[HN Gopher] What Happened to Treehouse?
___________________________________________________________________
What Happened to Treehouse?
Author : ChrisArchitect
Score : 127 points
Date : 2021-10-02 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| kif wrote:
| I am baffled by the responses of some other commenters. How some
| can still defend the CEO here is beyond my wildest guess.
|
| Sure, the boat and the house stuff are not really things that
| should put the CEO in bad light, that much we can all agree on.
|
| Though I must say, if you're a CEO and you make such an effort to
| showcase every good thing going on in your life on Instagram,
| while you are firing 90% of your employees, that's just bad
| optics. I know I would be mad.
|
| Secondly, another mistake the CEO did here is to not set the
| right expectations. How does "money runs out by November 2022"
| equate to "you're being fired this September"? It's an asshole
| move not to let your staff know that if the deal doesn't go
| through, layoffs are imminent.
|
| Also, the comment about the CEO reaching out privately to people
| being fired -- I mean, wow. How low can you go? I have never been
| the company and CEO worshipping kind of guy, but I have mad
| respect for my CEO because he has constantly proven to be someone
| who cares about employees. Whereas this guy even lies to the
| media about something that can be easily disproven.
| bcopa wrote:
| This is sad. I used TH in high school... the CEO seems completely
| delusional and clueless in the story
| rado wrote:
| Loved his "Future of Web Design" conference a decade ago. The TH
| product looked great (though I never used it). I unfollowed his
| Twitter after constant posts about getting up at 4:30, working
| out etc. He introduced me to HN!
| bradwood wrote:
| > Did he check in individually with any employees? Never.
|
| How the fuck does this author know this? The boss could have
| spoken to any number of employees with the author being none the
| wiser. FAQ my arse -- this is a whinge from a disgruntled former
| employee...
|
| Don't get me wrong, the CEO of this place was probably not the
| nicest guy, but this is clearly loaded a certain way. The use of
| the word "never" instead of just plain-vanilla "no" is also a bit
| of a give-away.
| coward123 wrote:
| I did business in PDX for a number of years... while I love the
| city, the startup / tech scene there was absolute fubar. It was
| fake it until you make it taken to an extreme. Weirdly insular,
| cliquish...so many snake oil salespeople. Couldn't find any
| actual hirable talent at any price. Some of the weirdest
| encounters of my career, where you looked at all of these
| "companies," Treehouse included, and knew they just didn't pass
| the smell test. Everything in that whole town was like a cult of
| personality.
| merryMellody wrote:
| I owe much of my current success as a professional software
| engineer to the instructors at Treehouse. As an intern, I went
| from 0 to learning the fundamentals of JavaScript on both the
| front and back end. It was the one site that helped React finally
| click for me.
|
| I don't know if you are reading this, Andrew Chalkley and others,
| but thank you for making such lovely courses. I hope you find or
| have found something better out there!
| SmellTheGlove wrote:
| Their product was good when I sampled a few courses, I will say
| that. I interviewed with them a looong time ago, though, and what
| I can say is everyone I met there felt really bought in to what
| they were doing. They were proud to work there, and proud of the
| product they were creating.
|
| This is all really shitty - startups fail, and companies wind
| down, sure. And I get this is only one side of the story but it
| really sounds like the founder got his and didn't give a shit
| about anyone else. That's pretty much textbook how not to do it.
| But hey, at least he has a boat and a smarmy instagram account!
| dylan604 wrote:
| "Carson sold a mansion for over $3.2 million, but couldn't afford
| to pay severance to his employees?
|
| Apparently."
|
| "Carson sold a mansion for over $3.2 million, and bought a boat,
| but couldn't afford to pay severance to his employees?
|
| Apparently."
|
| I haven't had a chance to look into how Treehouse started.
| However, a CEO's role is not to fund a company with their
| personal finances. If the CEO bought a boat with company funds,
| or received windfall bonus, that would be an issue. While these
| are examples of tone deaf behavior from this CEO, I don't
| understand why these questions are being harped on like this.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Yeah that's a really wild take from the authors. Nobody knows
| what's that 3.2M is, maybe the guy was in debt, or that was all
| he had. Sure he doesn't sound like someone I'd ever want to
| work even next to, but to suggest that the founder is supposed
| to burn his personal net worth to the ground to pay off
| employees of a failed venture is disgustingly entitled and
| cannibalistic on the authors' part.
