
Jason Calacanis at his finest - anderzole
http://pastebin.com/PSY4iYZ0
======
pg
Let's be fair here. For all we know, the guy might have done something quite
bad. Or not. But if he did, Jason couldn't say so.

We just don't know. But what we do know is that this is exactly the kind of
half-story that gets people going on forums: an antagonist everyone loves to
hate, and structural reasons why we're probably not getting the whole story.

Many, many times I've seen users on a forum go on the warpath after hearing
half of a story, then look like fools when the second half emerges. I don't
like to think how many times I've been fooled myself, between Reddit and HN.

It would be nice if Internet culture could evolve to reserve judgment when a
story like this appeared, in the same way it has evolved not to trust any
story that appears in a much-forwarded email. I would be proud if HN was the
place that mutation began.

~~~
exit
we do know calacanis went on to publicly denigrate the former employee. it
doesn't make me think there's more to "his half" than juvenile petulance.

 _> "Free advice for entitled Gen Y trophy kids: if you spend 12 months at a
company over and over you look like a flake." 10:06 PM Apr 21st via Twitter
for BlackBerry®_

<http://twitter.com/Jason/status/12621363849>

~~~
spamizbad
I'm beginning to resent that my generation has been dubbed the "Trophy Kids."
Those trophies were more for parental egos than our own self-esteem. We
weren't dumb, we knew it was just a meaningless participation trinket. Most of
those things ended up going in the trash unless your parents mandated you keep
them (Mine didn't, thankfully). I think I'd keep them around for a year or two
just for the sake of having a knick-nack, until I needed the space for a
model.

~~~
idoh
Agreed. Blaming a whole generation is silly. If you want to play that game,
then blame the parents of the trophy kids who decided that it was a good idea
to give everyone a participation trophy.

~~~
Nwallins
> _Blaming a whole generation is silly._

Is anyone really doing that? I see _Trophy Kids_ (btw, new term for me, and I
am one, I suppose) as a characterization rather than blame. There is no doubt
the term is pejorative, but if I think canned green beans taste like crap, am
I blaming the beans, the can, the producer, or am I not placing any blame at
all?

FWIW, I do agree that parents are largely responsible for their children's
behavior.

------
jacquesm
Suggested rewrite:

Hey Evan,

We're mighty sorry, but we understand. If things don't work out at yahoo! as
planned we want you to know the door is always open to return, after all we
hate to see you go.

Please tell the rest of your team that you go with our blessing and that we
look forward to seeing you do great things in the future. We all know if there
is one thing they need over there it is quality people.

Since we still owe you more vacation days than your severance we can of course
not hold you to stay longer but we'd really appreciate it if you could somehow
squeeze out an extra few days to transfer your duties to John, of course we'll
compensate you for that.

All the best!

j

~~~
hugh3
I think it would be legitimate to express some disappointment that the
employee decided to tell you he was resigning via a mass email rather than in
person or even via a phone call.

~~~
jacquesm
Agreed, that would have been more classy.

But as these emails go (and they do, I've been on the receiving end of a few
of those) it's about as good as they get.

------
jayliew
Having been through a few conflicts myself, as an independent observer and as
one of the parties in the conflict .. I'm not taking sides, but just wanting
to note that although the employer _definitely_ could have handled it better,
I have a feeling we're only scratching the tip of the surface and we don't
know much what really happened between the employer-employee.

The "pack and get out now" is actually very standard upon resignation, but
more so for sales people, less engineers, unless .. there's something going on
(which obviously we don't know).

Btw, as the employee: resigning via email is also not very classy, and could
be done better: e.g. handing an official resignation letter in person to your
direct superior face to face.

Just a suggestion. Also, if you want to air your dirty laundry, come forth
with the stuff that you didn't tell us about. There's 2 kinds of lies:

(1) commission: you explicitly fabricate non-facts

(2) omission: where you fail to mention details that matter

Both are still lies. I think the employee knows how snowball started, but is
refraining from telling the public. Which if that was the case, perhaps it
shouldn't have been brought to light in the first place - because that'd mean
the employee wants public to make a decision street-justice-style based on
incomplete information.

~~~
kwyjibo
Is 2 weeks notice common in the USA? Here in Europe it's 1 month or 3 months,
depending on what contract you have.

