IFI/VEX Response

FIRST General Forum
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I have spent the last 4 hours trying to make a post through teary eyes. It was reactionary and emotional. It was over 5 pages long. It outlined personal experiences. Had stories of times I felt unsafe and uncomfortable. It had direct dialogue from individuals I interacted with.

I have decided thatI cannot, or will not, post my experiences. To me, I do not think that it necessarily adds anything that hasn’t already been highlighted by other users & previous employees.

What I do believe I can say is that there are so many amazing and incredible people that have been employed, or are currently employed, by IFI. The original post of this thread is not a product of those people. Not everyone can leave or speak out because there will be consequences if they do. These consequences would range from financial to interpersonal. How do I know this? Because I myself sat in their shoes from the summer of 2016 all the way up until earlier this year.

I thought it was incredible that FUN started their section about this topic on their show tonight by saying something similar. These stories are not necessarily reflective of the people who are currently or previously have been employed by this company. They even said it was unfair to attribute these stories to individuals not directly named by the people who have been courageous enough to share. I want to say thank you to them for including that. I think it has not been said enough and that is why I have already repeated it twice in my post so far.

It’s easy to think that silence, or non-action, is just as bad as the actions taking place. I couldn’t disagree more. I’d like to share some potential reasons as to why people did not speak out when they experienced some of these things, or are even now not speaking out.

They didn’t speak out because they were scared. I personally didn’t because I was scared. Because I knew what would happen. The things I loved could very easily have been taken away. I loved having access to the whole robot lab for personal projects. I loved being a mentor for the local FRC team. I loved the FRC kids and I loved being a force of positivity and growth in their lives. I loved that some of these young adults found comfort in confiding in me. I loved having the ability to (attempt to) make products that would directly affect the youth of not only our nation, but the whole world. If I did or said anything out far enough of line, all of those things could be taken away from me. And forgive me for my ignorant confidence here, but I thought there was no better person than me to be making these games and providing these resources.

Man, all I wanted to do was provide every single kid with the exact same experience I was given that allowed me to change from a person I despised to a person I am actually very proud to be. At one point in time I called it my dream job. I knew I was a strong enough person to deal with what was thrown my way and hopefully I could help my coworkers handle it as well. Because it was worth it. We had the ability to do so so so much good. We just had to put up with the bad. But it was worth it to give at least one kid the experience that I cherished so much.

My first complaint was given during my 3rd week on the job. It’s a story I have told many times but I do not feel comfortable telling it here. I did not say anything publicly then because I was scared. I do not say anything now because I am scared. Let me help you understand why people are saying something now. Because for the very first time there is a place where it is safe enough to share this information comfortably. For the very first time there is a place that would actually be receptive to the complaints. And a place where the complaints can live on and not be conveniently forgotten. Just like mine, that date all the way back to July 2016 and as recently as March 2022, seemed to have been forgotten.

I applaud the people who have spoken out with their experiences. You are more courageous than I. And for everyone else that is not posting but has stories. Know that we hear you too, even if you do not say anything. Know that you do not owe it to anyone to share your stories. There is, and should never be, any pressure to share anything you do not wish to. There is nothing wrong with keeping to yourself. The only person that you owe any explanation to is yourself. Please do not forget that.

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I guess for both, I do appreciate their engineering team members for bringing so many great products, even if after switch to non-vex on frc bot, I would still say, at sometime in the past, I was inspired by vex for product design. But I do also “thank” for letting me learn how real vex leadership team is.

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:iphone: :heart:

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Hey @InnovationFirst some advice - Apology to Adam Heard (cw: domestic abuse) - #10 by Andrew_Schreiber

Or because I doubt you’ll click on the link - The parts of an apology are:

  • Expression of regret
  • Explanation of what went wrong
  • Acknowledgment of responsibility
  • Declaration of repentance
  • Offer of repair
  • Request for forgiveness

It’s ok, apologizing is difficult, but I’ve learned the FIRST community is actually really great at helping people grow.

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What’s interesting about the structure of IFI’s response is that in a vacuum (with no other context), it could to an outsider look reasonable (“oh, it’s just a company dealing with internet trolls”). To see what I mean, try re-reading it while imagining you hadn’t read any of the posts from the last week and/or didn’t know who those posters are. Of course, in context to anyone following what former employees have actually written (and the knowledge that most/all of those people are known to a broader community), it’s absolutely terrible.

I’m pointing this out because someone posted to the Linus Tech Tips forums just the link to the IFI response and the initial moderator response was very “meh” because there was no other context (additional replies there have since added context). So if/when you share IFI’s response with others, telling the complete narrative is important–what postings led to this statement, the fact that the former employees sharing their experiences are known in the broader community, that multiple other known/trusted people in the community are collaborating their statements, etc–demonstrating that these are not just random internet trolls doing some kind of coordinated attack. This post is a good example of how to introduce the story to others. This is another reason why it’s very important everyone sticks to the facts and doesn’t turn this into a witch hunt–doing the latter will just feed IFI’s narrative.

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As a former Team IFI member this will probably not get a warm reception from many, but I’ve known Jon for a long time and he is a good guy. Have you considered that IFI as an entity can be flawed and be run by a bad actor but that individuals (like Jon) can be trying to do the right thing by the community and that in the end despite those best efforts you can still remain unsatisfied, or that Jon is not the source of your problems? I don’t believe Jon would come on here and spout things he knows to be lies just because they would protect his employer. I don’t believe that as a competitor at the highest levels of FRC he does not understand what the stakes are and that he does not want to help teams be successful. Keep in mind that Jon is an engineer, he’s not the marketing team, he’s not the sales team, he’s not the accounts receivable team, etc. Everything he shared I assume that he shared in good faith to the best of his knowledge. That doesn’t preclude some of it from being inaccurate or inconsistent with your or others experiences.

