We definitely did not fail to get her food, so I think there has been a misunderstanding—it says in the texts below that Alice told Drew not to worry about getting food because I went and got her mashed potatoes. Ben mentioned the mashed potatoes in the main post, but we forgot to mention it again in our comment—which has been updated
The texts involved on 12/15/21:
I also offered to cook the vegan food we had in the house for her.
I think that there’s a big difference between telling everyone “I didn’t get the food I wanted, but they did get/offer to cook me vegan food, and I told them it was ok!” and “they refused to get me vegan food and I barely ate for 2 days”.
Also, re: “because of this professional/personal entanglement”—at this point, Alice was just a friend traveling with us. There were no professional entanglements.
I think that there’s a big difference between telling everyone “I didn’t get the food I wanted, but they did get/offer to cook me vegan food, and I told them it was ok!” and “they refused to get me vegan food and I barely ate for 2 days”.
This also updates me about Kat’s take (as summarized by Ben Pace in the OP):
Kat doesn’t trust Alice to tell the truth, and that Alice has a history of “catastrophic misunderstandings”.
When I read the post, I didn’t see any particular reason for Kat to think this, and I worried it might be just be an attempt to dismiss a critic, given the aggressive way Nonlinear otherwise seems to have responded to criticisms.
With this new info, it now seems plausible to me that Kat was correct (even though I don’t think this justifies threatening Alice or Ben in the way Kat and Emerson did). And if Kat’s not correct, I still update that Kat was probably accurately stating her epistemic state, and that a lot of reasonable people might have reached the same epistemic state.
Yes, that is incorrect. One of many such factual inaccuracies and why we told Ben to give us a week. The exact date is not simple to explain, since she gradually began working with us, but we will clarify ASAP.
Yeah, I mis-wrote there, will update that line in the post (though I say it correctly a few paragraphs later[1]). They traveled together between those dates.
From my perspective it’s fairly ambiguous at what point Alice started “working” for Nonlinear.
On the call with me, Kat said (roughly verbatim) “If you asked each of me/Emerson/Drew at what point Alice became an employee, we’d each give three different answers.” Kat said that her answer was at the end of February when they claim that they started paying Alice $1k/month, and that was when Kat started giving her Nonlinear tasks and negotiated things like vacation time.
Emerson said he didn’t know that was happening and thought he was just giving Alice a gift, and Alice reports after she quit he said he’d never thought of her as an employee.
Alice herself reports that the first conversation she had with Emerson, at EAG, lasting 4 hours, they explicitly discussed working together and salary. She says she walked away from that conversation believing they’d agreed that if she were to work for him, she would need $2.5k-$3k/month in salary to make ends meet, and was generally expecting to eventually work with Nonlinear when they travelled.
So as I say, IMO it’s quite confusing when they started being an employee in different people’s minds, but my current guess would be end-of-February when Kat thinks she started managing her would be a reasonable choice.
Added: In this December 28th comment Kat Woods says that they “are also incubating a promising woman for an as-yet-unspecified charity”, which is Alice. So I think it’s accurate to think of her as in their incubator at least at that point.
Alice joined as the sole person in their incubation program. She moved in with them after meeting Nonlinear at EAG and having a ~4 hour conversation there with Emerson, plus a second Zoom call with Kat. Initially while traveling with them she continued her previous job remotely, but was encouraged to quit and work on an incubated org, and after 2 months she quit her job and started working on projects with Nonlinear.
We definitely did not fail to get her food, so I think there has been a misunderstanding—it says in the texts below that Alice told Drew not to worry about getting food because I went and got her mashed potatoes. Ben mentioned the mashed potatoes in the main post, but we forgot to mention it again in our comment—which has been updated
The texts involved on 12/15/21:
I also offered to cook the vegan food we had in the house for her.
I think that there’s a big difference between telling everyone “I didn’t get the food I wanted, but they did get/offer to cook me vegan food, and I told them it was ok!” and “they refused to get me vegan food and I barely ate for 2 days”.
Also, re: “because of this professional/personal entanglement”—at this point, Alice was just a friend traveling with us. There were no professional entanglements.
Agreed.
This also updates me about Kat’s take (as summarized by Ben Pace in the OP):
When I read the post, I didn’t see any particular reason for Kat to think this, and I worried it might be just be an attempt to dismiss a critic, given the aggressive way Nonlinear otherwise seems to have responded to criticisms.
With this new info, it now seems plausible to me that Kat was correct (even though I don’t think this justifies threatening Alice or Ben in the way Kat and Emerson did). And if Kat’s not correct, I still update that Kat was probably accurately stating her epistemic state, and that a lot of reasonable people might have reached the same epistemic state.
The post says
Is that incorrect? When did Alice start working for Nonlinear?
Yes, that is incorrect. One of many such factual inaccuracies and why we told Ben to give us a week. The exact date is not simple to explain, since she gradually began working with us, but we will clarify ASAP.
Yeah, I mis-wrote there, will update that line in the post (though I say it correctly a few paragraphs later[1]). They traveled together between those dates.
From my perspective it’s fairly ambiguous at what point Alice started “working” for Nonlinear.
On the call with me, Kat said (roughly verbatim) “If you asked each of me/Emerson/Drew at what point Alice became an employee, we’d each give three different answers.” Kat said that her answer was at the end of February when they claim that they started paying Alice $1k/month, and that was when Kat started giving her Nonlinear tasks and negotiated things like vacation time.
Emerson said he didn’t know that was happening and thought he was just giving Alice a gift, and Alice reports after she quit he said he’d never thought of her as an employee.
Alice herself reports that the first conversation she had with Emerson, at EAG, lasting 4 hours, they explicitly discussed working together and salary. She says she walked away from that conversation believing they’d agreed that if she were to work for him, she would need $2.5k-$3k/month in salary to make ends meet, and was generally expecting to eventually work with Nonlinear when they travelled.
So as I say, IMO it’s quite confusing when they started being an employee in different people’s minds, but my current guess would be end-of-February when Kat thinks she started managing her would be a reasonable choice.
Added: In this December 28th comment Kat Woods says that they “are also incubating a promising woman for an as-yet-unspecified charity”, which is Alice. So I think it’s accurate to think of her as in their incubator at least at that point.
I write: