Hi Minh, Appreciate you sharing your views publicly here. I think you’re acting in good faith, and if others engage with this comment I hope they see that as well.
I think it’s very possible the Nonlinear team handled different employees very differently, especially since you started interning with them after Alice and Chloe had left and from Nonlinear’s account, it sounds like they made some changes (e.g. not having employees live and work with them).
Overall, I don’t think I’ve updated my views much as a result of this comment. I won’t cite every example in detail to save time, and won’t have capacity to do write it up publicly but happy to talk about it off the Forum, but here’s a quick overview of why I haven’t:
1) Most of the points you comment on here seem to be your interpretation of the accounts of the post. It seems like you don’t necessarily have a unique perspective on at least the first point, and overall I don’t agree with the conclusions you draw based on the evidence provided in the original post (e.g. the point about intimidation and Emerson)
I don’t think you are always engaging with all the context of the post (e.g. I think more so than talking about tactics, Emerson’s dealings with Adorian Deck seemed unnecessarily aggressive and doesn’t seem to be defensive in nature.) I don’t think this is intentional, but I think it could be helpful to engage with the substance of the points.
2) For pieces that you do have your own experiences to draw from, I think your situation was materially different from that of Alice and Chloe - namely, as I understand it you were not co-living and co-working for an extended period with the Nonlinear team, and your scope of work was different (e.g. I expect that house ops was not a part of your internship duties. I think most of the negative dynamics described resulted from the environment. I think it’s a fairly common occurrence that same thing in different contexts can have a very different meaning & consequences (e.g. the safety net point—which you also mentioned was insensitive—or the short deadlines).
It’s possible I could change some of the above views it in light of new evidence.
Oh yeah, don’t take this as a direct refutation of Alice/Chloe’s accounts. I definitely agree that the context was different. If the claims are true, then yeah, that sounds really bad.
Re: Core Claims
For the “core claims”. I have a personal opinion that these claims started from unfortunate, honest misunderstanding, and were substantively exaggerated. But those claims are specific and very sensitive. Clearly, at least one party involved is misleading people. So I’ll let Kat/Emerson represent themselves with whatever evidence they showed me.
Re: Patterns of behaviour
I’m addressing parts of the post that cite other concerning behaviour. Maybe it’s unintentional, but this post references a lot of extra details that make the core claims feel much more believable as a pattern of behaviour. If this post was just about “Nonlinear abused this specific employee in this specific context”, that’s one thing. But this post says “Nonlinear abused employees, and they openly brag about how cutthroat/exploitative they are, and they tell employees their problems and time and personal life don’t really matter”. Hell, I’d be convinced.
Also, … I’m disagreeing with this conclusion on a personal level, as the hypothetical person described in this strongly-worded appeal:
I expect that if Nonlinear does more hiring in the EA ecosystem it is more-likely-than-not to chew up and spit out other bright-eyed young EAs who want to do good in the world. I relatedly think that the EA ecosystem doesn’t have reliable defenses against such predators. These are not the first, nor sadly the last, bright-eyed well-intentioned people who I expect to be taken advantage of and hurt in the EA/x-risk/AI safety ecosystem, as a result of falsely trusting high-status people at EA events to be people who will treat them honorably.
Obviously, small sample size, but I’m already 50% of the pool of people this statement applies to.
Re: Adorian Deck
Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me that Deck was worth addressing. I did a quick read of the post+public linked sources, and came to the conclusion that Deck was supposed to co-manage the account (as stated in the contract), became inactive managing it and regretted it afterwards when it became successful. It’s incredibly common, almost expected, for young content creators who go viral to become inexplicably inactive and neglect obligations, as I’ve already experienced multiple times in my generative AI venture. It happens like … 70-90% of the time you sign such deals.
