Digg v4. I started at Digg as employee 30 or something close to that. When v4 was being designed I was (among others) very much not supportive of the concept. I did the work they asked of me and about ~4 months before launch I was fired.
Some Digg colleagues reached out asking why I decided to leave… since that is what digg internally announced. This is when I understand a number of others before me were also fired and not just “deciding to pursue other opportunities”.
EDIT: to be clear I don’t fault them for firing me. People not onboard for a decision made by leadership in a startup are fair game to be fired. You need people to believe in the product and I definitely wasn’t a believer.
Anyway I had 60-90days (can’t remember deadline) to exercise my options or let them expire. I decided to let them expire since I thought v4 was a bad direction. Honestly I was very stressed about this decision but I went with my gut. Saved me half a house worth of money.
You could write a memoire with more details in 10-20 years and publish it.
It would be nice who pushed for this, why, didnt they understand that it will be a disaster? Didnt they understand power users?
Even moderation issues, but (as far as I remember) digg was less brigaded politically than what happens nowadays that internet matured (state actor level).
Was digg even a startup at that point? It was a full mature website? Or at least gave such impression.
Maybe the money was "low" - as far as I remember Google wanted to buy it for 90M, but come on, those billion websties were mostly written off, since they are impossible to monetize.
Some Digg colleagues reached out asking why I decided to leave… since that is what digg internally announced. This is when I understand a number of others before me were also fired and not just “deciding to pursue other opportunities”.
EDIT: to be clear I don’t fault them for firing me. People not onboard for a decision made by leadership in a startup are fair game to be fired. You need people to believe in the product and I definitely wasn’t a believer.
Anyway I had 60-90days (can’t remember deadline) to exercise my options or let them expire. I decided to let them expire since I thought v4 was a bad direction. Honestly I was very stressed about this decision but I went with my gut. Saved me half a house worth of money.