Thread by @alexandrosM

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.🧵

https://twitter.com/fullydavid/status/1432283853394227204

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.

https://twitter.com/fullydavid/status/1432296887705640963?s=19

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.

https://twitter.com/fullydavid/status/1422765673273516038?s=20