> So, to confirm Deel’s involvement, Rippling’s General Counsel sent a legal letter to Deel’s senior leadership identifying a recently established Slack channel called “d-defectors,” in which (the letter implied) Rippling employees were discussing information that Deel would find embarrassing if made public. In reality, the “d-defectors” channel was not used by Rippling employees and contained no discussions at all. ... Yet, just hours after Rippling sent the letter to Deel’s executives and counsel, Deel’s spy searched for and accessed the #d-defectors channel—proving beyond any doubt that Deel’s top leadership, or someone acting on their behalf, had fed the information on the #d-defectors channel to Deel’s spy inside Rippling.

I am sending legal letter to someone warning them that I have dirt on them AND am also mentioning where the dirt is. And that didn't ring any warning bells to Deel's management? Just wow, if true. If they are truly this incompetent, they have no business doing corporate espionage.

Really worth the full read.

I have to say, I think if this was just limited to the Slack previewing behavior, it's unlikely it would have been caught. Previewing Slack channels is not particularly unusual or suspicious behavior and many people, probably most, don't even think of it as being something that'd be logged. (I personally didn't think of it until reading this post, but in retrospect, of course it is. Everything is.)

Crossing the line into dumb things like Deel executives personally contacting the spy's subordinates via their personal phone numbers, which he had no way of knowing is like sending up a massive flare of weirdness. I'm not saying loyalty to one's employer is everything, or even particularly important, but if I was randomly headhunted by a C-level from a direct competitor, who I had never spoken to or expressed interest in, I'd be pretty suspicious, and I'd find it underhanded. I might mention it to someone.

Supposing the allegations are substantially true, I wonder why Deel felt comfortable going that far. Maybe underestimation of competition?

I'm not so sure, this is very damning

https://www.rippling.com/peo

My company uses it. When you work for a company that uses Rippling, you are “co- employed” by both your company and Rippling. Your company does everything as far as hiring, firing, HR, management, etc.

But as far as taxes, insurance and benefits, you “work for” Rippling. It allows small companies to have the benefits of a larger company. Your company pays the PEO per head. It also serves as an SSO provider. Another startup I worked for in the past used Insperity.

[Edit: Added Deel, since we use both! Also hello to the Rippling salesperson who is reading this and is about to reach out to me to convince us to switch.]

Any reasonably company both shops around and is happy to throw one provider under any number of buses if it gets them a better deal with another provider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deel_Inc.

> How did Deel start? What’s your story? I'm originally from France. I lived in Israel, the U.K., the U.S., and Spain. Similarly, my co-founder, Shuo, was born and raised in Beijing. -Alex Bouaziz

maybe the they got to the paranoid and induced chest pains so they could never share their saying?

I can have multiple accounts in different countries, and configure percentages to be paid out automatically to each of my bank accounts. European tranfers typically arrive almost instantly, to Ecuador typically arrive the next day, sometimes the same day. It's all fairly convenient.

I couldn’t care less about this. Honestly the shit corporations pull on the daily in 2025 shouldn’t be considered normal.

Why should I be worked up about this?

Or, if that one hits you with a paywall, https://kill-the-newsletter.com/feeds/q8hb21183k12fmnv/entri... should work for a few days.

With vibe coding and all of these things becoming more popular it's a dream career for the next 10 to 20 years for a cyber security dev.

Deel was founded in 2019 and, in Rippling's opinion, began competing with Rippling in 2022.

Also I thought YC was supposed to sniff out jerks, what happened to that?

My point was merely that YC is about startups which are all about growth. There is no requirement for innovation. Maybe there should be more scrutiny on the idea of the founders. Don't let in people just because they are formidable and went to Berkeley. Reddit's original idea, ordering via cell phone, was arguably innovative for the pre-smartphone era.

I thought that's a core tenet of angel investing? Maybe not purposefully funding rivals, but funding many ventures with the knowledge many will fail while a few rise.

I used to be employed through Deel and that doesn't ring a bell, how did they charge the employee for getting paid on time?

If the honeypot description is accurate, the wolf is real. The below is from section 5 of their complaint [1]:

> Rippling’s General Counsel sent a legal letter to Deel’s senior leadership identifying a recently established Slack channel called “d-defectors,”

> In reality, the “d-defectors” channel was not used by Rippling employees and contained no discussions at all. It had never been searched for or accessed by the spy, would not have come up in any of the spy’s previous searches, and the spy had no legitimate reason to access the channel. Crucially, this legal letter was only sent to three recipients, all associated with Deel: Deel’s Chairman, Chief Financial Officer, and General Counsel (Philippe Bouaziz), Deel’s Head of U.S. Legal (Spiros Komis), and Deel’s outside counsel. Neither the letter nor the #d-defectors channel was known to anyone outside of Rippling’s investigative team and the Deel recipients. Yet, just hours after Rippling sent the letter to Deel’s executives and counsel, Deel’s spy searched for and accessed the #d-defectors channel

[1] https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf