I 100% agree with you that people should be allowed to enter mutually beneficial trades, even when those same trades would be terrible for most people if they entered them. This is really important; there are so many important things we can’t accomplish if every job needs to be safe for the lowest common denominator. And “allowed” includes “allowed to be imperfect at identifying who is a good fit, which means some people will get hurt”. I think the burden on people is somewhat higher when they’re deliberately recruiting people with less life experience, but you still can’t expect perfection.
My guess is Chloe and Alice were unusually fragile, and unusually bad at leaving (and I believed this before Kat’s post). You should expect that almost everywhere, regardless of quality: the people having the worst time are the ones who are unusually sensitive and unusually bad at exiting situations they don’t like. But it seems pretty inevitable that Nonlinear’s recruiting strategy at the time would attract these types (to their credit, they seem to have realized they can’t get the risk acceptably low, and stopped that recruiting).
Why do I think they were near-destined to recruit people like Alice and Chloe?
If you don’t value travel, the job paid poorly (in money). Valuing travel isn’t that weird, but even if you do your tastes are unlikely to perfectly overlap with the core Nonlinear team, so apply some discount for that. This attracts people with little work experience, who will be worse at advocating for themselves.
The job additionally paid in mentoring and social access. Mentoring can be immensely valuable, easily worth giving up tens of thousands of dollars… but if you feature it that prominently, you’re going to attract people who value it more, and a disproportionate number of those are inexperienced, emotionally adrift, or oversensitive to authority figures.
Similarly, there are a small number of people for whom social access can be extremely valuable, and giving up money to get it is a great trade. But it also attracts people looking for social validation, who are going to be more vulnerable.
So dismissing the complaints because Alice and Chloe were “too sensitive” feels a bit like bringing a canary into your coal mine and then dismissing its death. You’re right that the canary is more sensitive than people, but there is still a problem.
100% agree that there are some very bad incentives at play to make it very likely that people who aren’t good fits join this type of arrangement and I agree that Nonlinear shouldn’t be “let off the hook” so to speak. I think there should have been some precautionary things in place from the get go. Lots more things
I 100% agree with you that people should be allowed to enter mutually beneficial trades, even when those same trades would be terrible for most people if they entered them. This is really important; there are so many important things we can’t accomplish if every job needs to be safe for the lowest common denominator. And “allowed” includes “allowed to be imperfect at identifying who is a good fit, which means some people will get hurt”. I think the burden on people is somewhat higher when they’re deliberately recruiting people with less life experience, but you still can’t expect perfection.
My guess is Chloe and Alice were unusually fragile, and unusually bad at leaving (and I believed this before Kat’s post). You should expect that almost everywhere, regardless of quality: the people having the worst time are the ones who are unusually sensitive and unusually bad at exiting situations they don’t like. But it seems pretty inevitable that Nonlinear’s recruiting strategy at the time would attract these types (to their credit, they seem to have realized they can’t get the risk acceptably low, and stopped that recruiting).
Why do I think they were near-destined to recruit people like Alice and Chloe?
If you don’t value travel, the job paid poorly (in money). Valuing travel isn’t that weird, but even if you do your tastes are unlikely to perfectly overlap with the core Nonlinear team, so apply some discount for that. This attracts people with little work experience, who will be worse at advocating for themselves.
The job additionally paid in mentoring and social access. Mentoring can be immensely valuable, easily worth giving up tens of thousands of dollars… but if you feature it that prominently, you’re going to attract people who value it more, and a disproportionate number of those are inexperienced, emotionally adrift, or oversensitive to authority figures.
Similarly, there are a small number of people for whom social access can be extremely valuable, and giving up money to get it is a great trade. But it also attracts people looking for social validation, who are going to be more vulnerable.
So dismissing the complaints because Alice and Chloe were “too sensitive” feels a bit like bringing a canary into your coal mine and then dismissing its death. You’re right that the canary is more sensitive than people, but there is still a problem.
100% agree that there are some very bad incentives at play to make it very likely that people who aren’t good fits join this type of arrangement and I agree that Nonlinear shouldn’t be “let off the hook” so to speak. I think there should have been some precautionary things in place from the get go. Lots more things