

Calacanis' Side of the Resignation Story - samd

An excerpt from his email newsletter.<p><i>An email with the subject line every CEO loathes: Resignation.<p>Ugh.<p>Another promising Gen Y-er leaves after one year and a couple of days,
shockingly right on time to vest their first cliff of stock options
(25%). Via email? At nearly midnight? To go to a 15-year-old
competitor that we're trying to crush?<p>No "hey boss..." discussion? No "I know it's unprofessional to leave
after 12 months, but I feel this is an important career move. Can I
explain my thinking?"<p>CEOs and founders understand that folks leave, but that discussion is
customary. A late-night resignation email isn't appropriate. The most
frustrating part is not losing a great person--which happens--but
rather watching someone with promise set their career back five years
in order to have their salary jump ahead by three years.<p>Trading massive advancement to pop your salary, is a career move I
could never understand. Back in the day when I was employable I would
never have made that trade off--instead I cultivated my network.
Nothing puts me on tilt like talented young people trading long-term
rewards and career development for short-term greed and negative
expectations.<p>"Congratulations on being employee 4,235 at a dying company" was the
most I could muster as an e-mail response while parked at a light,
getting on the 10 freeway. Oh yeah, today was your last day. And since
you're going to a competitor, please don't show up at the office.<p>Right after I hit send I had that familiar moment: "did I really just
say that?"<p>It's not easy being me. I've got a version of tourette's where instead
of yelling obscenities at inappropriate times, I say something
brutally honest without regard to my reputation or the other person's
feelings. There's no reason to make the kid feel bad on the way out
when I could have just said "Good luck, we will miss you greatly!"<p>What's the benefit of telling people how you really feel when the
result of doing so only results in unpleasantness?<p>C'est la vie. No one is perfect. We all have flaws and the best we can
hope for is that our virtues outweigh them right?<p>Oh, it turns out my response is now on your blog, Hacker News and TechCrunch.<p>Great.</i>
======
dennykmiu
Jason, you need to understand the difference between your persona and your
reputation. What you write on your blog, your email newsletters, your facebook
and your tweets is your persona. What people think of you behind your back
when you thought they were not watching is your reputation. It takes a
lifetime to build a reputation. It only takes one tiny miscalculation to throw
it all away. And you have been throwing it all away, first with stealing
contributors from Digg, then with hijacking Leo Laporte's brand, and now
beating up on some young kid who just wanted to better his life ... Horribly
disappointed in you.

~~~
kevinp
Jason doesn't have just one persona. He alternates from Dean Martin to George
Steinbrenner and from Jerry Lewis to Donald Trump. Now he's doing his Tony
Soprano "youth today" routine demanding one-way loyalty. Hey Jason, while
you're getting in touch with your old-school values, go ahead and hire a
publicist. You really need one.

------
staunch
He also mentioned that the CTO of Mahalo quit. The CTO of a technology startup
does not normally quit after 3 years! That would be far more shocking to me
than a programmer quitting after 1 year.

Evan Culver as much as said Mahalo was a shitty place to work
(<http://twitter.com/evanculver>). If the CTO is quitting it can't be that
great for a programmer.

My impression of Jason is that he underpays people, overworks them, and
doesn't hold himself to the same standard. Does he take a significantly below
market salary (or no salary?) Does he actually clock in 9+ hours a day on
Mahalo? Is he the first one there in the morning and the last one out?

From the outside it seems like he spends a lot of his time playing around on
his side projects. Hanging out with cool people. And generally taking it easy.
No one wants to kill themselves working for a guy that seems to be having fun
doing unrelated things. VCs are even less okay with that, as far as I know.
How long will they put up with him launching/running side companies?

My guess is that within 18 months he will not be the CEO of Mahalo. He will be
much happier doing things he genuinely likes and is genuinely good at, such as
This Week in Startups.

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
Mark Jeffrey our CTO did not quit Mahalo. He wanted a new challenge and he
became CEO of a company we partnered on called ThisWeekIn.com.

He is in the Mahalo building every day and helps us with hiring. So, another
example of loyalty.

