thowaway999

i apologize if i offended you or anyone else. the mention of "brazilian" is a relevant as a secondary detail. there was a group of problem engineers who were ring led. that group was brazilian. that they were latin american or brazilian is unimportant but a significant identifier of the social group. if they were there when you were you would know exactly who. otherwise it may have been confusing. prejudice is not at play. i was pointing out an organic association.

as i said they don't bear sole responsibility but rather signified the problem for the impunity of being able to break the no asshole rule. other immature apples spoiled the basket as well. plenty of innocent people suffered. none deserved that. burnout is evil. i hope we have all learned our lessons and become better people.

ding ding ding. we have a winner!

when conflict cannot be meaningfully reconciled the whole system tumbles apart.

fwiw my critique focuses less on specific disagreements but the overall culture. i personally observed more innocent people eaten by this angry machine than necessary. that machine can't be the sole reason the company finds itself in this position today but friction from discord can't help an already uphill battle.

lesson number one: the no asshole rule is inviolable.

I did my best to behave professionally every day of the job and help those around me. This is to say act better than the fray. Doing so for so long led to cognitive dissonance and personal burnout. My resignation was promptly tendered when I realized the burnout became so severe that I couldn't hold back from dispensing the most restrained of zinger, which was nothing compared to what was happening around me.

If I sound angry, it was because I sacrificed a lot of time, energy, and giving up a good life I had in other city for taking the job. Worse was realizing how much of a lost opportunity all of it was. We could have achieved more had we more trust and decency.

If you're looking for examples, consider scouring the annals of the web for "shit Soundclouders say" - a Tumblr feed of leaked statements from our colleagues. I don't know who put that together, but it certainly didn't help the trust or maturity aspects of day to day work. To give an example of the shit posted on their, English was a second language for the majority of us at the company. There was a fair bit of mockery for peculiarities about how people wrote in their second tongue - among memorable immature tantrums recorded on the Tumblr. Do you see where I am going?

I bear responsibility for not being more persuasive. I tried to get this damn Tumblr deleted but couldn't. Nobody cared - especially because it predated me and them. Everybody accepted that immaturity as a given.

I apologize about calling out the entire Brazilian group by name. That was unfair. Not all of you were bad. I think if you asked folks at large anonymously they would say that their was a whiff of nepotistic networking privilege in whom was hired, why certain immature acts were tolerated from members of the group, and why certain favored outcomes occurred to the Brazilian network disproportionally.

Note that I never used the term "conniving" myself nor called anyone by name. Someone else did, and that is on them.

For me what was most difficult and disappointing was not being able to rally peers or their teams to get the necessary work done. Rather they were too busy sniveling amongst themselves — too jaded from burnout, I suspect. I felt incapable in the role at first until I recognized that it was really a maturity problem that pervaded much of the engineering organization.

I knew it was time to call it quits pretty early when seeing that nailing myself to the cross wouldn't affect change but hung on for two years. I was able to help a few people along the way by shielding them from the bullpen and the drama and giving some good career development opportunities. Let's face it: my peers in the leadership circle were long burned out, and I was quickly becoming so myself.

I have nothing but respect for the founders. They had their work cut out for them. Never asked a whole lot from them but they gave it their sincere all when I did. Maybe a learning opportunity for them would be having someone in their steed who was less conflict averse who could have helped referee the discord.

If anything, I wanted to caution folks to not be under any illusions with respect to SoundCloud's organizational and personnel context and work environment in Berlin. Everybody held it up as a panacea, which it sadly wasn't. Irrational exuberance is dangerous.

I was a director of an engineering department for SoundCloud for a time and left several years ago. Frankly none of this should be surprising: nobody there could figure out a product definition nor a monetization plan. What is more: the engineering organization at SoundCloud at large was completely fractured and suffered from in-fighting. Nobody trusted anyone across organizations. There was no shortage of bullying even. Taking that in mind, SoundCloud's downfall was to be expected. Because of caustic environment even before the financial crunch, they couldn't execute. Blame the incestuous Brazilian boys club there for it (I'm male, by the way); they bullied just about everyone.

As for Berlin, I am sorry to say: I had high-hopes for the tech culture there, but to call it Mickey Mouse would be a charitable statement. It was laden with confused hipsters who couldn't differentiate between language du jour and its monads and delivering a product.

When I applied, the warning signs were strong. Nevertheless I ignored them — to my own peril. Needless to say, I won't make those mistakes again!

Right before I resigned, it was revealed in a private leads meeting that 18 percent of the engineering force had resigned in that given quarter. Was I surprised? Not in the slightest. That knowledge gave me resolve to get out, which I hadn't yet announced.