|
| I'd take no severance over some guy having to sacrifice his or
| his family's livelihood so that he can provide 10 people with
| parachutes.
|
| Another case totally of course if that mansion was bought with
| company funds. In that case it's fraud and charges.
| austenallred wrote:
| A little weird to assume he "made" $3.2 million from the house.
| Who knows what he bought it for, what he owed on it, what his
| profit in the transaction was, etc.
|
| Maybe he's neck deep in debt? Maybe he spent all his money on a
| boat assuming a windfall would come that never came. There can
| be any number of reasons someone would sell their house as
| their company goes under.
|
| Seems pretty clear he was fully planing on the acquisition to
| go through. Which may be haphazard, but happens.
|
| The most likely answer to, "Why did he fire everyone instantly
| with no severance?" is "Because there is no money." It seems
| very likely after the acquisition fell through there was simply
| nothing left.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Nobody wants to layoff 90% of staff as CEO, so it is
| understandable to put it off for as long as possible. It's
| hard to admit things are that bad. If they did the layoffs
| early enough to have enough cash to pay severance, then this
| story would have come out months ago. Instead, the CEO held
| out hope that a deal would come through to make it no longer
| his problem. The deal fell through, and now they've burned
| through the cash that could have been used for severance. So
| instead of severance, they kept their jobs that much longer
| which is essentially what severance is meant to cover.
|
| I'm not excusing CEO's behavior. It was 100% poorly managed.
| However, it is a learnable lesson for others that could be in
| this position. This is a forum full of startups or hopefuls.
| Not all startups will succeed. There are tough decisions to
| be made. Nobody will be happy about potential loss of their
| job. There's always the decision to keep people informed with
| the potential of panic ship jumping vs going all in on a bet
| of selling the company.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Yup that is why it is called a limited liability corp. the
| limited liability part
| azundo wrote:
| Wouldn't it weirder if he kept the mansion? Perhaps he might
| not have been able to pay the mortgage anymore so he sold it?
| It's a bit shocking how tone deaf the the Instagram posts are
| though. Not really excusable when you're totally ghosting your
| company.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Again, how the CEO manages thier personal finances is really
| no concern and irrelevant to the conversation as long as
| there was nothing improper with the company's payment
| arrangement with the CEO.
|
| It really sounds like this CEO just checked out. Sounds like
| the board should have stepped in and either replaced him for
| being an ineffective steward of the company. Which just goes
| to show that the CEO has fault, but there are others that
| were asleep at the wheel as well.
| ealexhudson wrote:
| But he wasn't just CEO; he was founder and probably still a
| significant stock holder. While all the shareholders bear
| some culpability, either:
|
| a. having enough capital in the business to pay severance,
| or, b. firing people at the point before they stopped being
| able to avoid severance.
|
| ... are both better options than he should have taken.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Severance, in the US, is not a given and is not a
| mandated thing. If a company is in financial distress,
| why does it seem that money to pay severance is magically
| available when they don't have the money to pay wages?
| Are you suggesting the writing on the wall should have
| been seen earlier so that they could have made the
| decision to dismiss the employees while the bank account
| was flush enough to cover severance?
| cratermoon wrote:
| Except the reason the CEO got rich enough to afford a
| mansion and a boat is because he accumulated for his
| personal use the value created by his employees. That alone
| is reason to ask, "is this really fair?"
| dylan604 wrote:
| Fair? It's a corporation. CEOs get paid significantly
| more than employees. It is a fact of life. You do not
| have to continue employement at a company if you think
| the pay scale is not fair. Good luck finding a job where
| you think things are fair. When you do find that job,
| please, make a Show HN so that others might be able to
| leave their unfair situations.
| [deleted]
| billyhoffman wrote:
| CEOs of publicly traded companies, where a significant
| chunk of their compensation is stock which can be sold on
| an open market, sure but not all CEOs.