If Jon says he personally set up the line to disassemble and repair the falcons, I believe him. That’s not incongruous with the fact that some people received falcons that had issues after the fact. It’s entirely plausible things slipped through the cracks or there were changes in direction given after he took those actions.

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This is all I could think of while ready the OP

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9 posts were split to a new topic: Switching from VEX to FTC

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Wooooooooow.

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Live view of IFI’s response

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Multiple times

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If you read that post again, it is really telling of the culture at VEX. It’s actually a perfect instance of why said culture extends beyond the “sole bad actor at the top”.

Nearly the entirety of the original response to the Falcon issues deflected blame onto anyone other than VEX themselves, such as their suppliers, contract manufacturers, and even customers. It then proceeded to deny that VEX had done anything wrong. I can think of a fair few responses that would fall into the category of “trying to do right by teams”. That was not one of them.

That’s not what is most concerning however. What is most concerning, is that if this is the way multiple representatives of IFI respond to their customers’ concerns in public, imagine the amount of gaslighting and toxicity that would be inflicted upon someone internally who spoke up about racism, sexism or homophobia? Imagine the emotional distress IFI would cause that person if they weren’t doing so in public?

So I must ask, Cory, is now really the time to make excuses for this toxic organization?

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oof, I know I’m restating the obvious here, but not a great look guys.

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People are perfectly free to defend their friends as individuals who they have known for years.

Consider - after all that’s come out about top leadership, how much influence or pressure do you think there probably is from those people regarding how Jon or others even respond here?

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I don’t know anyone involved so this is not aimed at anyone in particular. And there are tons of valid reasons for someone to be stuck in a situation that they can’t get out of, even if they would desperately like to. That being said, and this extends beyond just IFI, if the some of the “good ones” turned a blind eye then just how good are they?

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Well, I’m surprised that you even reached out at all, but this is certainly not the best way to do it. Having no ties to your orginization nor any people/parties that were victims of the situation, here’s my impartial review and response to your statement.

In short, there just isn’t any accountablility being taken here. I am not at all saying that everyone employed at IFI (or otherwise involved with the affair) is to blame. There are certainly people that exist at (hopefully) every level of your orginization that aren’t involved with what happened, but there are also people that are. I’m not saying that you have to blame every single soul involved with your company, but we at least need to see responsibility taken for the select individual(s) responsible. At least I (I don’t know about others) would even accept “we understand that some damage caused by [people x y and z] is potentially permanent and catastrophic to those affected, and we are taking every measure to make sure these people recieve appropriate repercussions.” I would even accept adding something like “these people do not represent the mission and standards of our company, and proper actions are being taken to punish those who abused their positions to exploit others”.

What you just did reads as “This isn’t our fault, and we should not be feeling the repercussions of these people. This hasn’t been recorded happening before, so there’s no way it can be happening now.” That is literally the worst thing you could have done to yourselves. Not only are you completely disreguarding the flaws in your company, but disregarding the experiences of those who were attacked. I know someone who was subject to similar abuses, and they still have deep trauma for it; and that happened to them more than 20 years ago.

An important thing to understand here is that I’m not attacking the credibility of the orginization as a whole. I’m not saying having corrupt people makes your company inherently bad, but there needs to be some accountability for letting these things happen. If you read my post regarding reaction’s to a team’s public statement about terminating their sponsorship deal, you’ll see that I am not catagorizing your entire company as “the bad guys”. I understand that there are genuinely good and innocent people that work there to support themselves and/or their families, and I understand that you are going through a PR nightmare that could possibly compromise those people’s jobs. If you want to take action to remedy this and make sure innocent people don’t feel the repercussions of the actual people at fault here, you need to root out the core issue and fix it. If guilty parties are operating at a management level and levying their power to assault others, then remove the person and replace them with a better option. If you restructure your management structure to be operated by the genuinely good people, your company will change to match those ideals. Employees tend to do what they’re told, so if you get someone good to tell them what to do, they will do good things.

To others reading this:
I am in full support of making sure proper repurcussions are felt. Emphasis on proper. People should be fired, management should be restructured. But what is not okay is for innocent people to be fired/attacked (for more context, read the post I linked earlier). The people at fault should be exposed and permanantly removed, and replaced with people that truly reflect the mission and morals that they are trying to accomplish. Don’t entirely terminate IFI, but we need to push for transparency and honesty so we can hold the proper people accountable.

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This is not to far removed from victim blaming in my opinion. You have no idea what previous experiences or trauma or other reasons an individual may have that influences how they handle their current situation

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AS THEY SHOULD lmao

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You mean like how all the people who posted their own accounts of harassment and bad culture also admitted to doing or even partaking in at times because they didn’t know what else to do or didn’t realize it at the time?

This is a naive post considering everything that’s been discussed over the last few days about employee accounts.

People sharing their accounts are good people in my eyes, and almost all of them admitted to either being a part of or turning a blind eye to the problems at the time or until they could not tolerate it anymore.

Rethink how difficult a situation may be for regular employees, even those with a director title.

I don’t know Jon Jack as well as I know some other people who are or were at IFI, but I am giving him the benefit of the doubt because I think in light of circumstances at the company, and my own personal experiences with his customer service, he deserves it.

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No, absolutely not.

I agree 100%.

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