those boundaries will have immediate emotional consequences on how people perceive you. If Snoop Dog says fuck or calls himself a pimp nobody will blink, if he punched a child in the face people would immediately react negatively. Likewise if he stopped all of his Snoop persona and started working for the Rick Santorum campaign. If you are the CEO of a company that makes family friendly mainstream games, people expect that you will act like an adult in possession of self-control are good judgement. If you are the CEO of a company that sells coke spoons, maybe less so.
Notch is able to say what he did because he has garnered significant good will, and because it embodies the mass public reaction to the OMGpop tweet. If he tweeted this kind of thing all the time he would lose that good will eventually. As a one off though.. it IS idiotic and insane to publicly belittle former employees as a CEO.
Moral of the story is don't be a dick in public view, unless you are in public view for being a dick ;)
When you're nobody, nobody listens. If I say one of my co-workers is useless, the only people who are going to care about it are people who need to know that information - the other members of my team, and the boss. It's a private matter
When the CEO of a recently acquired company says it, it's not a private criticism anymore, it's a public shaming. He could have found a way of being honest to the developer without mocking him on twitter
The other celebrities you mention don't get criticized Because they have a limit. They say stupid things, but stop short of direct, public, unprovoked personal attacks.
Those people you name are all artists who make their living performing. "Professional" for them has a different meaning. But they still can't say anything they want without censure. Look at how much crap Kanye West took for "Imma let you finish", for example. You will very rarely find them talking trash about people they've worked with, and when it does it often has consequences. Megan Fox, for example, got fired from the Transformers movie because she said some unprofessional things about the director. Her co-star said, "Criticism is one thing. Then there's public name-calling, which turns into high-school bashing. Which you can't do."
More importantly, they're not executives or leaders. Dan Porter is in charge of hundreds of people. How he treats the people who work for him isn't some minor thing; it's the essence of management. His tweet made him look like a petty asshole, and his non-apology confirms that for me.
I seriously doubt this guy was being brutally honest. If this guy was so awful, why did they keep him? It sounds much more likely that he's lying about how bad this fellow was out of spite.
If he really was awful and got called on it, that would be one thing. But to be libeled for no reason other than writing up your decision not to take a new job is terrible. Nobody should do that, CEO of something or not.
What's so interesting about success is the number of
failures who try to ride on your back. Shay Pierce is
just one of many...
since the guy specifically went out of his way not to "ride on his back" because of morals.
Frankly from his tweets it sure looks like the biggest failure on the team is the CEO...they just got lucky and instead of being humble, he is doing the completely wrong thing...and if he was such a failure as an employee, why did such a great manager keep him employed
Can't stress this enough. I liked OMGPOP from the start, when they were still that obscure flash-site for 6-12yr olds. But that was before the CEO announced that he's an asshole...
"DrawSomething" most likely got popular mainly because the implementation is much better than the other Pictionary clones (which have been around forever). And that's an aspect that Mr. CEO probably wasn't involved with at all, but rather his lowly developers.
The one thing that Mr. CEO could attribute to himself would be if he smelled the opportunity early and executed on it. But he didn't. It took them 3 years to port their most popular flash-game (then called "Draw my thing") to the cashcow mobile platform.
That doesn't seem like a calculated move to brag about, does it?
That's what unsuccessful people say when someone becomes successful.
I think there are two reasons for the typical "he just got lucky" insult.
1) When you tear down a successful person, you get to transfer a little of their success to you. (aka "player hatin'")
2) Level playing field. It's nice to imagine that everyone has the same amount of "luck," and therefore the same chance of being successful. It's disheartening to accept that some people might work harder or have more natural talent than you. Chalking it up to "luck" gives you hope that it could just as easily happen to you one day.
"Hope is the only thing stronger than fear" - Hunger Games
Btw, I think what the OMGPOP guy wrote on Twitter was mean and dumb. He shouldn't have written it. And I don't know these guys.
And I actually believe that most success is rooted in luck (or chance or circumstance). But everything I've read about OMGPOP says that they struggled for 6+ years and finally made it big with Draw Something.
"The harder I worked, the luckier I got." - Samuel Goldwyn
I agree with you. Hard work drastically improves your chances. But there are indeed times when people hit the silicon valley lottery. I suspect marc andreessen's secretary's peers were just as hard working as she was.
Maybe he is indeed an exceptional CEO. If you rank CEO's by quality, I suspect the top half of the list has better things to do than fumble around on twitter Saturday afternoon.