|
| In my entire career the highest paid people in a private
| company (including multiple high growth B2B startups) has
| always been the top sales people. Not the sales manager,
| not the CEO, an individual contributor Sales person. As
| you hit more and more above quota, accelerators kick in
| where you commission percentage increases massively. And
| our CEO loves writing them those checks because good
| sales people way more than pay for themselves.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I guess if you assume the structure and systems of 21st
| century capitalism are "a fact of life", like breathing
| and reproduction, you could make the argument that it's
| OK.
| itake wrote:
| Do you have a source saying his $1.8m mansion (his
| purchase price) was from the value created by his
| employees? $1.8m homes are certainly expensive, but
| clearly the board approved his salary and they were the
| ones primarily funding it, not the employees.
|
| The boat may of been bought from the appreciation of the
| home.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Do you have a source?
|
| I mean.. that's capitalism? Capital accumulation is the
| bedrock of the system.
| wreath wrote:
| Some people have a child level understanding of how business is
| ran and financed and then you read such shit.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| You're factually correct, but one of the CEO's functions is
| maintaining morale amongst employees by at least appearing to
| exercise inspiring leadership. I don't know enough about the
| company to blame Carson for its failure, but optics matter in
| his role.
| jjcon wrote:
| On the other hand morale will never be good among people who
| see an ig post of a selfie during a tropical storm and try to
| spin it as:
|
| > Carson enjoys a climate-related disaster
|
| These people will never experience happiness and high morale
| Lightbody wrote:
| Meh. I'm pretty annoyed about over-the-top wokeness too,
| but this was shit management. It is understandable that
| people would be furious and thus inclined to amplify every
| slight.
| bendbro wrote:
| They hated jjcon because he told the truth.
| dylan604 wrote:
| forgive for not being cool and hip, but what's a jjcon?
| dylan604 wrote:
| yeah, so he's a bad boss. that in and of itself is not a
| crime.
|
| I get it. People are pissed off about not having a job and
| the no severance is just salt in the wound. Lashing out at
| the CEO is obvious and justifiable. Stretching that ire into
| the CEOs personal finance is not serving the cause in a
| meaningful way. Absolutely, bitch&moan about his Insta posts.
| Bitch&moan about the fact the CEO wasn't willing to sacrifice
| some salary as a gesture to offset. Lots of examples of how
| badly this CEO handled this. Definitely will not look good in
| his future CEO job interviews.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| It absolutely is. When your boss asks for overtime and
| weekends to support the company in a startup culture, they
| take the most valuable thing any of us has. The exchange is
| about more than money and time: they are also expected to
| pour their time and effort into this one idea with similar,
| if not equal, sacrifices. They sink or swim with you.
|
| This putz was too cowardly to lead honestly, and too
| incompetent to get a deal done to protect the livelihood of
| his team. If he knew he was checked out, he could have
| explored restructuring and letting the team buy in, maybe
| allowed them to reach out to their network and replace him.
| Instead all those hours of effort were reduced to nothing
| while he ran away from his responsibilities.
|
| Fuck people like that, and fuck their boats and their
| Instagram feeds. They steal time away from our families for
| no benefit to us our society at large.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Exactly. Well put.
|
| If you as a CEO feel burnt out etc and can't be bothered
| anymore to run the company and can't find a buyer, but
| the folks who joined your company are still invested
| because they believe in the vision, then let them buy the
| company from you. I'm sure some arrangement could have
| been made, even if you're not getting the millions you
| were expecting.
|
| At least you'd protect your personal brand when you go
| and do your next venture.
|
| But the way Ryan handled this is really poor - especially
| those sailing boat shots, while his employees had to
| worry about finding the next job.
|
| Poor leadership and he totally burnt his personal brand
| imo.
|
| Edit: typos / clarity
| dccoolgai wrote:
| No one said anything about criminal liability: this is just
| about being a scumbag. A CEO is a receptacle of trust: they
| get to see things rank-and-file don't get to see.
| Leveraging that information asymmetry to profit at the risk
| of people who put just as much (in a lot of cases more)
| effort and skill into the success of the company as you do
| may not make you a criminal in a legal system that has
| decided a few decades ago to commit civilization suicide by
| grinding away labor protections, but it sure does make you
| a scumbag.