~~~
staunch
He may not have quit Mahalo, but he clearly quit his job as CTO of Mahalo. You
can spin that if you want, but it's not generally considered a good thing when
the CTO of a tech startup resigns his position.

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
So people are not allowed to leave their position after three years? Wow...
you're more hard core than me!

Seriously, you have no idea. Mark and I have been close friends since 1994 or
95 and I think I might know the situation a little better than you.

I mean, it feels like you're looking to make this into something bad... I
think it's GREAT if someone I work with moves on to another company I'm
associated with.

anyway, enjoy the rest of your day trolling on HN

~~~
staunch
Jason, what makes this site nice is that we generally don't accuse each other
of having ulterior motives. Everything I said should be taken at face value.
I'm not trolling. I'm just calling it like I see it, and I certainly admit I
could be calling it wrong!

What I see is you perfectly okay with your CTO resigning his job after 3
years, but coming down harshly on a programmer for resigning after 1 year.
That seems unfair and hypocritical, and that's why I pointed it out. You can
safely ignore me, or point out why I'm wrong. You don't need to resort to name
calling or get upset.

------
nl
_Another promising Gen Y-er leaves after one year and a couple of days,
shockingly right on time to vest their first cliff of stock options (25%)._
... _I know it's unprofessional to leave after 12 months_

Really?! Sounds reasonable to me. It also sounds like their compensation might
be setup to encourage the exact thing he's complaining about.

 _The most frustrating part is not losing a great person--which happens--but
rather watching someone with promise set their career back five years in order
to have their salary jump ahead by three years.

Trading massive advancement to pop your salary, is a career move I could never
understand. _

When I read the resignation email it sounded like the guy was looking forward
to some new technical opportunities. I suspect Jason may have misunderstood
some people's motivations and what their idea of "massive advancement" is.
Given that he didn't try and get a pay rise, I don't think this was about
popping his salary.

------
starkfist
He's a bit delusional...

I agree that Yahoo is the C-list, but Mahalo is the bigger resume stain,
unless you're making a career in spam.

~~~
amock
How is Yahoo the C-list? They may not be as good at making money as Google is,
but they have a lot of good engineers and over the past few years they've done
a lot more than Google. They have YUI, BOSS, and I've had much better luck
with Yahoo's search results than with Google's. Google has all the hype, but
they keep releasing things like Wave and Buzz that aren't very useful to most
people.

It seems to me that he really made the choice between working on a spam engine
and working with a lot of talented people on interesting products that are
used by hundreds of millions of people. Calcanis not having anything good to
say about Yahoo is expected, but there's a lot more to Yahoo than the Google
fanboys would have you believe.

~~~
starkfist
Yahoo doesn't have much of a hiring filter. It's very easy to get hired there.
Thus, there are a lot of people just taking up space, or worse. There's a lot
of cargo cult "engineering" going on. This makes it hard for good people to
not lose their minds. Whenever Yahoo acquires a company, the acquired talent
flees as soon as possible. Google started down the same path of talent
dilution with their huge hiring spree a few years back, but they already had
enough talent so it's not going to affect them as much. I didn't intend this
to be a Yahoo/Google comparison, but it is incorrect to say that Yahoo has
done more than Google the past few years. Buzz and Wave are indeed solutions
without a problem but are technologically more impressive than anything Yahoo
has done, ever.

------
daleharvey
is there plans for malaho to be anything other than a low quality google spam
long tail site?

as much derided as yahoo is, it is still one of the biggest sites on the
internet which is putting out some great tech, when you get a chance to go to
somewhere with people like douglas crockford and steve souders as peers its
pretty hard to count as a step backwards from anywhere.

~~~
petercooper
And let's not forget $600m or so in profits last year.. hardly "dying." Like
PHP, Yahoo might not be cool amongst geeks.. but it works.

------
rit
As amusing as this kind of stuff is in a Schadenfreude kind of way, can't we
relegate it to ValleyWag where it belongs?

------
jasonmcalacanis
The full post is here--I would read the entire thing not just these 300 words
quoted above.

