Comment by dogman144
5 years ago
Yeah in general this strikes me as a learning lesson. If you're at all career-wise (and/or have signed a contract recently), this area is usually anywhere from an ethically gray area, to a contractural third rail.
A CEO flexing on an early-career SWE is the height of nonsense, but this sounds like an early-career mistake to make on the engineer's end.
For the SWE it's a project, for the CEO it's existential. Of course this could go south.
How exactly it's existential if a single intern could copy their product? Imagine Microsoft/GitHub or someone with deep pockets going after them?
My point is the view of the world for the two parties here is totally different (unless you are a founder on the edge of success without enough funding on the line to lose your mind at an intern, and if so - interested on your take).
Not empathizing with the founder other than noting it would be sort of predicable for the founder to react like this. IP is big