|
| Live in modest house and give the people who sacrificed for
| you like a week of severance or something. Anything.
| dylan604 wrote:
| apologies for introducing a new phrase into an emotional
| conversation. I didn't mean "is not a crime" in the
| literal sense of the word. It's just a phrase used to
| mean things other than criminal activity are causing
| someone to receive attention like this.
| _jal wrote:
| What it clearly demonstrates is that the CEO was far less
| invested in the company than those who worked for him.
|
| What the attempts at building a norm along the lines of,
| "It isn't a crime, so people shouldn't talk about his
| finances" is about attempting to keep people from noticing
| that is almost always the case. It is class-defense, and
| what won't look good in future CEO interviews is that he
| was gauche-enough to draw attention to the difference
| between incentives-in-theory and the real world.
| zacharycohn wrote:
| It's not just about him spending money. It's about him
| clearly not doing everything he can to fix the situation.
|
| When you're buying a boat and spending all your time
| sailing as you are supposed to be putting together a deal
| to save the company, and then that deal falls through,
| people are going to wonder if maybe there was more you
| could have done if you hadn't been buying boats and
| playing.
| thih9 wrote:
| The "doing everything [you] can to fix the situation"
| won't work if the other party isn't interested. For all
| we know, this may have been the case. And there are many
| valid reasons for someone to focus on their personal
| life. My point is, we don't have the full picture.
| wonnage wrote:
| I don't understand, why are you so eager to nitpick the
| exact manner in which some anonymous Treehouse employee
| gets to critique his fucking asshole of a CEO?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because it cheapens the argument. Complain all you want
| on the fact you have an absentee CEO where the employees
| are struggling with the decisions that were made while
| said CEO is galavanting around. Absolutely, complain
| away. The CEO does not owe the company money to fund
| severance packages. To comment about that is just
| lowering the signal to noise ratio.
| machinerychorus wrote:
| because it's a perfect symbol of the breakdown our society is
| experiencing. His life is completely unaffected by the failure
| of his company, while the employees who were passionate about
| the mission are left with nothing.
| jjcon wrote:
| From what I can tell the company didn't fail, just downsized.
| That's mundane, not 'a perfect symbol'. Downsized employees
| of tech companies aren't 'left with nothing' they got paid
| for the work they did and will have no difficulty finding a
| new job.
| machinerychorus wrote:
| They downsized 90%! Saying that they haven't failed _yet_
| strikes me as needlessly pedantic.
|
| Yes, employees of a tech startup are probably compensated
| pretty well and have great job prospects. However, their
| wealth is probably negligible compared to the CEO, despite
| them appearing to care much more about their work than the
| CEO does. I understand that most people will say that this
| is fair and the market has determined their worth, but even
| if that's true the people who get the short end will resent
| it and see that they have more to gain by toppling the
| system than by working inside it. Wealth Inequality is an
| existential threat to western capitalist democracy, and if
| it's not rectified it will lead to revolution. If you are
| in favor of our current system and wish to preserve it,
| wealth inequality must be addressed.
| heurisko wrote:
| I found this odd too. The idea of limited liability, is that
| your business can go under, without it taking your personal
| finances with you.
|
| > pay severance to his employees?
|
| Isn't severance pay something that should be included in the
| work contract? I don't know how this differs in the US.
| twunde wrote:
| While it can be put into a work contract, its never been in
| any contract of mine (I assume it is in contracts for union
| employees and for some executives). Many states do require
| that companies above a certain number of employees have to
| give notice, usually called WARN acts (and it looks like
| Oregon's requires 60 days notice according to
| https://www.oregon.gov/highered/institutions-
| programs/workfo...). Employees do need to pay out any unpaid
| holiday or sick time (which is why unlimited vacation is bad,
| since you don't get cashed out).