<http://calacanis.com/2010/04/27/red-jackson-gen-y-loyalty/>

Now, the entire piece is over 3k words. It's a commitment, I know. Most people
in the world, and sadly commenters in HN of late, seem to follow a pattern of
"skim and flame." (i.e. read for 90 seconds, grab a quote out of context and
write a flame).

If there are folks who want to ask me questions about the overall theme I'm
willing to discuss/debate/take my lashings. All I ask is that:

a) you read the whole thing, wait 60 seconds and then write some questions. b)
submit questions in #/bullet format and try to keep them on the shorter side
so I can get to as many of you as possible.

Side note: The Gen Y folks on Hacker News are, in general, the 1/3rd that kick
ass. The 1/3rd that I created TechCrunch50, This Week in Startups and Open
Angel Forum for. The folks who are doin' work and damage on the daily.

best @jason

------
blueben
Jason,

People are loyal to people and institutions they respect. People and
institutions that give them value in their lives. There is no respect simply
because you're in charge. No loyalty just because you're the leader. Those
coaches worked long and hard to earn the respect of their players, and that is
why they are loyal.

You're barking up the wrong tree. There is nothing inherently broken about
"Gen-Y". They are just as capable of loyalty as any generation that came
before. The real questions you need to reflect on are these. Are you
respectable? Are you worthy of loyalty?

------
ivosabev
I have a great respect for Jason, but there isn't explanation for his chidish
reaction. Even if he wanted to communicate his true thoughts with that
employee, it was done in irrelevant way, which completely defeated any
purpose. I don't see how is it wrong for a person to look for a better future
for himself, no one can say what Jason can offer in 5 years and what the
competition can offer. What is long term is out of the equation, but what is
today is definitely in and has the major impact. I understand arrogance is
important quality of all entrepreneurs, but they shouldn't underestimate
humbleness. I hope he learn his lesson and moves forward.

------
kevinp
At-will employment: Deal with it or sign an employment contract. This applies
to both parties. End of story.

Update:

Jason in October of 2008: "We’ve laid off a just under 10% of our full-time
staff, cut our overhead by doing smart things like renting desks (we have six
offices in Santa Monica fyi), and reorganized our editorial department to
focus on freelance positions over in-house editors."

Freelance positions, huh? You can't have it both ways, Calacanis. As an
experienced businessman you should know this.

------
brandon272
Wait, Mahalo is trying to "crush" Yahoo..?!

~~~
Raphael
I hear frequently that Mahalo is "crushing it".

~~~
moe
Crushing what?

I can't see how they're even playing the same game.

One is a former portal struggling to reinvent itself. Perhaps with moderate
success when compared to the Goorilla. But still with a noteworthy standing in
a wide range of areas; Flickr, delicious, YUI, Messenger, Mail.

The other is a spam link farm, run by a CEO suffering from a strong case of
delusions of grandeur. A single "product" that google could shutdown in a
blink tomorrow.

So. The gnat crushing the elephant, really?

------
thefahim
Sounds like a bad breakup being covered by the tabloids except this isn't
being covered by a sleazy reporter.

Calcanis' reputation: minus 1.

~~~
mahmud
_underflow error_

------
hga
" _but that discussion is customary_ "

Perhaps, but I've never seen anyone I respect advise doing exit interviews of
any sort. While this article is HR department centric, it covers the issues
very well: <http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/haexit.htm>

------
doki_pen
I don't understand how a salary jump of 3 years can be a career regression of
5 years. That means you are paying him 8 yrs behind what he should be earning
by his career progression? That is sad.

------
jsharpe
How exactly is it unprofessional to leave after 12 months?

An employee doesn't owe an employer anything more than the employer owes the
employee (which is not much). If a better opportunity comes up, who is the
employer to prevent the employee from advancing their career?

------
steve19
"I've got a version of tourette's where instead of yelling obscenities at
inappropriate times, I say something brutally honest"

I am curious to know if this is a real thing?

EDIT: Just to clarify, I am not saying it isn't, I am genuinely curious.

~~~
rit
Certainly not in the classification of Tourettes it isn't. And it's rather
insulting to those of us who do have it to make an excuse like that.

Having lived with it for 30 years I wouldn't classify it as something to cast
about lightly as some kind of metaphoric excuse for being an asshole.