You are probably thinking of Jim Clark's exec admin, and I can say as someone who supported Jim Clark, that no, she worked about 10x harder and smarter than any admin you will likely meet. I Have a hundred anecdotes, but the one that comes to mind is where she had to delay his private jet, with an "electrical failure", just so we could deliver a ThinkPad the IT organization was repairing without him even knowing it was missing. She was still lucky, but based on the number of other admins JC went through, she was also unique in her ability and work ethic.
A professor of mine once said that becoming a professor requires equal parts intelligence, hard work and luck. Usually I cite him to stress the importance of luck: being talented and working hard often isn't enough. However when someone says that someone else just got lucky, I cite it to make another point: without talent and hard work, luck is often useless. You need vast amounts of luck to get somewhere if you're talentless and lazy. If you are talented and work hard, the tiniest amount of luck is enough to lift you from your peers.
According to me if a person is lazy and unproductive, even luck gives up on him.
You need to work hard anyway. And you need need luck on top of it. Things work in that order.
But a lot of people first expect to get lucky and then work hard. IMO that never happens, because the person tries to reverse cause-effect scenarios. The person expects reward before work, whereas rewards always come after work, never before it.
I don't know anything about Dan Porter. I have to admit my first thought reading this was that he's another 20-something CEO who hasn't developed the communication and political skills an good executive needs. But this guy is a seasoned executive (http://danporter.org/?page_id=4). Astounding.
Well, I had ignored the whole Draw Something phenomenon until a few days ago. I downloaded the game, and for the last 3-4 days have been finding myself enjoying it quite a bit and anxiously refreshing the app to see if my game partners had updated their drawings.
Needless to say, having just read this I deleted the app a couple minutes ago. They can keep my dollar, for all the good it will do them.
Remember that if you choose to uninstall the app, also go into Facebook and remove the app from their as well.
I don't understand this. Pierce didn't slam OMGPOP, from what I have read, just Zynga's unwillingness to exempt his personal project from its IP clutches. I have to wonder why OMGPOP's CEO felt the need to do this.
He sounds incredibly insecure about it which probably belies a lot of the truth about what Shay Pierce contributed to the team.
Shay probably didn't have a lot at stake and it was just a job, as a leader it's a sign of leadership failure if your troops don't follow you which is what the CEO is likely insecure about. He's also working at Zynga and who knows what the management team will think next week about what OMGPOP really contributed to Zynga.
Both of them look incredibly insecure, but Mr. Porter is the guy with $200 mm in the bank who is expected to show some class. If Shay's weak why even pay attention, just smile that you avoided bringing a weak link with you.
My thoughts exactly. My first hunch was: Pincus (CEO of Zynga) put him up to it (or called him out, "how did you ever hire this asshole?"), and Porter jumped at the chance to please his new boss.
Porter forgot the number 1 rule of politics: If your opponent is making a mistake, don't stop him. I understand what Pierce is saying (and can't help sympathizing), but I can't help thinking that writing that editorial was poor taste on Pierce's part, and probably would have reflected poorly on him had Porter kept his mouth shut and not turned him into a martyr.
I mean, if you disagree with a potential employer's" values", it's career suicide to write a widely distributed Op-Ed about it unless that value is something like "Don't club baby seals" and you have hard proof that said employer is actively clubbing baby seals. Calling them evil over what is essentially a contract dispute (even if it's a perfectly valid contract dispute) would make me think twice before negotiating a contract with him. If he's writing an Op-Ed about them, what's to prevent him from writing an Op-Ed about me if he doesn't like my terms?
Imagine the viral traffic you could get when people have seen "moe clubbed two obnoxious baby seals" in your facebook ticker a few times an hour for a while.
I highly doubt dissing on Zynga when he didn't take a job there is going to hurt his chances of being hired by other software shops (for one thing, we all sit around dissing on Zynga too.)
I respect honesty, priorities and transparency. I'd hire the guy. We aren't MBAs, after all: our goal isn't to hide behind a web of obscurity while we sell our clients bonds too toxic for us to hold. We want to hire people with side projects as long as they won't distract from their work for us.
He will have lost some crappy jobs at crappy companies that want cogs instead of collaborators. I don't think it's going to be a major disappointment for him.
> I mean, if you disagree with a potential employer's" values", it's career suicide to...
It's not career suicide. People should talk about shitty places to work more often, and there's no way Zynga can keep another company from hiring the guy. The only time you see "you'll never work in this town again!" work is when all the companies are colluding to control the labor market. In programming that hasn't happened yet, so he can say pretty much whatever he wants and still get a job.