~~~
jayliew
2 weeks is courtesy, and standard. In California, it's "at will" employment ..
meaning, the employee can quit with or without notice, but the employee can
also fire, with or without notice. That said, there's a lot of labor laws to
comply with, so companies in practice don't just fire people at will (they can
be sued by the now ex-employee). But yeah, in this part of the world, 2 weeks
is courtesy. No courtesy is rude, and you're "burning the bridge".

~~~
joezydeco
Actually, it's the opposite.

The moment you give the employee a reason, you open the door to a lawsuit. The
best way to let someone go is simply say "your services are no longer
required" and leave it at that.

------
37prime
Seriously, Jason Calacanis has not done anything considered smart since he
sold Weblogs, Inc. to AOL.

Other than that he's not a graceful entrepreneur and an attention seeker (I
refrain myself from using a harsher term).

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
1\. Mahalo is a top 200 site, over 10M uniques and operationally profitable.

2\. Open Angel Forum has been hosting in five cities in the first four months
of 2010.

3\. I've done seven angel investments including gdgt.com, gowalla.com and
blippy.com.

4\. TechCrunch50 has made millions of dollars, but more importantly launched
amazing startups like Mint.com, Powerset and yammer.

5\. This Week in Startups about to have it's one-year anniversary and
advertising has been sold out for two years. Also, ThisWeekIn.com is closing a
small angel round and have almost 10 shows.

6\. ON the board of Savings.com, GDGT and another company not yet announced.

I'd list ten more things... but it would start to get a little silly.

I'm getting a lot done these days, but you are correct I'm far from graceful.
I'm blunt and to the point... sometimes I say things in private, or public,
that I shouldn't.

A private thing that should have stayed private is now public. Yawn. There is
more to the story, but I'm not going to comment HR issues publicly--that would
not be professional. Part of me would love to unload however.

best j

~~~
jacquesm
1\. you could be #3, I couldn't care less, mahalo does not exactly contribute,
it just rehashes.

2\. good for you

3\. The only one I've heard of is 'blippy', and that's only because of some
fairly sloppy coding there.

4\. great. I'm fairly sure they would have made it without your personal
contribution though, you can't possibly take personal credit for that, just
like Paul Graham doesn't take personal credit for dropbox or any one of the
other YC investments.

And so on. The list would indeed be silly if you continued.

You're one hell of an entrepreneur, I'll give you that but you're _way_ out of
line in how you treat people and the basic business model of mahalo simply
sucks.

Do you really believe that even if such email should stay private that that
absolves you of what you wrote there?

I used to look up to you, that has changed dramatically in the last 18 months
or so.

~~~
wdewind
And to bring the point further: no one cares what you accomplish if you act
like a total asshat while doing it. Mussolini and some trains come to mind.

~~~
jacquesm
<http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp>

~~~
almost
Thank you, at least now I've learnt something from this silly drama thread :)

------
jonknee
At least everyone else at Mahalo now knows how to leave the company--no hints
and fuck yous on the way out. Don't let Jason beat you to the punch. Bonus
points if you quit during the most critical time of a time sensitive project.

------
staunch
I think it's best if this doesn't get killed for the 20th time. It's clearly
not going to go away until it's had the usual rise and fall on HN.

------
theBobMcCormick
It never ceases to amaze me the entitlement mentality that some employers
have. When they decide to lay off a group of employees, it's just business.
But when an employ quits to peruse other opportunities suddenly it's a big
betrayal and "how could they be so disloyal".

(obviously this only applies to _some_ employers. I've worked for some
employers who were very compassionate and mature for both layoffs _and_
resignations).

------
run4yourlives
I'm just going to ask a question to the 110 people that voted for this
"story".

Do we really think it's appropriate to air a company's dirty laundry and/or
conflicts on Hacker News? I mean, that's the type of shit they do over at TMZ
isn't it? Gossip about people?

I don't care who's an ass, who's been wronged and who has sand in their
ovaries today. I don't come to HN for this.

~~~
whalesalad
I'm glad that this was posted. I applied to Mahalo a few days ago because it's
a Django gig in southern California. I was hesitant to apply because of some
of the stories I had heard about Jason. However, I try to judge things as I
see them, and wanted to give it a shot.

I'm glad that this came out, because it's given me some more perspective on
Mahalo and Jason.

~~~
cookiecaper
I saw ads for Mahalo on CL in the last few days too and have purposely avoided
them because I don't want the tarnishment of either Mahalo (a mass spammer) or
Jason on my resume or psyche.

------
lanstein
You almost wonder if there's messages missing from this middle of this.
Incredible.

------
ck2
I've never worked at a company where I tried to be professional and gave 2
weeks notice and was NOT immediately shown the door (hence I learned to
prepare and not be surprised).

Does it really happen in this day and age? Don't companies lockout high value
employees immediately as a matter of security and anti-sabotage?

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
correct.

