Y Combinator President Garry Tan took to the social platform X on Tuesday to once more categorical his displeasure at elected officers representing San Francisco, the place the storied accelerator relies.
This time he was lambasting California State Meeting member Matt Haney, who represents San Francisco, over a proposed late-night e mail invoice he authored.
The tweet learn, “Legalize hard work. Haney is spreading nonsense again, from the guy who killed algebra and spun up the fentanyl crisis in the Tenderloin.” He then posted a thread saying, “Is this a foreign op or what?”
Haney is what you may name Tan’s “favorite punching bag.” Again in 2016, Haney led the San Francisco Public Faculties board when the district was discussing moving algebra out of middle school. The course was later reinstated in 2024. To say Tan was not a fan of that earlier transfer is clear in a number of tweets, together with in April 2023, October 2022 and June 2021.
In the meantime, in 2022, Haney was appointed to steer California’s opioid committee, to which Tan tweeted, “Politics as usual is putting the incompetent supe who presided over 1000s of fentanyl deaths in his SF district in charge of the CA opioid commission. Matt Haney has done nothing to support recovery and treatment…”
Haney defended his work combating the opioid disaster in a February LinkedIn post. In it, he referenced AB 1976, a invoice that he described “would build on existing requirements for California employers to have ‘adequate first-aid materials’ for workers.” His objective is to make kits that embrace the life-saving remedy naloxone accessible “as a fire extinguisher.”
What’s caught Tan’s ire this time is Haney’s proposed invoice, AB 2751, that will allow workers “the right to disconnect” after agreed-upon working hours. That means they’d have the authorized proper to disregard calls, emails, texts or messages despatched after that point, besides in circumstances of emergency, and employers in violation may very well be topic to fines, the San Francisco Standard reported.
Haney informed the publication, “If you’re working a 9-to-5 job, you shouldn’t be expected to be working 24/7. That should be available to everyone, regardless of the existence of smartphones.”
It’s price stating that the invoice isn’t as a lot to forbid folks from working lengthy hours in the event that they select to, as Tan implies, as to forbid firms from imposing an always-available expectation on staff. Nonetheless, this concept does run opposite to the startup hustle culture, a part of YC’s world, which reveres dedication to work, significantly within the early years.
Tan’s newest tweet discovering fault with a California lawmaker will not be distinctive. He went on a rant in January on X about seven San Francisco supervisors that took a violent tone. He later apologized, defined that the tweet was meant to be an apparent reference to a well-liked rap tune and later deleted it.
It didn’t finish there, although. In February, three San Francisco supervisors received threatening letters to their houses that included a photograph of Tan and the phrase, “I wish a slow, painful death for you and your loved ones.”
TechCrunch spoke with San Francisco board supervisor Aaron Peskin concerning the letter at the moment, and Peskin mentioned he didn’t assume Tan was immediately chargeable for somebody sending the letter. Nonetheless, with its threatening tone geared toward an individual, not simply discourse on a coverage, Tan’s tweet nonetheless did “harm to democratic discourse,” Peskin mentioned.
Makes an attempt to achieve each Tan and Haney for remark weren’t answered on the time of publication. Y Combinator declined to remark.