In fact, it was easier for me to get a job after I demolished Ruby on Rails for being the piece of shit that it is. People like honesty.
There's a world difference between speaking ill of an open source project and speaking ill of someone you couldn't negotiate a contract with. We're used to people ranting about open source projects. It happens every day.
In a perfect world, people would be able to expose employers who are doing wrong with impunity. In the real world, it's difficult to do so without repercussions. How do you think companies like Zynga can still recruit developers?
Well, given how many people Zynga is buying vs. the mass exodus that seems to be happening in S.F. from them, I'd be interested in seeing their recruitment numbers.
You should probably go back and re-read the editorial; He didn't call them evil because of a contract dispute.
Personally, I'd have no trouble hiring Shay Pierce. I like it when people I hire have some backbone and some moral sense. Obedience is occasionally useful, but making software is essentially a creative effort (as is starting a new company). For that, you need people who can think independently from the basis of shared values.
What a fool. Shay Pierce's article was incredibly polite and graceful, so there's no way OMGPOP can come off looking like anything but pathetic and vindictive.
I think the worst thing I've heard our CEO say about a former employee is "it was time for the company and X to part ways" after X took a job elsewhere, and this was an internal meeting. We don't take to tweeting the inner workings of our company.
"Earlier this week – days after Zynga bought OMGPOP for $210 million – a now former OMGPOP engineer named Shay Pierce wrote a column for gaming news Web site Gamasutra explaining that he would not join Zynga because it is "evil." He said that companies like Zynga think of users as "weak-minded cash cows.""
Come on. OMGPOP was a fast rising company with a very green CEO. Expectations that they're going to act like the CEO of Oracle (boom, bad example) or something seems out of place. The CEO is a person just like everyone else, and had a moment of weakness.
The CEO took it personally. And rightly so, because in his implications Pierce was saying that everyone else were willing to join an "evil" company that treats people as "weak minded cash cows". When we make personal statements of values and their justifications ("I don't eat meat because I don't like murdering innocent animals, blood on my hands"), we naturally raise the hairs of those who make different decisions.
EDIT: Normally I just bear those downvotes, but in this case I find them a little disturbing. The whole narrative around this has taken on a distinctly "we are the 99%!" type of schism. The CEO is a human being too, and there is no reason to value or respect the opinion of Pierce.
He has 20 years of executive leadership. Irrespective of what you think of the actual job activities or of a particular title, how can you possible color that "green"?
It's very childish, to say the least, to take offense and lashing out upon hearing of someone else's morals.
Many would see Pierce's media efforts as childish and unprofessional. I originally saw it presented with the title "The one smart OMGPOP employee", and it was pretty obvious what the deal was (when you make demands and the other side ignores you, it means you aren't in a position to make demands).
Further his "morals" went so far as demanding that they provide some sort of oddball waiver for him, which they didn't feel worthy of the time required. I'm not sure if you're reading a different story than I am, but the one I read had him completely fine with joining Zygna until they said stuff it, at which point he retroactively gained a higher calling.
Many would see Pierce's media efforts as childish and unprofessional.
Well, he explained publicly why he opted out of the employment offer.
when you make demands and the other side ignores you, it means you aren't in a position to make demands
And so what? Should I look down upon him because he's "weak" when compared to Zynga?
Further his "morals" went so far as demanding that they provide some sort of oddball waiver for him, which they didn't feel worthy of the time required. I'm not sure if you're reading a different story than I am, but the one I read had him completely fine with joining Zygna until they said stuff it, at which point he retroactively gained a higher calling.
Well, it was your post which introduced differing morality into the question, as a justification for Porter's tantrum. Pierce himself waives any claim to being an "idealist", in his words[1]. On the "oddball waiver" I won't comment; that's a Silicon Valley thing, don't wanna be culturally insensitive.
That is not an "oddball" waiver. Saying that creative people continue to own what they owned before they took the job is a common contract feature. I know we have that in the IP agreement that our developers sign -- anything they explicitly list as theirs continues to be theirs.
You're over analyzing it: it's not a "we are the 99%" schism. It's just a guy in a leadership position being a first class douche bag.
It's also independent of whether the other guy was "right" or "wrong". I've had plenty of moments of weakness in my life, and none of them compelled me to rip in to former coworkers on Twitter.
Reluctant to comment, since this is circumstantial and may be seen as not adding to the discussion, but for what its worth, I've heard (long before this incident) many cases in which Dan Porter has exhibited this type of behavior (immoral actions), and that this headline in itself is not an isolated incident.
