Why would they offer him a job right before saying that? Some of it could be true, absolutely, but it seems more emotionally manipulative than anything else, to me. The CEO was mad so he said something.
> Why would they offer him a job right before saying that?
A few people have mentioned that on this thread, but I don't think it's in sync with the reality of how incredibly hard it is to hire technical talent right now, esp talent that knows your systems well.
It's entirely possible for someone to be the most demanding intern a co has ever had and still be a great hire; hell, it might even be _correlated_. Interns usually haven't figured out workplace norms yet, and combining that with being smart and driven could easily yield good-faith behavior that nevertheless is "demanding" (for example, asking lots of questions about tasks he's given, asking for guidance with parts of the system he's not working on, etc etc). In that case, I would absolutely want to hire that intern, with the understanding that he'd need to get better at the cultural aspects of the job once he joined full-time (as all intern conversions do).
That being said, no question that it was a bizarre and immature thing for the CEO to bring up, and I don't disagree with your characterization of it as "emotionally manipulative".
I'm looking at this from the perspective of "is the emotion/frustration felt by the CEO valid". In other words, did this open source author actually do ANYTHING which could cause frustration in a previous employer. An important part of that is whether they were actually a 50% pain in the ass employee who repeatedly was pushy (but still perhaps is hireable because they were net positive)
I'm disregarding any commentary on actual action taken by the CEO, because as I said I think it's incredibly stupid and immature.
This reply below by @treis is a good explanation of how i feel about the answer to your question.
> Lots of CEOs/Owners will definitely be salty about that. And they're not totally wrong to feel that way. You pay someone a bunch of money only to watch them walk and help your competitor take your market share. It's understandable why that's upsetting. But they should have the maturity to understand that's how the world works and not throw a tantrum.