Yes, maybe Emerson’s account is entirely fabricated, but I find it easier to believe that this is a very common dispute, and not “behaviour that’s like 7 standard deviations away from usual norms in this area”. I mean, mathematically, believing someone is behaving many standard deviations outside the norm is a bit harder than believing a teenager lost interest in maintaining their viral account, which happens most of the time.[1]
I can elaborate, and even cite personal examples. But point is: it’s really common in industries that work closely with content creators/affiliates, which is why it didn’t register as a red flag for me.
In any case, Emerson directly refutes he sent stalkers. This claim sounds really hard to prove/disprove given the information presented, so I … didn’t want to go down that weird rabbit hole.
Edit on Dec 26 2023: not sure it’s worth people freaking this given the new nonlinear updates. I think it makes the below comment outdated. I don’t think I would still endorse the specific claims in this comment if i came back to it.
Re patterns of behaviors—I believe I still disagree here. The way I’d summarize it (poorly) is something like: “Nonlinear have a history of negative behavior towards employees, they have continued to demonstrate some negative behaviors, and have not acknowledged that some of their behavior was harmful to others” (edited)
What I think constitutes a “pattern”:
Two employees had multiple negative experiences across a range of scenarios (e.g. financial, psychological/social, legal) over the course of 7 months.
I think they have demonstrated a consistent pattern with at the very least intimidation tactics (re their email to Ben about this post).
Based on their responses of events (over a year later), it seems like Nonlinear team does not believe they have done any wrong. For many actions which they admit to doing (e.g. the driving or drugs incidents) seem like pretty clear red flags, they don’t see anything wrong with that behavior.
Edit: I no longer endorse the first sentence this based on Violet’s comment below, and agree with her overall take here. I would be keen to see what aspects the Nonlinear team believe to be mistakes and what changes they made.
I think the above is still consistent with current/future employees having a much more positive experience though, since as I said I think a lot of the problems were caused by the environment / co-living situation.
I do think it’s strange / unfortunate that Ben didn’t interview you given how the conclusion is stated. I still agree with the end-line conclusion though, I think it’s possible there could still be situations where others could have negative experiences.
Re Adorian Deck—I hadn’t read much about the Adorian Deck incident, based on what your summary I think it does sound less bad than I would have initially thought. I also think that including that quote about standard deviation seems a bit extreme.
Kat explicitly acknowledges at the end of this comment that “[they] made some mistakes … learned from them and set up ways to prevent them”, so it feels a bit unfair to say that that Non-Linear as a whole hasn’t acknowledged any wrongdoing.
OTOH, Ben’s testimony here in response to Emerson is a bit concerning, and supports your point more strongly.[1] It’s also one of the remarks I’m most curious to hear Emerson respond to. I’ll quote Ben in full because I don’t think this comment is on the EA Forum.
I did hear your [Emerson’s?] side for 3 hours and you changed my mind very little and admitted to a bunch of the dynamics (“our intention wasn’t just to have employees, but also to have members of our family unit”) and you said my summary was pretty good. You mostly laughed at every single accusation I brought up and IMO took nothing morally seriously and the only ex ante mistake you admitted to was “not firing Alice earlier”. You didn’t seem to understand the gravity of my accusations, or at least had no space for honestly considering that you’d seriously hurt and intimidated some people.
I think I would have been much more sympathetic to you if you had told me that you’d been actively letting people know about how terrible an experience your former employees had, and had encouraged people to speak with them, and if you at literally any point had explicitly considered the notion that you were morally culpable for their experiences.
This is only Ben’s testimony, so take that for what it’s worth. But this context feels important, because (at least just speaking personally) genuine acknowledgment and remorse for any wrongdoing feels pretty crucial for my overall evaluation of Non-Linear going forward.
I also sympathize with the general vibe of your remark, and the threats to sue contribute to the impression of going on the defensive rather than admitting fault.
I think given what you know, your level of skepticism is reasonable here.
I mean, obviously, I’m disagreeing based on my subjective experience/knowledge. But these are reasonable concerns for an outside observer to have. My take is that how unreasonable this level of defensiveness is, would vary based on how true the actual claims are. If they’re say, 80% false, vs 80% true.