Out of all the ways I can think of to describe Pierce's article, "incredibly polite and graceful" is probably at the bottom of the list. Pierce branded a potential employer "evil" because of a minor detail in his contract (granted, a minor detail he had every right to turn the contract down for). Zynga isn't exactly well known for having the most integrity as a company, but it's certainly neither polite nor graceful for him to publicize his dispute with them like that.
A better way to phrase it would be to say "Pierce's article says something impolite and ungraceful in the most polite and graceful way possible".
I said no such thing. What I did do is question whether it was a good idea for the ant to throw the pebble at the elephant. The pebble did little to harm the elephant and might have earned the ant a reputation for being a pebble-thrower.
Wouldn't it be possible to create a trust (or even a corporation), transfer all of your IP to the trust and then appoint trusted third parties as trustees? There seems to be a world of difference between personally holding IP and being the sole beneficiary of a trust that holds IP.
For my part, I'll stick to working for employers with reasonable terms of employment.
Reasonable question, but I suspect the answer is, practically speaking, "no".
Two important things to remember about negotiating contracts: A) They are mainly about the spirit of the agreement, and B) If any of the language actually gets as far as being tested in a court and you're just an individual, you're probably already fucked.
Zynga/OMGPOP clearly think it's unreasonable for any of their employees to do any outside game work. When Shay said, "Hey, can have an exception for my pet project," they said no. If Shay had tried to find some behind-their-back trick, the best case is that they just wouldn't care.
The worst case is that they fire him and bring a suit to take the game from him. Whether or not they win, Shay probably can't afford to spend $100k or more on a lawsuit, not for a little side project. So if he's lucky he escapes with $5K in legal bills so that he can hand the game over to him and agree in writing never to utter the word "Zynga" again.
I'm not suggesting that this would work for subverting an agreement as it pertains to work done while an employee. The grandparent specifically referred to an employer demanding past work, presumably predating any business relationship.
Your approach might be enough to win a lawsuit. But he probably can't afford to fight a lawsuit, so whether or not he'd eventually win doesn't matter. Even if he could, it would be a hollow victory. He'd get to keep his modestly successful iPhone game, but it would cost him his job and maybe a year's salary on lawyers, plus 2-3 years of aggravation.
That would almost certainly work, but I suppose the proble that Shay Pierce had was that this was not possible to do before he had to sign the contract.
Frist, he said he wasn't joining because they wouldn't let him keep ownership of his prior work. They publicly announced that all developers were joining, forced him to make a decision quickly, and refused to negotiate. They in effect forced him out of his job. Him losing a game he built was not a "minor detail".
Second, he did not call Zynga evil because of that. His actual words: "When an entity exists in an ecosystem, and acts within that ecosystem in a way that is short-sighted, behaving in a way that is actively destructive to the healthy functioning of that ecosystem and the other entities in it (including, in the long term, themselves) -- yes, I believe that that is evil. And I believe that Zynga does exactly that."
Politeness and grace do not require you to bend over and take it. They do not require you to shut up when your conscience insists that you speak.
From his article, Zynga isn't evil because of the minor detail in the contract. He gives a reason why he thinks zynga is evil and so not worth negotiating this minor detail.
"When an entity exists in an ecosystem, and acts within that ecosystem in a way that is short-sighted, behaving in a way that is actively destructive to the healthy functioning of that ecosystem and the other entities in it (including, in the long term, themselves) -- yes, I believe that that is evil. And I believe that Zynga does exactly that."
Pierce branded a potential employer "evil" because of a minor detail in his contract
That's not true. This is the reason he gave:
An evil company is trying to get rich quick, and has no regard for the harm they're doing along the way. It's not making things of value, it's chasing a gold rush. An evil game company isn't really interested in making games, it's too busy playing a game -- a game with the stock market, usually. It views players as weak-minded cash cows; and it views its developers as expendable, replaceable tools to create the machines that milk those cows.
I'm curious, could these sort of statements made by a CEO in regards to a former employee be crossing the line into defamation? As in, if Pierce is looking for a job in the future and this is what a potential employer finds...
Could well. I've heard a lot of larger companies have a policy of only providing references of the form "X worked here from Y to Z" for that exact reason.
I also agree - but then he said something potentially defamatory :-)
However, I think if an employee looks up Shay's details, they will first find his op-ed calling Zynga "evil". I guess if they are concerned about the OMGPOP tweet, then they will be REALLY worried about the op-ed!
