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Calacanis: Working at Mahalo is Like Prison Except We Gots Better Coffee
Earlier today, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis came out with 17 ways to save money running a business. He calls them "really good tips" – There are a couple of good ones on there like buying good chairs for employees but the majority of them show that working at Mahalo is like prison. In fact, I hear an electrified fence is going up in the coming weeks when they get the Series B funding. It’s also important to understand that entrepreneurs do not always make great leaders.
Duncan Riley at TechCrunch has his sarcastic take on the points which is well worth a read and Alain Sherter shows how Jason can easily run his company into the ground. There is a HUGE difference between the ceo/founders/stakeholders putting in time, and forcing the low-paid staff to be worked to death.
Update: Mahalo employee Sean Percival has a paragraph on how life is like for him at Mahalo.
What does Jason leave off his list? First, that all employees (including part time "guides") are basically forced into social media submission – thou shall vote, stumble, save every Mahalo content page. I call it his form of paid employee submissions – basically the same as affiliate marketing. And what I’ve learned is that to save money on paper products and water, they have only one toilet, men go on even hours, women on odd. If you need to go in-between, pee in a cup.
Why is Jason wrong in this case? Sure, having workers who bust their ass for a company is great. I did it for years and am doing it now working 14 hrs a day for CN (and for you). But it’s important to let employees come up for air sometimes. And that doesn’t mean team air, it means personal air. Jason brings in lunches, sounds great right? I’d be all for it once a week, but instead he forces employees to stay inside the prison office to eat. But not just eat – there are meetings while eating. So while stuffing your face quickly with a burrito or burger, you must discuss how to get the next Veronica Belmont video to go viral. Now, to turn this into something good, Jason could easily give his employees pre-paid cards for a few local joints to let them get out on the company dime. That’d be hot.
Employees do their best work when they have at least some amount of downtime. It doesn’t mean being off every other day, but it does mean being able to shut off the PC once in a while. In fact, I’ve seen employees actually work more effectively by having some normalcy in schedule.
What else does Jason suggest?
- Buying 2 monitors for employees – may as well get them mirrors so left eye goes to one, right eye to another
- Buying a fancy coffee pot – Jason says this saves employees time and money – sure the money part is great, the time part not so much – wouldn’t the 15 minutes of fresh air be a good thing?
- Don’t buy a phone system – I agree with this on a basic level – tho I don’t care for using employees phones for work – there just needs to be separation – what about a packet8 voip setup?
- Rent out your extra space – excellent suggestion, I’d love to rent some extra space somewhere in NYC
- Buy your workers computers for home – why not get them something for the car too – may as well install a pc in that single Mahalo bathroom
- Allow folks to work off-hours – again excellent, as long as the hours don’t run into each other
- Ask vendors for discounts – again, good suggestion, this is the place to really save large amounts of cash
In all of my years of management, the best thing I ever did was give my teams more room to breathe. I’d put my hours worked in my career against anyone and I can assure you that I’ve lost a lot of great chances with great people because of putting work first always. Jason should consider it as well if he wants his team to stay on. Short term his strategy works, but won’t in the long run. Burnout comes quick and with all of the current opportunities out there, people will leave when they are burned out. And when they leave, it will be at the worst time.
I am astounded by the the lack of startup reality people have about industry changing startups. I think attacks like this one are coming from two groups of people: Those who’ve never been in a startup and are blogging from their ‘full time’ 9-5 jobs at some cushy big company and start up companies that are ‘lifestyle’ companies (like 37 signals) where they have nice small business providing some limited audience service or product that will never get to be more than a few million (or 10′s of millions, max) dollars a year making their ‘startup’ lives very comfortable.
If you want to change an industry (Music, movies, media, distribution, manufacturing, biotech, greentech, you name it) it requires massive amounts of work with little capital and incredible dedication to the job.
Especially if you’re trying to bootstrap it as much as you can and not end up owning 15% of your company amoung the founders and employees with VC’s hogging 85% of that $100M payout.
I say: Wimps and wanna be’s are the complainers.
I think I like his ideas, the look a little more in-line with how I’d treat my staff and my business!
Mark Cuban’s Rules For Startups
Marcos Gonzalez thinks he is very funny with his stupid comment on every post in the blogosphere on this topic. Loser.
Here is what I find ironic. Working hard is the “crunch” part of the name TechCrunch, and then Duncan goes and makes light of the need for hard work.
Jason is a serial entrepreneur who has already started and sold two companies. I think he knows what he is talking about, but it is everyone else’s job to make sure others don’t work as hard.
Just becuase the prevailing wisdom is that you can build applications that automatically do everything (in the web space) does not mean that you cannot succeed with hard work.
Im just giving richard a hard time, there is a backstory here. At least he doesn’t go the anonymous route :)
Yeah Sean and I go back a little ways, just a little lite hearted jab between friends.
Allen the irony involved in the TechCrunch story is the only positive remarks I see come from employees. If that doesn’t fit right in with “forced into social media submission ” then I don’t know what does! I’ve always found it interesting that Jason and his crew run in and circle the wagons anytime a challenge comes up.
Why all this bathroom talk? We have two bathrooms and are in the process of getting two more (literally being built right now).
Richard are you working at circuit city yet? Hows that going? I need a blue ray player.
