(originally uploaded by l0ckergn0me)
Calacanis just dropped a post on his blog that’s chock-full of tips on how to save money with a start-up. Most of them are bean counting strategies to save a buck that make perfect sense, but toward the middle of his list, Calacanis drops straight into oxymoronic territory:
[...]
10. Buy your hardest working folks computers for home. If you have folks who are willing to work an extra hour a day a week you should get them a computer for home. Once you get to three hours of work a week from home you’re at 150 hours a year and that’s a no brainer. Invest in equipment *if* the person is a workaholic.
11. Fire people who are not workaholics… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. Go work at the post office or Starbucks if you want balance in your life. For realz.
[...]
So does that make all Mahalo employees workaholics by default? Even the student, work from home parents or normal folk “expert” guides that Calacanis likes to pimp that he has working for him?
Let me back up.
Five months ago I wrote a piece about Mahalo and in conclusion made a point about the editorial scalability issues they faced with the current business model:
[...] For shits and giggles, say that Mahalo succeeds in creating result pages for the top 25,000 search queries from Google and Yahoo!. Then what? How many “expert” monkeys are needed to not only scale to meet the demand of the ever shifting zeitgeist, but to maintain pre-existing hand-linked search result pages? [...]
To which Calacanis responded:
[...] Also, our team is not a bunch of “monkeys,” they are hard working, real people who are trying to make a living by help people find quality information on the web. These are good people doing good work and I would ask that you have some respect for them and their effort. We’ve got students, work from home parents, and normal folk trying to make a little extra money to take care of their kids a little bit better building Mahalo search result pages. Try to have a little decency. [...]
While that strawman response made one little tear run slowly down my cheek, the question now running rampant through my head is: How exactly can Calacanis pimp “real people” as the core team of Mahalo and then demand his “real people” employees to be workaholics?
As commenter #76 on the TechCrunch post puts it:
I spoke to their CTO through a common contact for a product job and he said they just hired a new one so they won’t need another one for a few more months… phew dodged a bullet… with this kind of shit even if it’s half true I’d be gone in 10 days… yeah I’ll work 60 hour week for a company that is make real products and treats me well… but not for some shit SEO wikipedia wannabe clown company
Carry on JC.
Agggghhhh!
What a dink.
That post makes me so angry. And the same goes for the idiots who give kudos to someone who makes a list on how burn-out talented, dedicated, hardworking people, for less. What about catheters Jason? Bathroom breaks waste a ton of money.
And lets not forget my favorite:
Number 15. Make people believe they’re actually owners in the process of helping you build the start-up. They’ll work harder for less.
Blood. Boils.
Here is a fact I wish the corporate world would acknowledge… to the average corporate employee there is not 40 hours of work to do in one week. Most people have to come up with creative ways to stay busy. Once that attempt is exhausted they simply begin to wait for work from their supervisor or fade into a drone.
Workaholics should not be taken advantage of. Instead they need to focus on themselves and their families… not some greedy corporate prick.
the average corporate employee isn’t in a start-up position, so i don’t think that necessarily applies to this situation. that said, your scenario of drone workers is probably the exact scenario calacanis is trying to avoid when he speaks of wanting “workaholics.” the problem is that his phrasing is far too over the top, so it leaves him wide open for criticism. none of this is new with him. he always makes provocative statements that cause commotion.
that post was all about how smart jason calanis is in the eyes of jason calacanis. period. why else would a ceo share budgeting tactics, particularly as they apply to human resources, and consider it positive brand PR? there are far too many variables in the mix there that could spin out of control.
i wonder what his investors thought of it all.