Could well. I've heard a lot of larger companies have a policy of only providing references of the form "X worked here from Y to Z" for that exact reason.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadIf it is true, then I gues that OMGPOP will be a great addition to Zyngas "culture".
https://twitter.com/#!/tfadp/status/185901238477537281
Apparently the company's backlash against Shay Pierce had begun on Thursday: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2012%...
Does anyone know how those retention clauses usually work?
However, there was a second tweet that did explicitly mention Pierce. Here's a screenshot showing both: http://i.imgur.com/Dob8n.jpg
The text of the other tweet is "What's so interesting about success is the number of failures who try to ride on your back. Shay Pierce is just one of many...".
These tweets were on March 30, so they are not April fools jokes.
[1] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga...
Our window for reaching its peak was gone. I sat in our tent, unable to do anything, while my dream of climbing Mount Everest faded
It's wrong to quote them as saying
"Our window for reaching Mount Everest's peak was gone"
Even though the "its" is clearly referring to Mount Everest. There are a couple options, the simplest being:
"Our window for reaching [Mount Everest's] peak was gone"
What worries me is that people don't know this. That you can just substitute/fill in a quote because it's obvious that's what the person meant. Rather, it should be thought of as a recording device that can only play back exactly what the person said.
And this seems bizarre behaviour on OMGPOP's part - he was entirely complimentary to OMGPOP and he publicly disclaimed credit for Draw Something. Even if you did hate him and the press he stirred up, the best way to make it go away is to completely ignore it. Why on Earth would you make this the story?
Further, Porter's the one who set up the retention process in a way that forced somebody out the door over a perfectly reasonable issue. A manager who's first instinct for a problem is to blame others has a big problem. One who does it publicly is a fool.
You just got bought for $200 million, now it's the time to show that you deserved to be the CEO of that company, by being diplomatic, respecting those around you (or who used to be around you) and now calculating your every move. Your opinion no longer just affects yourself, it affects your whole company, as well as (in a lesser extent), the company that just bought you.
Then I see celebrities like Snoop Dog (who owned a porn company), Sarah Silverman (who has some of the most offensive jokes imaginable), lil john (self explanatory), Colin Farrel, Charlie Sheen, Lindsey Lohan, and other well known figures who say and do anything they want yet still have successful careers, keep starring in movies, and even get in on really good business deals and endorsements. Lets not forget the Lady Gaga / Polaroid event where during the unveiling she said "smile you're fucking famous" and other unprofessional phrases.
It's like there's absolutely NO consequence for them. I guess because it's their "image" and it's "expected". So I guess the moral of the story is, become an offensive comedian /or/ celebrity known for being crazy and work your way up towards serious entrepreneur. That way you can talk shit and get away with it. OR start out as the well spoken guy, and just 1 accidental F-bomb later, show up on the news as the bad guy and get thrown out by your company board.
EDIT: ALSO, wtf did Notch gain by saying "You're an insane idiot"?! What did he gain from his remark?
As for celebrities acting badly, this doesn't make it particularly admirable. I should point out that no F-bomb was used by the CEO in question - he merely showed a complete lack of class. There really was no upside. A lot of people wouldn't have known, or perhaps wouldn't have cared, that Shay didn't join the new company.
I'd suggest that the OMGPOP CEO be very careful about what he says. Saying someone was the "weakest link" in a team with no backup might lead to defamation proceedings.
Actually it reminds me of the kinds of reactions Sebastian Marshall gets around here for his jerky/arrogant/employee-badmouthing style of blogging, and that guy isn't even wealthy or famous (except HN-famous).
Because he is supposed to be a leader. Leaders are held to higher standards. They are supposed to have integrity and good character.
The people you cite are celebrities, not leaders. We do not take them seriously. They are there to entertain us, make a lot of money, do drugs and fade into oblivion. Comparisons are irrelevant. All that you get making comparisons is a race to the bottom.
And it wasn't that he was profane. He wasn't profane in the tweet at all. (No one really cares about profanity anymore anyway).
He went out of his way to demean another human being (who he likely knew and worked closely with) when it was really not necessary. That is the shocking, self-serving, and utterly ugly part about his statement. It shows that he lacks character.
For sure, this guy called Zynga evil and said he didn't want to work for them, and that's the last thing you want showing up in Mark Pincus's news feed when he's just bought your company. But to shoot back in public and call him a parasite and the weakest person on the team? That's just vengeful and childish.
Forget censorship, it's just about having a shred of professional respect. Maybe he has a fat mother, or erectile dysfunction, or shitty dress sense. If you do something to upset me, what would you want me to post about you on Twitter? There's a line that even DHH-style "I'm funny because I'm callous" can't cross.
Any business relationship carries with it a certain amount of trust, and between a leader and their team most of all. Pierce said he didn't like Zynga (his personal opinion) and he was attacked by someone who had the ability to expose private information about his job performance, and who should have owed him better than that.
Personally, I wouldn't care if Porter said "Shay Pierce is wrong and doesn't know what he's talking about", or even if he said "Shay fucking Pierce is fucking wrong fucking" while hanging out of a porn-funded blimp. It's the intention, not the words, that I find offensive.
"Shay is a great engineer who we were unfortunately unable to retain. I'm sure he'll do well wherever he lands." Would have sufficed as a tweet. One comes across as not being pricked by the story and if he's actually the weakest guy on the team and ends up hired by a competitor, you win.
A CEO is always recruiting and promoting, even to employees. To use the petty language that he did only weakens his position amongst his team and outsiders interested in the company.
I grew up around a father that would talk shit but do good things so to me I've always discarded what people say and paid attention more to what their actions are.
If you are worrying about having to censor your public persona in the future, go into a line of business where being edgy is part of the attraction. However, it is never a good move, whether as a CEO or public figure or basic human being to get up on a soapbox and say bitchy, petty, mean spirited things. The OMGPop CEO is not speaking "brutal honesty", he's just acting like a dick most likely because his ego has swollen out of control by the sale and the success of Draw Something and he can't stand that this "little guy" is pissing on his parade. This is the behaviour of a child, not a leader.
Lastly, this isn't about "holding people to high standards", as if it is some sort of conscious thing we participate in. In societal interactions there is a implicit understanding of the range of acceptable behaviour for a public figure, it is unconscious and breaching those boundaries will have immediate emotional consequences on how people perceive you. If Snoop Dog says fuck or calls himself a pimp nobody will blink, if he punched a child in the face people would immediately react negatively. Likewise if he stopped all of his Snoop persona and started working for the Rick Santorum campaign. If you are the CEO of a company that makes family friendly mainstream games, people expect that you will act like an adult in possession of self-control are good judgement. If you are the CEO of a company that sells coke spoons, maybe less so.
Notch is able to say what he did because he has garnered significant good will, and because it embodies the mass public reaction to the OMGpop tweet. If he tweeted this kind of thing all the time he would lose that good will eventually. As a one off though.. it IS idiotic and insane to publicly belittle former employees as a CEO.
Moral of the story is don't be a dick in public view, unless you are in public view for being a dick ;)
- More of my respect.
Which of these two gaming CEO's would you now want to work for or with?
When the CEO of a recently acquired company says it, it's not a private criticism anymore, it's a public shaming. He could have found a way of being honest to the developer without mocking him on twitter
The other celebrities you mention don't get criticized Because they have a limit. They say stupid things, but stop short of direct, public, unprovoked personal attacks.
More importantly, they're not executives or leaders. Dan Porter is in charge of hundreds of people. How he treats the people who work for him isn't some minor thing; it's the essence of management. His tweet made him look like a petty asshole, and his non-apology confirms that for me.
If he really was awful and got called on it, that would be one thing. But to be libeled for no reason other than writing up your decision not to take a new job is terrible. Nobody should do that, CEO of something or not.
Frankly from his tweets it sure looks like the biggest failure on the team is the CEO...they just got lucky and instead of being humble, he is doing the completely wrong thing...and if he was such a failure as an employee, why did such a great manager keep him employed
Can't stress this enough. I liked OMGPOP from the start, when they were still that obscure flash-site for 6-12yr olds. But that was before the CEO announced that he's an asshole...
"DrawSomething" most likely got popular mainly because the implementation is much better than the other Pictionary clones (which have been around forever). And that's an aspect that Mr. CEO probably wasn't involved with at all, but rather his lowly developers.
The one thing that Mr. CEO could attribute to himself would be if he smelled the opportunity early and executed on it. But he didn't. It took them 3 years to port their most popular flash-game (then called "Draw my thing") to the cashcow mobile platform.
That doesn't seem like a calculated move to brag about, does it?
No respect for this guy.
That's what unsuccessful people say when someone becomes successful.
I think there are two reasons for the typical "he just got lucky" insult.
1) When you tear down a successful person, you get to transfer a little of their success to you. (aka "player hatin'")
2) Level playing field. It's nice to imagine that everyone has the same amount of "luck," and therefore the same chance of being successful. It's disheartening to accept that some people might work harder or have more natural talent than you. Chalking it up to "luck" gives you hope that it could just as easily happen to you one day.
"Hope is the only thing stronger than fear" - Hunger Games
Btw, I think what the OMGPOP guy wrote on Twitter was mean and dumb. He shouldn't have written it. And I don't know these guys.
And I actually believe that most success is rooted in luck (or chance or circumstance). But everything I've read about OMGPOP says that they struggled for 6+ years and finally made it big with Draw Something.
"The harder I worked, the luckier I got." - Samuel Goldwyn
Maybe he is indeed an exceptional CEO. If you rank CEO's by quality, I suspect the top half of the list has better things to do than fumble around on twitter Saturday afternoon.
You need to work hard anyway. And you need need luck on top of it. Things work in that order.
But a lot of people first expect to get lucky and then work hard. IMO that never happens, because the person tries to reverse cause-effect scenarios. The person expects reward before work, whereas rewards always come after work, never before it.
Needless to say, having just read this I deleted the app a couple minutes ago. They can keep my dollar, for all the good it will do them.
Remember that if you choose to uninstall the app, also go into Facebook and remove the app from their as well.
Shay probably didn't have a lot at stake and it was just a job, as a leader it's a sign of leadership failure if your troops don't follow you which is what the CEO is likely insecure about. He's also working at Zynga and who knows what the management team will think next week about what OMGPOP really contributed to Zynga.
Both of them look incredibly insecure, but Mr. Porter is the guy with $200 mm in the bank who is expected to show some class. If Shay's weak why even pay attention, just smile that you avoided bringing a weak link with you.
I mean, if you disagree with a potential employer's" values", it's career suicide to write a widely distributed Op-Ed about it unless that value is something like "Don't club baby seals" and you have hard proof that said employer is actively clubbing baby seals. Calling them evil over what is essentially a contract dispute (even if it's a perfectly valid contract dispute) would make me think twice before negotiating a contract with him. If he's writing an Op-Ed about them, what's to prevent him from writing an Op-Ed about me if he doesn't like my terms?
From all we've read about Zynga they seem to fit the bill just shy of actually clubbing animals...
Imagine the viral traffic you could get when people have seen "moe clubbed two obnoxious baby seals" in your facebook ticker a few times an hour for a while.
I respect honesty, priorities and transparency. I'd hire the guy. We aren't MBAs, after all: our goal isn't to hide behind a web of obscurity while we sell our clients bonds too toxic for us to hold. We want to hire people with side projects as long as they won't distract from their work for us.
He will have lost some crappy jobs at crappy companies that want cogs instead of collaborators. I don't think it's going to be a major disappointment for him.
It's not career suicide. People should talk about shitty places to work more often, and there's no way Zynga can keep another company from hiring the guy. The only time you see "you'll never work in this town again!" work is when all the companies are colluding to control the labor market. In programming that hasn't happened yet, so he can say pretty much whatever he wants and still get a job.
In fact, it was easier for me to get a job after I demolished Ruby on Rails for being the piece of shit that it is. People like honesty.
In a perfect world, people would be able to expose employers who are doing wrong with impunity. In the real world, it's difficult to do so without repercussions. How do you think companies like Zynga can still recruit developers?
Personally, I'd have no trouble hiring Shay Pierce. I like it when people I hire have some backbone and some moral sense. Obedience is occasionally useful, but making software is essentially a creative effort (as is starting a new company). For that, you need people who can think independently from the basis of shared values.
I think the worst thing I've heard our CEO say about a former employee is "it was time for the company and X to part ways" after X took a job elsewhere, and this was an internal meeting. We don't take to tweeting the inner workings of our company.
Come on. OMGPOP was a fast rising company with a very green CEO. Expectations that they're going to act like the CEO of Oracle (boom, bad example) or something seems out of place. The CEO is a person just like everyone else, and had a moment of weakness.
The CEO took it personally. And rightly so, because in his implications Pierce was saying that everyone else were willing to join an "evil" company that treats people as "weak minded cash cows". When we make personal statements of values and their justifications ("I don't eat meat because I don't like murdering innocent animals, blood on my hands"), we naturally raise the hairs of those who make different decisions.
EDIT: Normally I just bear those downvotes, but in this case I find them a little disturbing. The whole narrative around this has taken on a distinctly "we are the 99%!" type of schism. The CEO is a human being too, and there is no reason to value or respect the opinion of Pierce.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/danporter
"Moment of weakness" maybe, but not from an inexperienced guy.
