Baldur BjarnasonMay 12, 2024
One of the things that the Stack Overflow brouhaha demonstrates is that it doesn’t matter if a service was founded by people trusted by the community (Atwood and Spolsky) and was broadly community-led. If it’s a VC-funded startup, they will sell out their users at some point.
Show threadBaldur BjarnasonMay 12, 2024

People keep forgetting that "by developers, for developers" was a big part of Stackoverflow's initial pitch. It was founded by people who most of the community implicitly trusted. They said all the right things. But as soon as they took VC-funding it was just a matter of time.

I think we know better now than to trust something like a VC-funded community site, but remember that SO was founded in 2008 at the tail-end of the Web 2.0 funding bubble

Show threadHeath Stewart

@baldur I wonder how many Vulture Capitalists have MBAs. Merely a coincidence, likely, but cut from the same cloth.

I knew a person - one of the nicest, thoughtful, and customer-driven people I knew - who got their MBA and completely changed. Then it was all about what's cheapest even though we weren't asked to tighten it belts. Seemed they weren't as well-liked after that.

May 12, 2024 at 8:23pmWeb
Show threadPaulMay 13, 2024
@heaths @baldur The venn overlap is probably significant. I’m sure there are “good” MBAs out there, but for me it’s an instant red-flag.