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WrkRiot Collapses Amongst Allegations of Fraud (qz.com)
HockeyPuck quotes a report from New York Times: This week, WrkRiot, began unraveling in a highly public fashion (Warning: may be paywalled). Its former head of marketing revealed that the start-up had been mired in internal chaos and had sometimes paid employees in cashier's checks before delaying payment... Penny Kim, the former marketing director at WrkRiot, wrote about her experience at the company -- a story that consists of alleged deceptions, including forged wire transfer receipts, late paychecks, and lies from executives. Her entire story can be found in a Medium post titled "I Got Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup." Quartz reports: "Here's the story Kim lays out in her Medium post: In May 2016, after three interviews, she says she accepted the role of marketing director at 1for.one, one of WrkRiot's earlier incarnations. From the beginning, things didn't seem quite right, she says. The CEO, Isaac Choi, hired one of her direct reports without consulting her. A promised $4 million marketing budget never materialized. At investor meetings, the co-founders 'talked about themselves, their connections, and their qualifications for 30 minutes' rather than the product, which they touted as the next 'Credit Karma of LinkedIn.' The software engineering team was largely made up of young Chinese employees relying on visas sponsored by the company to remain in the U.S., Kim says. After repeated inquiring about salaries, Kim alleges, Choi sent forged Wells Fargo wire transfer receipts to 17 employees, and told them that if the money wasn't in their accounts that it was their responsibility to follow up with their banks. Kim ended up filing wage claims with the state of California as the paychecks stopped coming. Kim claims Choi fired her without cause and owes her back wages, a promised $10,000 relocation bonus, and three months of severance worth $50,000, as negotiated in her contract. A series of former employees, advisors, and even the company's former CTO have since denounced WrkRiot and its leadership, in particular Choi."
...that's all anybody is really expecting. Like, one sentence, a parenthetical phrase, even, describing WTF WrkRiot is, what they make, something, anything, in the first paragraph of the summary to make me care about this. We get a "Credit Karma of LinkedIn" buried somewhere in the middle, which -- fascinating-ly -- is actually LESS than descriptive or useful.
Slashdot, I love you guys, but most days you make it really, really tough...
We need a new FuckedCompany for this bubble. That was always some good reading.
For every legit startup, there are 9 others that are garbage. That ratio is being generous.
Obviously she must be horrible at her job as Marketing Director, and thus was fired with cause... /s
Seriously though, I've never heard of them. What's the point of a job site nobody knows about?
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Why do people stay at a company if it has missed a payday? The day my employer misses a payday, I go home and don't come back until they come up with a paycheck (if at all, since while I'm home I look for another job immediately). Do people stay out of loyalty or naiveté or what?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Ahh, yet another answer to Credit Karma. Startups are a dime a dozen. Especially those that challenge well established companies.
If I get one whiff of weird shit going on at a company I'm interviewing with, I'm gone.
A job interview should be considered an opportunity to figure out whether the company is worth your time, as well as showing your stuff off.
Anyone who treats it otherwise is either very naive or stupid. If you don't do your due diligence, you get what you deserve.
They'll recognize this outfit immediately. There's a lot of people jockeying to be one of the "Cool Nerd Kids" with endless re-tellings of the pranks played back in their elite engineering school, etc. Lots of people wearing black clothes who don't necessarily look good in it.
Don't piss off a marketing director: cue exhibit A.
https://news.ycombinator.com/i...
Yes most startups that fail are like this. What we did was enter a startup just like this, and work hard and succeed and spun off from the shipwreck. That is what Silicon valley is about. Joining a messed up startup and sinking is just your own fault. Most sink, but if you swim you will succeed even if the company is flotsam! Silicon valley isn't about getting free rides, its your chance to fly on your own and leave the rest to sink.
I'm a marketing director... I tell my wife to pick up a 12 pack of Budweiser and Cheese Puffs at the market. That's a marketing director.
What the fuck does it even mean? This is wha WrkRiot positioned themselves as. It makes no sense.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
maybe anti-youtube digital phobia should end on china so new businesses could more easily be created motivated by those cultural gates and then side-show horror scams would not be that useful anymore.
You let her leave the kitchen? Da fuq?!!
any hope of charging him with fraud in China, where they have a working judicial system? I'll buy the bullet....
I guess that is what you get when you try to be cute with a company name. If that is what this is about.
I think you're missing the part where the startup illegally forges fake salary payments in order to extract even more work without paying their employees.
I don't understand why you haven't been modded as a troll. You're made up a side to the story in order to discredit the speaker. No where does she talk about planning to make massive wealth. She didn't even name the company, other people looked into it and uncovered the company.
their previous company, formed from the founder's grandfather's dying fever-dream.
No brandcuffs!
+5 Insightful? Really? This is about the most incorrect statement I've seen today.
FIX this useless moderation system, or keep bleeding users, dying site once known as /.
Budweiser? Cheese puffs?! You fucking peasant.
