
Latest Viral Craze: Ex-Staffers Bashing BuzzFeed on YouTube - john_mack
http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/why-i-left-buzzfeed-youtube-1202399091/
======
minimaxir
Granted, this submission is likely receiving a lot of upvotes because the
headline contains the phrase "Bashing BuzzFeed", but the concerns echo
submissions that tend to be important to HN, such as the rights of individual
contractors/ownership of product. Although bashing your former employer is not
a good long term strategy.

Disclosure: I am currently working on a "Why I Left Apple" blog post/video,
albeit _much_ different than the examples in the article.

~~~
slantyyz
Serious question - can someone please explain the purpose/appeal of these "Why
I Left X" blog posts/videos?

I'm from a generation where you didn't publicize this kind of stuff, and I'm
not quite sure I understand the intent/social value of such posts/videos
outside of the "whistleblowing" types of posts. Absent of any context, these
posts/videos just strike me as self promotion.

~~~
thesuitonym
Because blogging and publishing videos is easier than ever. Nothing has
changed about the culture.

In 1972, if someone left a company, they would willingly tell anybody who
cared to ask. It is a frequent question during the interview process because
it is insanely useful in helping to understand a potential hire. You didn't
publicize this kind of stuff because the effort of typing it and Xeroxing it
for your zine wasn't worth the reward of a reader getting some sort of insight
into the company culture.

But now publishing that thought requires almost no effort beyond just typing
it or saying it. That's it. It's just a personal story.

~~~
slantyyz
>> You didn't publicize this kind of stuff because the effort of typing it and
Xeroxing it for your zine wasn't worth the reward of a reader getting some
sort of insight into the company culture.

At least for my cohort, that's not the reason why you didn't do it. You didn't
do it because it was career limiting. There was value placed on a person who
had a sense of discretion.

I'm sure a lot of HR types Google their candidates. I'm wondering if any would
drop a candidate for having posted these things.

~~~
danso
And this is why it is interesting: the fact that someone is putting their name
to something that could seriously damage their future career potential. It is
ironic that you dismiss this as self-promotion -- of course it is -- and then
point out that it could be career-limiting.

~~~
slantyyz
It _was considered_ career limiting for my generation. Don't know if it still
is now, or if the younger generations simply don't care.

Outside of the "Why I Left" posts, a lot of younger people put a lot of
content on social media that my age peer group would consider "career
limiting".

~~~
danso
I think you have to see it in a technological context, as in, what does
_technology enable people to do_ that it didn't during your generation?
Because it's very likely your generation would be doing the same thing had
your younger years experienced the same kind of technological enabling.