|
| Normally when you get severance, it's in exchange for
| liability from lawsuits and to prevent bad press and sharing
| of trade secrets. What this does is make it much harder to
| sell Treehouse since there's now a fair amount of liability
| attached.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Two things that always seem apparent to me when reading missives
| like this:
|
| 1. It's just my opinion, by I find things like this always
| reflect incredibly poorly on the _author_ , especially since the
| author appears somewhat clueless as to why someone would think it
| would show them in a bad light. It would be one thing if there
| were some egregiously bad behavior (e.g. stories of Adam Neumann
| come to mind, as do the recent articles about Ozy Media
| leadership). But this basically just comes off as a bitch
| session: the CEO is rich, he did a bad job announcing the
| layoffs, we got no severance, etc. etc. When that happens, you
| say "fuck that guy" and move on. Nobody really cares about your
| laundry list of slights.
|
| 2. Now, all that said, I normally only see missives like this
| where leadership tries to build a false emotional bond with
| employees: "We're a mission-driven company, we're changing the
| world, we treat each other like family, yada yada." So some
| (usually less experienced, less jaded employees) take this
| message to heart and truly _do_ form an emotional bond with the
| company, so when business conditions change and there are
| layoffs, they take it incredibly personally. Thus, my point is
| really that leadership only has themselves to blame when they
| cultivate a "we're a big family" vibe and then are surprised
| when people are extra pissed that their "family members" are
| kicking them to the curb.
|
| Just a bit of advice: treat your employment like business,
| because that's what it is. You can work hard and take pride in
| your work, but also understand that you might get cut if the
| business need arises. Getting laid off always sucks, but I think
| it's easier to do if you have a healthy detachment from work.
| peterthehacker wrote:
| > It's just my opinion, by I find things like this always
| reflect incredibly poorly on the author
|
| Ironic considering the comments that follow. Like
|
| > basically just comes off as a bitch session
|
| I do think your points could have merit but you're articulating
| them in a rude way that detracts from your argument.
|
| Yes, the love bombing approach to corporate culture in trendy
| tech startups is a nasty manipulation technique we should all
| watch out for, but we should also have some respect and
| compassion for employees that buy into it and get their hearts
| broken. Should they have known better? Yes. Is this not that
| bad in the grand scheme of things? Probably. But comments like
| this don't help.
|
| Just a bit of (unsolicited) advice: articulate criticism
| respectfully with empathy for the criticized. It will make your
| arguments much more effective.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| In retrospect, I agree, your approach would have been better.
| memonkey wrote:
| It is astounding to read this point of view that people should
| just shut the f** up and be OK with being treated like shit
| because that'S BusiNEss BABY.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| What does the author hope to accomplish from this blog post?
| Congrats, the world now knows he had a CEO who over-promised
| and under-delivered, and who looks to have handled layoffs at
| his company poorly. I mean, get in line.
|
| If the author was actually trying to _do_ something with this
| post (e.g. expose criminal behavior as the recent Ozy Media
| articles have done, or expose a broken, misogynistic culture
| in hope of affecting some change like Susan Fowler 's post on
| Uber did), I could understand. But this just seems to be a
| pissed employee who wants to vent - which I understand, I
| just don't understand what he wishes to accomplish with this
| public bitch list.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Maybe other and/or future CEOs will come across this
| anecdote and learn something and be better more effective
| leaders for having read it.
| nerdawson wrote:
| I'd be frustrated in the author's shoes but far too much
| attention is paid to the CEO's personal finances.
|
| Who knows what he walked away with after he'd sold his house and
| cleared the mortgage. Presumably he needs to buy another house
| afterwards. Either way it doesn't matter in the slightest because
| that's not related to the business. What sense would it make to
| invest personal funds in a failing business? How much of a dent
| would it have even made with 45 full time employees?
| ssijak wrote:
| I'm just a casual observer but I can't help to notice that in one
| screenshot someone was calling this CEO a "white tech dude" and
| how we should make him mad. What's up with that phrase lately,
| started noticing it a bit too often.
|
| Also a person from another screenshot wanted "safe space" in work
| Slack.
| PKop wrote:
| It's political/cultural tribalism and being anti-white is the
| dominant establishment position in US elite circles (tech,
| media, some areas of explicit politics etc).
|
| It is a position that suffers no backlash or threats of job
| loss or cancelling in contrast to anything similar for other
| identity groups. Similar, industry conferences and hiring
| practices etc can even explicitly single out and promote
| favoring other identity groups ("women/minorities who code",
| explicit racial hiring quotas etc) but could never in a million
| years pursue similar efforts for white men.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| More people have been gaining awareness about the lines along
| which inequality occurs, and race is one of them, so that must
| be why you're seeing the phrase more often lately.
