Comment by ImPostingOnHN
7 months ago
For a second there, I thought you were talking about Vlad!
Based on the exchanges, Vlad is both extremely combative and unwilling to accept the possibility that he is wrong (which he is here).
Being aggressively wrong is no way to go through life. Vlad should be more humble, and open to being wrong, rather than being unnecessarily belligerent.
I don't get the sense that Vlad is combative, just (over)confident. There are no personal attacks, no aggression, no flaming or flamebait. He just is very confident in his approach and doesn't slow down to listen to criticism. Not the best approach as a founder, but not combative.
Combative in this case means treating the exchange as combat: a fight to win; rather than an opportunity to be humble and listen to others and learn.
The exchanges all read like Vlad derives a lot of self-esteem from being right, which isn't as good as deriving it from ability to learn when wrong.
Wouldn’t the same apply to Lori in that exchange. They just put the company on blast and aren’t willing to even hear the other side of things. That email exchange made me lose a ton of respect for them.
But, Vlad definitely should have stopped when Lori responded that they didn’t want to have a conversation at all. If for no other reason than they were a lost cause.
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If someone says "please don't email me about this anymore" and you continue to email them you are being combative
If someone say "please don't email me about this anymore" after writing a hit piece on someone and there company without giving them an opportunity to respond they are being provocative, goading and a troll.
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If your intention to stop communication - you can block someone.
Or if that's the words that would've been chosen - I would agree to you.
But if you mix those words with extra message, then no. A reply to this new message is warranted.
E.g. if you add a reason and that reason is unreasonable - it's warranted to address that and reply to you. Either do a request without attached strings, or block. Don't write extra conditions/reasoning and then complain that someone doesn't agree with you on those and kept messaging.
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This comment, taken as a response to the parent or just as general advice about life, is so entirely bereft of anything objectionable, and is so intrinsically reasonable that its status as 'downvoted' (assumed from the grey text color) is a blemish on HN's commentariat.
Put more simply: it takes a weird, broken logic to find fault in the idea that a person who won't stop emailing you, after being told to, isn't "combative".
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If someone say "please don't email me about this anymore" after writing a hit piece on someone and there company without giving them an opportunity to respond they are being provocative, goading and a troll.
It's not a hit piece, it's someone's personal experiences on their own personal blog.
Regardless.
> Being aggressively wrong is no way to go through life. Vlad should be more humble, and open to being wrong, rather than being unnecessarily belligerent.
I think that if he had different type of personality then he wouldn't start this company - a regular, humble, humiliated, developer would just tremble, sweat and shiver at the thought of starting business straight competing with core Google, MS products. He needs to be believer and confident to pull this. Also almost all leaders of great and (now) big companies seem to be type of people that regular Joe not necessarily would enjoy to be friends with.
I think the image you paint of a "regular" person explains why some folks view this blog post as a opportunity for Vlad to learn, and others view it as a "hit piece" that he must "get a chance to respond to", as if this were combat (and as if he didn't get tens of chances to respond more effectively in the discord conversations we see).
There is a great strength in "I might be wrong here, I'd like to learn more" than makes even the most hardheaded wrongness look weak, and if you look at the history of effective CEOs, you'll likely notice that inability to entertain the possibility you might be wrong tends to be a liability.