And honestly, even the most charitable interpretation states that Nonlinear team really dropped the ball on communicating to employees and frequently says a lot of weird, shady stuff. So I’m not gonna pretend like Nonlinear does nothing wrong, just because they’re “my team”.
I mean, for all I know, there’s 2 parties each claiming the other maintains a complex web of deception and lies, and I might be believing the wrong one 🤔
Hi Minh, Appreciate you sharing your views publicly here. I think you’re acting in good faith, and if others engage with this comment I hope they see that as well.
I think it’s very possible the Nonlinear team handled different employees very differently, especially since you started interning with them after Alice and Chloe had left and from Nonlinear’s account, it sounds like they made some changes (e.g. not having employees live and work with them).
Overall, I don’t think I’ve updated my views much as a result of this comment. I won’t cite every example in detail to save time, and won’t have capacity to do write it up publicly but happy to talk about it off the Forum, but here’s a quick overview of why I haven’t:
1) Most of the points you comment on here seem to be your interpretation of the accounts of the post. It seems like you don’t necessarily have a unique perspective on at least the first point, and overall I don’t agree with the conclusions you draw based on the evidence provided in the original post (e.g. the point about intimidation and Emerson)
I don’t think you are always engaging with all the context of the post (e.g. I think more so than talking about tactics, Emerson’s dealings with Adorian Deck seemed unnecessarily aggressive and doesn’t seem to be defensive in nature.) I don’t think this is intentional, but I think it could be helpful to engage with the substance of the points.
2) For pieces that you do have your own experiences to draw from, I think your situation was materially different from that of Alice and Chloe - namely, as I understand it you were not co-living and co-working for an extended period with the Nonlinear team, and your scope of work was different (e.g. I expect that house ops was not a part of your internship duties. I think most of the negative dynamics described resulted from the environment. I think it’s a fairly common occurrence that same thing in different contexts can have a very different meaning & consequences (e.g. the safety net point—which you also mentioned was insensitive—or the short deadlines).
It’s possible I could change some of the above views it in light of new evidence.
Oh yeah, don’t take this as a direct refutation of Alice/Chloe’s accounts. I definitely agree that the context was different. If the claims are true, then yeah, that sounds really bad.
Re: Core Claims
For the “core claims”. I have a personal opinion that these claims started from unfortunate, honest misunderstanding, and were substantively exaggerated. But those claims are specific and very sensitive. Clearly, at least one party involved is misleading people. So I’ll let Kat/Emerson represent themselves with whatever evidence they showed me.
Re: Patterns of behaviour
I’m addressing parts of the post that cite other concerning behaviour. Maybe it’s unintentional, but this post references a lot of extra details that make the core claims feel much more believable as a pattern of behaviour. If this post was just about “Nonlinear abused this specific employee in this specific context”, that’s one thing. But this post says “Nonlinear abused employees, and they openly brag about how cutthroat/exploitative they are, and they tell employees their problems and time and personal life don’t really matter”. Hell, I’d be convinced.
Also, … I’m disagreeing with this conclusion on a personal level, as the hypothetical person described in this strongly-worded appeal:
Obviously, small sample size, but I’m already 50% of the pool of people this statement applies to.
Re: Adorian Deck
Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me that Deck was worth addressing. I did a quick read of the post+public linked sources, and came to the conclusion that Deck was supposed to co-manage the account (as stated in the contract), became inactive managing it and regretted it afterwards when it became successful. It’s incredibly common, almost expected, for young content creators who go viral to become inexplicably inactive and neglect obligations, as I’ve already experienced multiple times in my generative AI venture. It happens like … 70-90% of the time you sign such deals.
Yes, maybe Emerson’s account is entirely fabricated, but I find it easier to believe that this is a very common dispute, and not “behaviour that’s like 7 standard deviations away from usual norms in this area”. I mean, mathematically, believing someone is behaving many standard deviations outside the norm is a bit harder than believing a teenager lost interest in maintaining their viral account, which happens most of the time.[1]
I can elaborate, and even cite personal examples. But point is: it’s really common in industries that work closely with content creators/affiliates, which is why it didn’t register as a red flag for me.