|
| As for the employee who was asking for a safe space to gather
| with other employees who are being fired on such short notice
| and without severance, that's a reasonable request.
| yeswecatan wrote:
| There's no denying the inequality that exists in tech. I find
| the "another white dude" comments don't really add much
| though and can even come off as veiled racism.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| I don't see how it doesn't add much--the tweet pointed out
| his race to point out his privilege. Can you explain where
| the veiled racism is in that? Because I'd hate to think
| that we're actually making the CEO the victim here.
| seneca wrote:
| > Can you explain where the veiled racism is in that?
|
| Sure. It implies his success is because of his race. It
| also implies his bad behavior is because of his race.
| Both of these statements ignore his agency and
| individuality, and suggest white people are, as a group,
| poorly behaved and undeserving of the success they work
| for.
|
| Attributing negative stereotypes to people based on group
| characteristics is bigotry, and doing so based on race is
| racism.
|
| Imagine it were attributing his succeed to being jewish,
| or his bad behavior to being black. It should be pretty
| obvious that those would be socially unacceptable. The
| fact that it's currently popular among some groups to
| hate white people doesn't make it any less racist.
| jurassic wrote:
| > But Ryan simply wasn't interested. Student graduations count as
| a negative on his spreadsheet, since graduating students
| typically unsubscribe.
|
| Major yikes on this. I never thought about how online learning
| platforms have this kind of misaligned incentive.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Yeah, this is why for-profit schools are problematic.
| samastur wrote:
| Wait till you hear about schools ;)
|
| Seriously though, this is not a misaligned incentive. Some
| business simply can't realistically be based on a model of
| perpetual customers.
| simonw wrote:
| There's a similar issue with online dating: the better an
| online dating service is at matching people, the higher their
| subscription churn rate.
|
| A customer who had been using an online dating service for many
| years is presumably a great revenue source but a bad experience
| for people they are matched with!
|
| The result of this is that online dating becomes mostly about
| new user acquisition - you've got to keep new people coming in
| to keep the service useful.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's not a charity organization that can run deficit financing.
| If you have fewer and fewer paying users, you have to make
| harsh decisions. They are never easy. How one handles those
| decisions and conversations with the employees that will be
| affected shows the class of the CEO/board. This example shows
| they had none.
| ytwombly wrote:
| How disappointing. It was almost 10 years ago to the day I signed
| up for Treehouse and embarked on my career switch to software
| engineering. I hope they come back from this.
| unobatbayar wrote:
| They definitely have created tremendous amount of value,
| hopefully they do.
| xibalba wrote:
| It is telling that this "Treehouse Insider" declines to take
| credit for their writing, while also maligning this CEOs personal
| life. Also, this picture caption:
|
| > August 25: Carson enjoys a climate-related disaster
| (#hurricanehenri) two days after announcing a severe reduction in
| force
|
| What an absurd, petty reach. As though hurricanes haven't been
| happening since prehistory. The CEO in question may be terrible,
| but this author has lost all credibility in my eyes.
| hackbinary wrote:
| I remember coming across Treehouse a year or two ago. It just
| seemed a bit desperate, and I moved on. I am not surprised they
| are having troubles.
| Borlands wrote:
| Years ago, Treehouse had a refrenshingly easy to grasp, with
| great content, curriculum around web technologies. The tutors
| were super friendly and enthusiastic while retaining a good
| technical level (for the target) - I really praise their
| introductory courses. Shame to hear this, definitely some better
| communication was needed, but IMHO personal life details only
| take the real failures out of focus - business and people
| involved deserved much better out of the whole process.
| unobatbayar wrote:
| Does this mean their contracts had no mention of severance pay?
| How is it possible to not compensate when it's not the employees'
| decision to leave the company?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| In the USA it's quite possible, there's no law saying
| otherwise, it happens all the time.
| Multiplayer wrote:
| Isn't this the company that famously went to a 4 day work week
| years ago?