~~~
danudey
But you can do that without sounding like a jerkass.

e.g. instead of 'never return, do not attempt to contact us', you could say
'We're sorry to see you go. Monday will be your last day, come in to pick up
your belongings and say goodbye and we'll all go out for lunch.'

Just because other companies do it doesn't mean you have to act like a jerk
when you do it too.

------
crad
This was posted on Evan Culver's blog and made it to the front page of hn the
day after it happened. It was deleted off of HN shortly after being posted.

It was originally on <http://evanculver.posterous.com/> but he appears to have
since removed it.

Edit: Adding original link bit.

------
misuba
Takeaway: if it's email, it's on a server somewhere; if it's on a server
somewhere, it's best to assume it'll be public record someday. If it's an
outburst, maybe you should do it by phone.

~~~
Frazzydee
No matter how many times people are reminded of this, they will continue to
make the same mistake.

And it will continue to be amusing gossip for the rest of us :)

------
MikeCapone
This wasn't meant to be public, but then, lots of things that aren't meant to
be public should be to deter people from being total jerks. I think this falls
in this category.

And I say this as someone who used to quite enjoy Calacanis's podcasts a few
years ago.

~~~
nfnaaron
Actually just not wanting to be a jerk should deter one from being a jerk,
public or not.

~~~
MikeCapone
If jerks thought like that, they wouldn't be jerks...

------
penang9
This email exchange is the equivalent of breaking up with your girlfriend over
a text message and letting her know that you will now start dating her
roommate. Obviously, there is no right way of letting someone know that they
are no longer what you desire, but sending an email at 10 o'clock at night is
hardly the right approach. How about "Hey Jason, I have some rather bad news
that I need to share with you, are you free for a cup of coffee right now;
it's an urgent matter." At least have the decency to say it to you his face.

I'm an undergraduate student at University of Texas with entrepreneurial
ambitions who met Jason personally at SxSW for the first time. I am pretty
much a nobody and yet he treated me with utmost respect and was a pleasure to
talk to. Personal relationships are a delicate matter. You can't use a
computer to solve all your issues.

~~~
jayliew
are you from penang? ping me if so

------
tlack
I feel like if we knew who he quit to go work for, we'd have a better idea of
why Mr. Calacanis was so upset. Must have been a powerful direct competitor -
I hope..

~~~
Frazzydee
We do know: Yahoo

@evanculver Good luck at Yahoo, dude. It's not as dead as some say, as is
evidenced by the excellent code they churn out. \--
<http://twitter.com/codeshaman/status/12584315658>

@codeshaman Thank you sir. I was going to delay the announcement, but you
know, people do things that make you jumpy. \--
<http://twitter.com/evanculver/status/12585519584>

~~~
mrkurt
That makes me wonder, has Yahoo laid off more or less employees
(proportionally) than Mahalo?

~~~
jacquesm
No need to wonder, considerably more, but they've also hired considerably
more.

~~~
brk
Of course they've hired considerably more, I think that's why the parent to
your comment said "(proportionally)".

~~~
jacquesm
I could have sworn that wasn't there when I first answered.

/me needs glasses ?

~~~
mrkurt
It's an eisenclarification!

It was there. :)

~~~
jacquesm
I believe you. But I've fallen in to the habit of quoting the bits I'm
replying to just to make sure I'm not hallucinating, after the fact edits
which make your comments look like you're an idiot happen all too often.

Literal quoting seems to be a good protection against that.

------
alexro
Jason shall not bother about employees. His money-making Spam-machine is
already doing magics. And will probably continue to run even if all workers
leave.

------
cookiecaper
Link is dead. It says it will be back in a few minutes but hasn't been back
for more than an hour. Anyone have a mirror?

~~~
omd
Google cache:
[http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:h1M0xdV67_EJ:pastebin.co...](http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:h1M0xdV67_EJ:pastebin.com/PSY4iYZ0+pastebin.com/PSY4iYZ0)

------
shrikant
<http://twitter.com/evanculver/status/12440647847>

_There's no way I'm doing more work tonight. I'm done. Have to quit kidding
myself._

11:12 AM Apr 19th

A day before he sent the resignation email.

------
mg1313
Funny how he is preaching one thing but does another...

------
rikthevik
Classy.

------
c0d3c
if he joins a competitor, he should be removed asap. it's bad for morale and
company ip.

who cares about jason cala... whatever the fuck his name is.

------
jsz0
If the point of the story is sometimes people say moderately unpleasant things
I would fully agree. Some people choose to self-censor, some don't. Personal
choice really.

