Without saying anything about Wave in particular, I do think the prevalence of NDAs biases the information people know about start-ups in generality. The prevalence of early excitement vs. the hard parts makes they too optimistic, and get into situations they could have known would be bad for them. it’s extra hard because the difficulties at bigtech companies are much discussed.
So I think the right thing to weigh against the averted slander is “the harm to employees who joined, who wouldn’t have if criticisms had been more public”. Maybe there are other stakeholders here, but employees seem like the biggest.
Without saying anything about Wave in particular, I do think the prevalence of NDAs biases the information people know about start-ups in generality. The prevalence of early excitement vs. the hard parts makes they too optimistic, and get into situations they could have known would be bad for them. it’s extra hard because the difficulties at bigtech companies are much discussed.
So I think the right thing to weigh against the averted slander is “the harm to employees who joined, who wouldn’t have if criticisms had been more public”. Maybe there are other stakeholders here, but employees seem like the biggest.