| jrockway wrote:
| I'm trying to find the part that should outrage me and I'm not
| finding it. Startups fail. You can make up whatever internal
| metrics you want ("graduation rate" "are students happy?") but at
| the end of the day, revenue needs to be greater than expenses. If
| they lose money making students happy, that's a charity, not a
| business. If they structured the organization as a business, then
| that's an existential problem.
|
| I look at startup employees as being very similar to investors;
| instead of investing money, you invest time. Most startup
| investments fail; the investors lose everything. You have to know
| that going in.
|
| Nitpicking the instagram posts also seems pretty petty. We're
| criticizing the CEO for spending time with his family and walking
| around in the rain? People do stuff outside of work, even though
| there's work that they could theoretically be doing. Most people
| consider that healthy, and even CEOs that failed badly still
| deserve some recreational time. (It would be pretty cringey if
| the CEO looked up your Instagram account and posted a blog post
| like "why are you visiting your parents when there's still bugs
| open against your component!", right?)
|
| (I take particular exception to the "Carson enjoys a climate-
| related disaster (#hurricanehenri) two days after announcing a
| severe reduction in force" caption. It's not like he willed the
| hurricane into existence, or could do anything to stop it. Why
| are we mad at him for climate change and random natural
| disasters? The dude is bad at being a CEO, but he's not God!)
| noneeeed wrote:
| Is a company that's been going for 10 years still a startup?
| Perhaps it's just me, but I just wouldn't assume that joining a
| 10 year old company (especially one that had essentially been
| spun out of a another venture, Think Vitamin) was a risky
| venture in the silicon valley startup kind of a way?
|
| But I strongly agree with you on the metrics thing. Sure, all
| those feel-good internal metrics are important, but if your
| subscription business has fewer subscribers this month than
| last then that's _bad news_. Complaining that "keeping the
| company solvent" was the CEO's main focus is a weird thing to
| complain about.
| wonnage wrote:
| Move along then, the blogpost is meant for regular humans who
| might actually feel outraged when their seemingly-stable
| employer (at least through Nov 2022) suddenly decides they
| don't feel like running the company anymore and burns it to the
| ground
| jrockway wrote:
| You have to understand that there is some risk working on
| social causes versus turning the gears of a money machine. If
| there weren't any risk, everyone would be working on online
| learning or curing cancer instead of figuring out how to
| shave off a nanosecond in an automated trading system or
| getting newspaper readers to click one more ad.
|
| I work at a startup, and most of our code is open source.
| That makes the job more enjoyable, but I also realize it
| comes with a risk. Someone could just read the code, take the
| best parts, and sell and market it better than us. That's a
| risk that you just have to live with. And, I can personally
| mitigate some of the risks -- keep my technical skills sharp,
| save money, etc.
|
| I empathize with the people that lost their job; it's a huge
| disruption and their lives will never be the same. But I
| think it's unfair to blame the CEO for climate change because
| he enjoyed going for a walk in the rain. It's not related in
| any way.
| draebek wrote:
| I have to agree with this. On the basis of results, I'm not
| sure that this person was a particularly good CEO or leader,
| but I'm also not sure that I'm qualified to make that judgment.
|
| If you want to be mad about climate change, or economic
| inequality, or the lack of social safety nets in the USA,
| that's reasonable, but I'm not really sure that it's fair to
| pin this on Carson.
| jackconsidine wrote:
| Unrelated to the politics of the company and this post, Treehouse
| was one of the best products I've ever subscribed to. I learned
| how to develop Android Apps via TT as a sophomore in college and
| within a month was working on paid projects. I run a software
| development firm and have had employees use TT to quickly get up
| and running. I haven't had close to this experience with other
| code learning tools.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I have no idea what's going on of course, but I think this is
| exactly what would happen when a normally nice and competent CEO
| of a struggling company goes into a deep burnout.
|
| (Note: i dont know whether Carson was normally nice and
| competent, but this article itself describes Treehouse as a great
| place to work and toxic asshole CEOs don't usually build such
| places. So I'm really just extrapolating from there)
| open-source-ux wrote:
| Treehouse seem primarily skewed toward beginners but I wonder if
| the market for beginner programming and computing content is too
| saturated? Udemy dominates for paid computing-related video
| courses (for beginners) and YouTube covers the free tutorials
| option.