Yeah!! How dare she expected to get paid instead of being happy with lies and fraudulent wire transfer notices.
What a stupid, greedy cunt she must be. *rolls eyes*
- Have an idea which is sold as being the next big thing.
- Claim to have a great education at one of the great universities and follow on requisite experience needed to build up a company to build the next big thing
- Maybe round up some venture capital or claim to have some VC
- Hire some employees with promises of reasonable income for a startup with the implications that they will become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams in a short time because the idea is the next big thing and have the capital to make it happen since the investors believe it's so
- Some of the employees hired to build the next big thing haven't got a clue how to build the next big thing
- Don't pay the employees, i.e, cheat them out of promised pay, relocation expenses, etc.
- Fire the employees who ask why they haven't been paid
- Close the company
- If there was any venture capital, keep it and hide it somewhere
As was once said, perhaps in the investigation of the Watergate scandal, follow the money. That's how we'll find our who was involved and what happened.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Jesus. Getting pretty sick of this shit. Tell us what WrkRiot is. What is it? Why should I care?
You fucking idiots.
Nice characterization, but no. Not greedy, but too easily seduced by bullshit.
She didn't spend enough time doing due diligence.
Now, please explain to the rest of the class why you would immediately jump to the "stupid, greedy cunt" assumption.
Grownups find that trite and rather boring.
Still think the world owes you something? If so, you have some serious growing up and learning to do.
Get over yourself. With that attitude, you're just more roadkill on the highway of life.
Don't be so backwards. Women can be allowed outside when their housekeeping duties require it. But I see how this could be a slippery slope...
WrkRiot is not Linux, and you shouldn't care, because if it's not Linux, it's irrelevant.
Whoosh
I worked at a startup. it was my first job out of college. I remember being so excited because "we were going to make a difference," but really I was just fooling myself. I had no experience and this place was the only job I found that would take me before I ran out of rent money. 12-15 hour shifts, no health insurance, I had to bring my own computer (I only had a tower, no laptop so that was interesting), and we worked out of a basement. Eventually it became a little more professional with health insurance, and a proper work building, they bought me a computer. I pushed my boss hard for this stuff. Then I had a child and couldn't work the hours, so I went to greener pastures with a more sane work environment. Fast forward a year after I left and I get a call from one of the previous employees who I refer to as my "war buddy" because of all the strange and difficult happenings at this previous place of employment for both of us. He tells me the boss just killed his wife at the work place by cutting off her head. That was my first boss, my first work experience. Every job since then has been a cake-walk.
No, that is spot on. You seem to blame her for everything and completely gloss over the fraud perpetrated by her bosses.
I remember hearing high-dram startup flame-out stories right around this time 15-16 years ago. The only differences this time are:
- Phones/tablets instead of PCs/browsers
- Truly stupid startups are able to stick around longer because of public cloud services
- This round of startups isn't going to leave behind goodies like thousands of miles of dark fiber, data centers full of equipment, etc.
Seriously, "the credit karma of LinkedIn?" What does that even mean??
There's a certain amount of sunk costs involved in moving that makes the calculus a little trickier than just move back to Texas over a missed paycheck.
Considering sunk costs in your evaluation of what to do going forward is irrational. Either the expected future prospects of an investment (time, money, effort, etc) are worthwhile or they are not. The past investments are already spent and gone and if one is acting rationally they should play no role in determining actions going forward. Yes it is frustrating to spend a lot of resources on something that ultimately proves a dead end or the expected return seems too low to justify continuing with but once you realize it is a dead end you then are throwing good money after bad.
No, I chose to take a look at things that were under her control. The decision to go to work for those scumbags was hers and hers alone.
She even wrote that she'd repeatedly ignored the warning signs.
If it looks like shit and smells like shit, it's probably shit.
The idiots behind WrkRiot will get theirs, it's just a matter of time. I'll let the justice system sort that mess out.
Just about all the stuff described in that long blogpost is pretty normal. I've been screwed over just about more times than I can count. Today I smell bullshit from miles away and (re)act accordingly. CYA is the rule of the game. Know what you are getting into and avoid total doucebags.
Web business is often shady and always at the intersection between employed, freelance and entrepreneur/in-on-your-own-good-will. Think and act accordingly and don't take any shit. If a deal is on and isn't delivered (that next invoice payment, the salary, whatever) go into professional mode inmediately.
And, of course, never work without a signature on a piece of paper.
I did that once again a few years back despite better knowlege and got screwed over yet again. By someone I thought I knew.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Say goodbye to the contents of your bank account. Those are the only things someone needs to write bad checks against your account. The check does not even need to have your name on it.
Someone that is going to commit fraud and fake a bank authorization is certainly not above draining your bank account.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I can understand not having sympathy for the lazy or stupid, but the green? We were all n00bs once, at everything we now do well. We've been through that, and we should remember what it was like.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Isn't $135,000 kind of low for a Director of Marketing position in the Bay area?