Comment by FridayoLeary

6 days ago

Hello. It's nice to be able to interact directly with the subject of the article, so thanks for coming on. It's a shame you're being downvoted, because it would definitely be interesting to hear your perspective. This can't be a pleasant experience for you.

I have a couple of questions for you. Firstly the article really didn't hold back about you in a way that you don't usually see. But he makes very specific and verifiable claims. The owner blames the market for 40% of their decline and you for another 40%. You have made over 400 negative comments about the company over the last couple of years. You run the subreddit as a bad faith mod, and you run a rival company so you have an interest in the decline of codesmith. Those are some of the accusations laid against you by the article.

I would be interested in hearing what you have to say about them. Obviously i don't expect you to say anything that might create legal issues for yourself. But you have opinions that youre not shy of expressing. The article was perhaps not wholly neutral so maybe you can clarify your side of the story. Do you have a specific problem with codesmith? why do you care so much about them? Is it because they are competitiors? Do you take such an active role on reddit in order to promote your own interests, outside of creating and maintaining a better community?

To be clear i'm a completely random guy with no skin in the game, just looking for answers.

[edit to reply: There is no plausible scenario that my life will depend on the answer. Literally the only reason i'm on here is for casual chit chat. Frankly, this might be life changing for some people, but i'm really not too invested in the story so i don't mind opening some dialogue in good faith from my end.]

20 comments

FridayoLeary

Reply
ctippett  6 days ago

This is a wonderfully mature and constructive comment.

I appreciate this is off-topic, but I really wanted to highlight/praise what you'd written. It came across to me as very "HN" and the guidelines appear to corroborate this...

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

  • FridayoLeary  5 days ago

    Thanks for that. I've been through the guidelines a dozen times. Following them is really the best possible way to have genuinely interesting and constructive dialogue. My last account got banned so i've been trying to do better. It's amazing how much some good faith conversation can get you, i feel in the time i've been here it's helped me develop better patterns of thought and argument techniques, i would say the most important lesson i've learned is to debate in good faith as much as possible and being honest with yourself about what you know and don't know. Most of the users on this thread are just looking to shut michael down, and expressing their opinion that he's an awful person... It's really very tiresome and boring. I have enough confidence in people here that they can hear what he has to say and make their own judgement.

bluishgreen  6 days ago

You should be able to identify badfaith because your life depends on it. Otherwise you will drown in a pit of bothsides. Bad way to go.

Next we should hear from the counter party is from a court filing. Not here. This is well past having a chill chat on hackernews.

michaelnovati  6 days ago

Yeah I'll I'm going to say for now is that if all your competitors (that I spoke positively about) are shutting down and shrinking and laying people off... there's more to the story. A sad story about an industry dying that should be told.

  • baubino  5 days ago

    You keep saying that there’s more to the story but then won’t say what that ‘more’ is. If the article is truly not a truthful accounting of events, you have the opportunity here to set the record straight. That you are not doing that only reinforces everything the article is claiming.

  • Montymio  5 days ago

    “it’s a sad story” is such an “aw shucks”, condescending sorta bullshit thing to say. I’ve read your posts where you claimed to be bullied as a kid (which i’m obviously sorry for if true), but to then channel that into becoming the bully yourself? That’s 1000% on you, Michael.

  • Hadriel  5 days ago

    Michael for what it's worth I went to Codesmith back in 2016 lol and even then Will was a lil greasy with his marketing! LOL