|
| The production quality of the videos at Treehouse is high, but
| the quality of the instruction varies by teacher.
|
| The link below is to a small, but helpful, YouTube channel called
| _Tech Course Review_. It reviews online learning platforms
| (Udemy, Pluralsight, etc) and has an informative review of
| Treehouse from December 2020:
|
| _Treehouse Review 2021: Is Treehouse worth it?_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSuv0QaALZM
| mabbo wrote:
| It sounds as though this guy just got tired of running his
| company, realized he couldn't sell it for the price he wanted and
| decided to just walk away from it.
|
| He could have handed the reigns over to someone else. He could
| have sold for a lower price- there's always someone willing to
| buy if you go low enough. He could have pivoted the company to
| doing something he was more excited about. He could have done
| anything.
|
| But the most important thing he could have done was be
| transparent and open with the people his decisions would impact.
| Being a leader means you stand there and deliver the bad news,
| and take the heat from people mad at you. Dropping a bomb and
| then hiding to avoid the flak for it is a cowardly move.
|
| Adding "Ryan Carson" to the list of leaders I don't want to work
| for in the future.
| spoonjim wrote:
| There isn't always someone to buy a company at any price. That
| is definitely a myth. There are a lot of risks to an
| acquisition (eg sexual harassment, IP litigation, security
| vulnerabilities etc) and if an acquirer doesn't think the
| upside is worth it, then you'd have to pay them to acquire you.
| elliotec wrote:
| > There are a lot of risks to an acquisition (eg sexual
| harassment
|
| How on earth is sexual harassment a risk to an acquisition?
| spoonjim wrote:
| CEO has sexually harassed employees. You acquire the
| company and now the employee sues the company. Which is now
| you.
| rmason wrote:
| When TreeHouse first launched I traded a series of emails with
| Ryan. He seemed to me to be a nice, genuine guy.
|
| He'd already had success as an entrepreneur, he never needed to
| ever work again. Yet he challenged himself to build something
| much bigger that stood a chance to change the world. Sometimes it
| just doesn't work out.
|
| His actions at the end indicate to me that he was just burned
| out. But in my opinion he should have announced the firings
| himself no matter how painful and quit a few months earlier when
| he could have paid severance, no excuse for that.
| beckman466 wrote:
| I wish Treehouse had become a worker owned coop with democratic
| decision making and transparent finances. it could have even
| expanded and allowed others to create courses on it's platform,
| even better if they became a platform coop. I love the modularity
| of TH courses/'tracks'.
| [deleted]
| hugocbp wrote:
| Really sad to read this.
|
| Treehouse was the first online resouce that made programming
| "click" for me almost 10 years ago when I started thinking about
| changing careers.
|
| I absolutely loved their short, fun videos followed by quick
| quizzes and programming challenges. I basically completed
| everything they had for Ruby, Python, JavaScript, HTML and CSS
| back in the day.
|
| Unfortunately they didn't keep up the pace with interesting
| classes, and I would come back after a few years and resubscribe
| to see mostly the same courses, just re-shot.
|
| I was still recommending Treehouse for people completely new to
| programming, though.
|
| It is a dire scenario, but I hope they can bounce back from this.
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| I used TreeHouse in the past, it used to have very good websites
| on web development.
|
| But the CEO always seemed... weird. I remember he appeared
| randomly in one video, seemed obvious he had forced it.
|
| Also looks as though the CEO "removed management" in 2013. As in
| get rid of all the manager roles. Also seems people didn't work
| Fridays (in other words had a 4 day a week).
|
| It would be interesting to me to learn if any of these things
| were the reason for the decline of TreeHouse.
| riffic wrote:
| the flat hierarchy is kind of weird but not completely unheard
| of. W. L. Gore & Associates (makers of Gore-tex) is well known
| for pursuing this sort of org structure and they're not in any
| danger of going out of business.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| That probally kept it going for a while?
| ookblah wrote:
| I think one of the hallmarks of a good leader is good
| communication internally. Can't speculate on what he was going
| through or the validity of said claims, but if he indeed did go
| radio silent in the midst of layoffs... yeah.
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