Calacanis' Side of the Resignation Story

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1296902

by samd • 16 years ago

38 34 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

An excerpt from his email newsletter.

An email with the subject line every CEO loathes: Resignation.

Ugh.

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?

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?"

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.

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.

"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.

Right after I hit send I had that familiar moment: "did I really just say that?"

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!"

What's the benefit of telling people how you really feel when the result of doing so only results in unpleasantness?

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?

Oh, it turns out my response is now on your blog, Hacker News and TechCrunch.

Great.

daleharvey• 16 years ago

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.

nl2• 16 years ago

Steve Souders is at Google now: http://stevesouders.com/bio.php

petercooper• 16 years ago

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.

hga• 16 years ago

"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

starkfist2• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

starkfist2• 16 years ago

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.

rradu• 16 years ago

There's reason to believe Yahoo is on its way back up. They've let go of a lot of their underperforming services, grew display advertising by 22% in the past year, and have a very capable executive suite.

I'd say moving to Yahoo is a good move.

moe2• 16 years ago

Hell yes. Yahoo demonstrates some great engineering talent in various products.

What does Mahalo have? A scraped HTML linkfarm. Which are dime a dozen, except this one somehow evaded the google ban so far.

The whole "trying to crush Yahoo" notion is just surreal to me. Not only do I not see that happen. But I also think many people would miss yahoo and their products, whereas I have never seen anyone say anything positive about Mahalo.

rit2• 16 years ago

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

nl2• 16 years ago

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.

dennykmiu• 16 years ago

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.

kevinp2• 16 years ago

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.

staunch3• 16 years ago

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.

jolan• 16 years ago

I definitely see a lot of truth in what you say. I enjoy him on TWiS but he barely mentions Mahalo in passing on the shows except for some metric like 10M uniques.

Mahalo has been going backwards in my opinion. About a year ago it seemed like a prettier social news site. Now it seems like a flashier/social yahoo answers clone.

The big ask a question box on the homepage has to go.

jasonmcalacanis3• 16 years ago

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.

staunch3• 16 years ago

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.

markjeffrey• 16 years ago

This is Mark Jeffrey.

My quitting Mahalo was in no way a comment on either Mahalo or Jason -- it was about me, my life, and stuff going on in it: and what i wanted to do next.

Jason is telling it like it is. And I'm totally stoked about ThisWeekIn and it fits much better with where I want to do -- and I'm frankly delighted to be working with Jason on it, given both our friendship and his experience. And he has a gun to my head and made me write this :)

(In all seriousness: JCal is telling the truth, I promise.)

- Mark

brandon272• 16 years ago

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

Raphael• 16 years ago

I hear frequently that Mahalo is "crushing it".

moe2• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

underflow error

steve19• 16 years ago

"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.

rit2• 16 years ago

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.

blueben2• 16 years ago

Look up the definition of Tourettes tics; this most certainly does not count as a tic. The popular condition people who are "brutally honest" (aka: an asshole) claim is Aspergers. Aspergers is not in fact an asshole syndrome, but internet assholes have adopted it as their self-diagnosis of choice anyway.

jsharpe• 16 years ago

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?

doki_pen• 16 years ago

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.

kevinp2• 16 years ago

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.

jasonmcalacanis3• 16 years ago

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

blueben2• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

Calacanis' Side of the Resignation Story

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