In any case, Emerson directly refutes he sent stalkers. This claim sounds really hard to prove/disprove given the information presented, so I … didn’t want to go down that weird rabbit hole.
Edit on Dec 26 2023: not sure it’s worth people freaking this given the new nonlinear updates. I think it makes the below comment outdated. I don’t think I would still endorse the specific claims in this comment if i came back to it.
Re patterns of behaviors—I believe I still disagree here. The way I’d summarize it (poorly) is something like: “Nonlinear have a history of negative behavior towards employees, they have continued to demonstrate some negative behaviors, and have not acknowledged that some of their behavior was harmful to others” (edited)
What I think constitutes a “pattern”:
Two employees had multiple negative experiences across a range of scenarios (e.g. financial, psychological/social, legal) over the course of 7 months.
I think they have demonstrated a consistent pattern with at the very least intimidation tactics (re their email to Ben about this post).
Based on their responses of events (over a year later), it seems like Nonlinear team does not believe they have done any wrong.For many actions which they admit to doing (e.g. the driving or drugs incidents) seem like pretty clear red flags, they don’t see anything wrong with that behavior.Edit: I no longer endorse the first sentence this based on Violet’s comment below, and agree with her overall take here. I would be keen to see what aspects the Nonlinear team believe to be mistakes and what changes they made.
For the second sentence, I still endorse it based on Nonlinear’s interview with Ben
I think the above is still consistent with current/future employees having a much more positive experience though, since as I said I think a lot of the problems were caused by the environment / co-living situation.
I do think it’s strange / unfortunate that Ben didn’t interview you given how the conclusion is stated. I still agree with the end-line conclusion though, I think it’s possible there could still be situations where others could have negative experiences.
Re Adorian Deck—I hadn’t read much about the Adorian Deck incident, based on what your summary I think it does sound less bad than I would have initially thought. I also think that including that quote about standard deviation seems a bit extreme.
I don’t quite agree with your summary.
Kat explicitly acknowledges at the end of this comment that “[they] made some mistakes … learned from them and set up ways to prevent them”, so it feels a bit unfair to say that that Non-Linear as a whole hasn’t acknowledged any wrongdoing.
OTOH, Ben’s testimony here in response to Emerson is a bit concerning, and supports your point more strongly.[1] It’s also one of the remarks I’m most curious to hear Emerson respond to. I’ll quote Ben in full because I don’t think this comment is on the EA Forum.
This is only Ben’s testimony, so take that for what it’s worth. But this context feels important, because (at least just speaking personally) genuine acknowledgment and remorse for any wrongdoing feels pretty crucial for my overall evaluation of Non-Linear going forward.
I also sympathize with the general vibe of your remark, and the threats to sue contribute to the impression of going on the defensive rather than admitting fault.
That’s fair point regarding Kat’s comment—I would be curious to know what kind of changes they made.
I hadn’t seen the testimony re Ben so thanks for sharing that, would definitely like to see response / engagement on this point from Emerson as well.
I think given what you know, your level of skepticism is reasonable here.
I mean, obviously, I’m disagreeing based on my subjective experience/knowledge. But these are reasonable concerns for an outside observer to have. My take is that how unreasonable this level of defensiveness is, would vary based on how true the actual claims are. If they’re say, 80% false, vs 80% true.
And honestly, even the most charitable interpretation states that Nonlinear team really dropped the ball on communicating to employees and frequently says a lot of weird, shady stuff. So I’m not gonna pretend like Nonlinear does nothing wrong, just because they’re “my team”.
I mean, for all I know, there’s 2 parties each claiming the other maintains a complex web of deception and lies, and I might be believing the wrong one 🤔
Guess we’ll find out.
Yeah, I hope we will! Thanks for engaging with me in a productive and open way, this conversation has been helpful.