I want to address this head on, because this sort of nasty attack has been threatened for a while by this "sensemaker" and he seems to have finally decided to cross the line, attacking my work.

I've been running a company for almost 10 years and seen it through lows and highs.🧵
We've intentionally decided to follow a non-standard approach to building our organization, which I will share more on soon. As the glassdoor reviews show, the responses are bimodal. People love working at balena or they don't.
We've since learned to better explain our culture in the hiring process, to prevent bad experiences on both sides. We now know people looking for a traditional career ladder and structure will most likely not be happy at balena, and now make this clear early.
At the same time, the criticisms are not that we stole, lied, or misled in any way. They're mostly differences of opinion on management style. I've always been clear about my approach to decision making inside balena: Strong opinions, weakly held.
Especially with regards to compromise for the sake of peace, it's something I never allow myself, despite the short-term benefits of appearing "nice". I expect of the balena team to act with consistency and clarity, and they demand it from me also. alexandros.balena.io/against-compro…
This does mean I have to make clear statements about what is the way forward, and not everyone loves that. Sadly, for a startup in an inhospitable environment, we don't have the luxury of making everyone happy.
I don't generally like to list accomplishments, but for context, IoT/Edge is an incredibly lethal environment for startups and large corporations alike. Google has exited the space twice, as have Intel, GE, Samsung, and literally hundreds of startups. Balena survives and thrives.
And to me, this is what leadership looks like. Being there to absorb the negative energy, if it means shielding the team so they can make progress. Balena has been my proudest accomplishment, and for this I will never apologize.
Is it without error? Absolutely not. We've made more mistakes than I care to count, for which I hold myself responsible, and so far we recovered from all of them. Any startup founder will tell you that this is the most important skill.
Our plan, as we build balena towards being a #gameb company is for my special role to fade over time, as it has been. However, until we get there, my role is to keep things going in the right direction, always taking feedback from the team.
I don't think most realize what it takes to keep a ~100 people team operating through a pandemic, in dozens of countries and in every continent, not having seen each other for almost two years, and for new hires, never. It requires consistency, and you can't make everyone happy.
And, if balena sounds like the place for you, remember, we're always hiring! Balena.io/jobs
And if anyone was uncertain whether this kind of attack is coming my way because I've been saying uncomfortable truths on unrelated matters, Mr Fuller says it clearly enough.
I'd been publicly threatened something like this would come, and someone with something to hide would've backed down. At least now it's clear that speaking out like this is not just unprofitable, but costly. However, making sense of all this matters more.

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More from @alexandrosM

15 Sep
Wait till they hear Darwin write the "Origin of the Species" without getting a PhD first.
I even heard he did his own research. Why did he hate science?
It didn't even get peer reviewed. Basically a preprint.
Read 4 tweets
15 Sep
The paper in the Lancet by the ex-FDA official had a fascinating figure in it. The reason it's fascinating is that it showed how vicious Gamma really is (chart B).
The reason this is of interest is that the TOGETHER trial took place in Brazil, during a period of very high prevalence of the Gamma variant. bmj.com/content/374/bm…
As such, attempting to compare results from that trial, with other studies elsewhere is bound to show worse results. Vaccines show 10-20% worse performance against gamma than alpha.
Read 10 tweets
14 Sep
Did Robert Malone invent mRNA vaccines?

This🧵will answer from first principles, a question that comes up surprisingly often in pandemic-related conversations.

As always, I'll give you the primary sources and my reasoning so you can take my answer apart and put yours together.
First, a caveat: You may have noticed that me and Dr. Malone have shared good words for each other. All that was *after* my original investigation thread that this one will polish and complete. Regardless, the case made should not require you to trust me.
We'll be focusing on the claim as seen on Dr Malone's Twitter profile: "Inventor of mRNA vaccines". To get there, first we need to define what it means to invent something. After all, battles over who the "real" inventor of something is have some times carried on for decades.
Read 58 tweets
13 Sep
This reads far fetched but I've come to believe it points to an uncomfortable truth. There are two mindsets for the future of humanity: one where we rely on control systems to keep things "stable", and one where we rely on enablement systems to do what life does: grow and grow.
The "control" mindset is not just in communism, and it's not just in sustainability circles. Many of the world's top capitalists espouse it as well. It starts from a lack of faith in humanity. The problem? It creates zero-sum games, which bring out the worst in humanity.
When Eric Weinstein talks about the "embedded growth obligation" baked into "the system", I think he misunderstands where it comes from. The obligation to grow is fundamental to life. No species has fought it and remained alive. Chesterton's fence suggests we shouldn't either.
Read 14 tweets
13 Sep
This sounds.. like a big deal. Any native speakers who can confirm context and translation?
Content is in doubt as per the response below. Probably best to get an uncut recording before further conclusions.
See whole translation from @NoSpoon11 below. Also gives further insight into possible rationale.
Read 4 tweets
12 Sep
The responsibility for the expert conversation being had in public is solely with the godfather figures of "The Science" who have shut down any opposing voice within academia. We trusted them, they failed us, it's over. Public conversation is the only trustworthy conversation.
No discussion of responsibility of any expert having public conversation can begin before total condemnation of those who shat on the hard won commons, forged fake consensus, and then have the gall to lecture about appropriate messaging.
And it's not like their curated, top down, fully taxpayer funded, expert seal of approval sensemaking is much better.
Read 4 tweets

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