"SVP" of "Virgin USA", which was an absolutely minuscule offshoot.
He has been a CEO of a tiny company for two years, prior to that acting essentially as a glorified salesperson. That is absolutely green.
Or more accurately, it's self-centered, oblivious and aggressive. I'm more than content with the outcry all over the net.
Many would see Pierce's media efforts as childish and unprofessional. I originally saw it presented with the title "The one smart OMGPOP employee", and it was pretty obvious what the deal was (when you make demands and the other side ignores you, it means you aren't in a position to make demands).
Further his "morals" went so far as demanding that they provide some sort of oddball waiver for him, which they didn't feel worthy of the time required. I'm not sure if you're reading a different story than I am, but the one I read had him completely fine with joining Zygna until they said stuff it, at which point he retroactively gained a higher calling.
Well, he explained publicly why he opted out of the employment offer.
when you make demands and the other side ignores you, it means you aren't in a position to make demands
And so what? Should I look down upon him because he's "weak" when compared to Zynga?
Further his "morals" went so far as demanding that they provide some sort of oddball waiver for him, which they didn't feel worthy of the time required. I'm not sure if you're reading a different story than I am, but the one I read had him completely fine with joining Zygna until they said stuff it, at which point he retroactively gained a higher calling.
Well, it was your post which introduced differing morality into the question, as a justification for Porter's tantrum. Pierce himself waives any claim to being an "idealist", in his words[1]. On the "oddball waiver" I won't comment; that's a Silicon Valley thing, don't wanna be culturally insensitive.
1. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/167244/Turning_down_Zynga...
It's also independent of whether the other guy was "right" or "wrong". I've had plenty of moments of weakness in my life, and none of them compelled me to rip in to former coworkers on Twitter.
A better way to phrase it would be to say "Pierce's article says something impolite and ungraceful in the most polite and graceful way possible".
For my part, I'll stick to working for employers with reasonable terms of employment.
Two important things to remember about negotiating contracts: A) They are mainly about the spirit of the agreement, and B) If any of the language actually gets as far as being tested in a court and you're just an individual, you're probably already fucked.
Zynga/OMGPOP clearly think it's unreasonable for any of their employees to do any outside game work. When Shay said, "Hey, can have an exception for my pet project," they said no. If Shay had tried to find some behind-their-back trick, the best case is that they just wouldn't care.
The worst case is that they fire him and bring a suit to take the game from him. Whether or not they win, Shay probably can't afford to spend $100k or more on a lawsuit, not for a little side project. So if he's lucky he escapes with $5K in legal bills so that he can hand the game over to him and agree in writing never to utter the word "Zynga" again.
Your approach might be enough to win a lawsuit. But he probably can't afford to fight a lawsuit, so whether or not he'd eventually win doesn't matter. Even if he could, it would be a hollow victory. He'd get to keep his modestly successful iPhone game, but it would cost him his job and maybe a year's salary on lawyers, plus 2-3 years of aggravation.
Frist, he said he wasn't joining because they wouldn't let him keep ownership of his prior work. They publicly announced that all developers were joining, forced him to make a decision quickly, and refused to negotiate. They in effect forced him out of his job. Him losing a game he built was not a "minor detail".
Second, he did not call Zynga evil because of that. His actual words: "When an entity exists in an ecosystem, and acts within that ecosystem in a way that is short-sighted, behaving in a way that is actively destructive to the healthy functioning of that ecosystem and the other entities in it (including, in the long term, themselves) -- yes, I believe that that is evil. And I believe that Zynga does exactly that."
Politeness and grace do not require you to bend over and take it. They do not require you to shut up when your conscience insists that you speak.
"When an entity exists in an ecosystem, and acts within that ecosystem in a way that is short-sighted, behaving in a way that is actively destructive to the healthy functioning of that ecosystem and the other entities in it (including, in the long term, themselves) -- yes, I believe that that is evil. And I believe that Zynga does exactly that."
That's not true. This is the reason he gave:
An evil company is trying to get rich quick, and has no regard for the harm they're doing along the way. It's not making things of value, it's chasing a gold rush. An evil game company isn't really interested in making games, it's too busy playing a game -- a game with the stock market, usually. It views players as weak-minded cash cows; and it views its developers as expendable, replaceable tools to create the machines that milk those cows.
[2] https://twitter.com/#!/tfadp/status/186439284767719424
However, I think if an employee looks up Shay's details, they will first find his op-ed calling Zynga "evil". I guess if they are concerned about the OMGPOP tweet, then they will be REALLY worried about the op-ed!