Napster and LimeWire were big in my younger years and it allowed kids to
illicitly amass music collections beyond what most middle-income kids could in
a previous generation. Does that mean my generation were inherently more
appreciative of music and/or more unethical, had Internet file-sharing never
come to pass?

~~~
slantyyz
>> Napster and LimeWire were big in my younger years and it allowed kids to
illicitly amass music collections beyond what most middle-income kids could in
a previous generation. Does that mean my generation were inherently more
appreciative of music and/or more unethical, had Internet file-sharing never
come to pass?

The only thing that Napster and Limewire did was to allow you to get more
faster. You guys were no worse than my generation who shared vinyl and
recorded "personal copies" onto cassette tapes.

When I was young, schools used your "permanent record" as a scare tactic.
Having a black mark on your school record could prevent you from getting
certain jobs (the one example cited by my high school principal was getting
into the police academy). This stuff would get laughed at today.

On the other hand, today's version of your "permanent record" (i.e., anything
you've said or done online) is broader in scope and for the most part,
available to everyone. While it seems like everyone is aware of the potential
consequences, it also seems like people are also less concerned about them as
well. I'm just amazed at some of the stuff I see on sites that use Facebook
comments where everyone is pretty much posting with their real name.

------
danso
Pretty interesting dynamic. As someone pointed out, these people are hired by
BuzzFeed for their ability to be creative thinkers/creators who show aptitude
in drawing attention to themselves. These are precisely the kind of people who
would do something viral like this after quitting the company. As someone else
noted, this kind of public airing is usually career-limiting, but it's
different with BuzzFeed in that many industry folks tend to have disdain for
BF, so publicly dissing BF might have less of a negative connotation depending
on the nature of the complaint.

When I saw this headline, I immediately thought of Mark Duffy's rant in
Gaeker: [http://gawker.com/top-10-best-ever-wtf-omg-reasons-
buzzfeed-...](http://gawker.com/top-10-best-ever-wtf-omg-reasons-buzzfeed-
fired-me-lol-1471409834)

I was surprised to see that BF apparently has such strong constraints on
creative's side projects. That policy apparently doesn't apply to the
investigative journalism team, where reporters seem to have free reign to open
source their work and share their data.

------
gumby
This article is more interesting than its title suggests. You think it'll be a
schadenfreude-filled dish on problems with buzzfeed but no:

1\. BF trains people to go for eye-catching content _and_ personalities, so as
people leave in the normal course of events they call attention to their
departure as a way of helping their own career.

2\. BF basically doesn't come off as a bad place and indeed seems to be
teaching these people to do, well, item #1.

------
atemerev
Clickbait header opportunity missed :( Of all places, where that would be
legitimate...

------
catacombs
It seems to me a lot of these ex-BuzzFeed video producers just leave the
company once they become super popular and want "more independence."

It seems like they're publicly biting the hand that fed them by making these
videos: If BuzzFeed never hired them in the first place, they'd all just be
no-name YouTubers.

------
6stringmerc
I want to know how much these people get paid. The content industry needs some
transparency. Especially after that horrible stain on professionalism
Huffington Post paid its writers nothing and Ariana got $315 million.
Exploitation is not cool, nor is kneecapping the real market.

------
theparanoid
The Chubbs parody video[0] is very funny and spot on.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPjPPuA0ERg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPjPPuA0ERg)

------
smacktoward
An angle this article is kind of vague on that could potentially be of
interest to HN readers would be how many of these people's relationship to
BuzzFeed was through a new-ish L.A.-based video unit of theirs, BuzzFeed
Motion Pictures.

BuzzFeed Motion Pictures was launched in 2014 with a big splash and a $50
million investment from Andreessen Horowitz
([http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/buzzfeed-
raises-50-mil...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/buzzfeed-
raises-50-million-creates-724513)). It's led by viral content pioneer Ze Frank
([http://allthingsd.com/20120914/buzzfeed-hires-web-video-
pion...](http://allthingsd.com/20120914/buzzfeed-hires-web-video-pioneer-ze-
frank/)).

Frank has characterized the unit's approach to content creation as "cheap and
fast" ([http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buzzfeed-
studios-20150...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buzzfeed-
studios-20150809-story.html)), and they got in a fair bit of hot water last
year after firing two on-camera personalities for appearing in a non-BuzzFeed
video ([http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/06/non-compete-
agre...](http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/06/non-compete-agreements-
buzzfeed-firings-004600)), with Frank then warning remaining staff that "you
cannot work on personal projects outside of BuzzFeed that impact your ability
to work for us" ([http://adage.com/article/media/ze-frank-buzzfeed-motion-
pict...](http://adage.com/article/media/ze-frank-buzzfeed-motion-pictures-
employees-good/304605/), [https://www.buzzfeed.com/zefrank/being-a-part-of-
buzzfeed-mo...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/zefrank/being-a-part-of-buzzfeed-
motion-pictures)).

All of which makes the place sound a bit like a video sweatshop that makes its
money by grinding up talented young people and then spitting them out, so it
would be interesting to know how many of the complaints in this article are
from people who worked at BuzzFeed in general versus how many are from people
who worked at BuzzFeed Motion Pictures.

------
elevenfist
Half the people who make these videos still actually work for buzzfeed.

------
losteverything
This just confirmed my dinosaur status. I had no idea what BF did or that a
video factory existed to such an extent.

Don't despair, I still go to YouTube to see how to fix things.

------
danellis
This is just about impossible to read on mobile. Pop up ads everywhere.

~~~
apercu
Only slightly better on desktop, with a video player (for unrelated content)
cycling adds, and then moving down the right hand of the screen when you
scroll away from it.

The web is broken. Sigh.

