From “Human” Culture to “Exposed”: The Failure of AbacatePay

Let’s start with the obvious: a company isn’t anyone’s parent. Firing employees is a normal and, at times, necessary part of management. If an employee is harming the operation or the culture, leadership has a responsibility to act.

Besides, a firing is an expensive event for the company itself, which invested time and money in the hiring process. That’s why the smart path is always to try to correct course. A good management process involves clear feedback, warnings, and an attempt to realign the employee before reaching the point of termination. That’s the bare minimum.

What bothers me deeply about the recent drama isn’t the act of firing @RefleX2D from @AbacatePay. It’s the absolute disconnect between their marketing and their practice.

We’re talking about a company that built its entire public image on the promise of being “different,” more human, a “family.” @AbacatePay, led by @ChristoPy_ and @daniellimae, chose the “build in public” path, which sells total transparency as a virtue.

And it was this exact company that, apparently, fired a developer “out of nowhere,” without a clear feedback process, and then committed the indefensible act of exposing that person on a stream with national visibility, in this case, @manodeyvin’s.

This goes beyond bad management. It’s completely unethical. Even for a traditional company, this would be absurd. For a company that sells itself as human, it’s the height of hypocrisy.

And, to be honest, this attitude doesn’t completely surprise me, as much as it irritates me. I confess I was already wary of the founders. Watching previous projects like @alertpix_live and @tech_ears, the feeling I get is one of immaturity in managing expectations. There seems to be a huge focus on hype, on positioning themselves as “disruptive,” on creating the “build in public” narrative, but it doesn’t hold up when it’s time to deal with the difficult, real problems of management.

Furthermore, this attitude exposes a much bigger problem with the “build in public” community itself. It’s an ecosystem where everyone wants to be the 1%, and the unwritten rule is mutual glorification. There’s a lack of any critical discernment. Random “another product” is praised as if it were the most amazing thing in the world, even when it’s obvious there was no minimum market research. Often the process is completely reversed: they make a product and only then try to find a problem it solves. It’s a bubble where everyone’s kissing each other’s ass in exchange for marketing.

This hype culture only feeds immaturity. The attitude of @AbacatePay, and what we’ve already seen with @alertpix_live and @tech_ears, is just a symptom of this: a disproportionate focus on narrative and “disruption” that doesn’t hold up when dealing with real management problems.

Was @RefleX2D wrong in his actions? Maybe. We’ll probably never know the full story. But that’s irrelevant to the main point. What we know is that he, by all accounts, did not receive the necessary feedback to correct his course and, worse, was publicly thrown under the bus for no good reason.

Companies need to learn how to manage people. People are not tools. And if you decide to build your brand on the premise of being “different” and transparent, you are the first one who should be held accountable when you act like the worst of the corporate world. This mess by @AbacatePay shows a serious failure of leadership.