Nope never felt the need to stoop that low. I see you are enjoying the in house job over there. From what I see I think I’m glad I got out of there when I did. Wish it wasn’t under those terms but hell what can you do?
So not only does Mahalo kill your social life it also turns you into an asshole – RE: comment above
i have to say that i kind of like most of jason’s ideas, and i feel like what you said vs. what he meant was taken out of proportion.
i am an interactive project/product manager, and have worked in interactive/integrated marketing for the past nine years…from startup to well-established. as i’m sure most know, agencies are not exactly known for the 9-5 routine. most of the things that jason lists as being things to save money are quite common in the agency environment, more in the sense of just making your employees happy that they are at work…and i think that’s really the context that his comments should be taken in rather than ways to save money.
it’s all about the nice little things that you get at work that help to make it feel more like a place you WANT to be rather than a place you HAVE to be.
am i happier to come into work and sit down at an aeron chair rather than a crap-ass regular office chair? yep.
happier to come in because i have good coffee as opposed to plain old folgers? heck yeah.
happier to work through my lunch when it’s purchased for me. yes? yes i am.
am inclined to think a little more about work when i have the tools ready and available for me to use them when inspiration strikes (i.e. the computer for home…or even a nice laptop). sure.
how could any of these things be construed as ‘bad’, or contribute to MAKING a person work more than they necessarily want to?
these are things that show me that my employer a) cares and is thinking about my general well-being b) understands that they ask a little extra, and in return, are willing to give a little extra and c) is interested in maintaining the integrity and long-term future of my company…and that’s an especially poignant thing to think about in the start-up environment.
i don’t think jason is saying, ‘you MUST work 80+ hours a week ad ignore your families and lives.” what i think he’s saying is simply, ‘look…we’re a startup. you are going to have to work a little harder…and i’m going to be working hard right along with you. i want to show you that i appreciate it by providing you with x,y, & z’
while jason could’ve perhaps been a little more tactful in how he said some of those things, i think some of you guys (i.e. duncan riley) could’ve cut the guy a little slack and took it for what it really was rather churn up the negative spin machine.
to those that work at mahalo and jason: good luck to you all.
I’m sure you’ll find a better match, in either case I hope you did learn something (if not a lot) from the experience. You’ll find some experiences can be more valuable than any check.
He can’t even spell “flexible” properly. I don’t feel bad for MAhalo employees. Getting paid that much to do monkey work isn’t awful.
Mahalo “a sweatshop powered search engine”
I love comments like the one above. I’m also a Mahalo employee, and I have a few things to add:
1) Jason didn’t ask me to do this.
2) If Mahalo is a sweatshop, then sweatshops have gotten a really bad rap. This is the first company I’ve worked for that hasn’t nickel-and-dimed me where it comes to my workstation, perks and amenities. As Sean stated, we have 2 bathrooms, 2 more on the way, and no silly schedule. I like CN, but this kind of rumor-mongering ultimately hurts you more than us. I’m not calling it muckraking or yellow journalism, but… I don’t know how to finish that sentence diplomatically.
3) Sean is pretty decent guy, and so is Jason. Of course, trolls don’t need a reason to attack…
4) Ok, I don’t think there’s anything I can say to convince the people who obviously know more about Mahalo than I do that the lunch meetings are a form of slavery, and since I lack their omniscience, I’ll have to speak from experience. The lunch meetings are a crucial part of keeping our 50+ staffers on the same page. If we didn’t have them, we’d be wasting much more time coordinating on an individual basis. More to the point, though, every company has some form of compulsory task. Weighed against the various freedoms Mahalo affords me that no other company ever has (I make my own schedule, I choose what I work on, etc.) one hour of my day– during work hours, for which I am paid– and fed– is not a lot to ask. It’s actually pretty cool to get free food on such a consistent basis. I think of friends of mine who have to commute, are forced to overpay daily for food they don’t even like, and they aren’t paid for their lunch hour, which in any case is wasted time they would have preferred to spend at home. If what I have is slavery, then why do I pity them?
5) We get downtime! We have lives! Sheesh. Do I need to say more?! These allegations are silly. I lead a very full life outside of Mahalo, and I can’t think of a single instance where I was forced (or even asked) to set my personal priorities aside for the good of the company. Not once. I truly think that those of you with some level of critical thinking who are currently jumping on the Jason-is-a-slavedriver bandwagon are going to feel really foolish for having engaged in this baseless speculation.
6) Mahalo is a business. Like any other business, it will live and die by the work ethic of the people who run it. Do we work long hours? Sure, sometimes. Is there stress? You bet. To my mind, this whole debacle speaks more to the sense of entitlement some people have than Jason’s business practices, and that’s fine– there are businesses that ask for little more than benchwarmers and clockpunchers, and I think that a lot of people have gotten spoiled on that. I will admit that this work is a bit intense at times, and it’s not for everyone, but that’s ok. I spoke to a former VP of UPN who knows David Geffen personally, and she told me he was fond of saying “if you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday.” Wow. Harsh. Mahalo isn’t that kind of shark-tank, but it’s also not a loose-and-lazy gig where there is infinite patience with the laziest of slackers. It’s been a few years since I heard about the Geffen thing, but I wonder about the employees for whom those words were intended. Were they slackers? Did they find themselves working for one of the most well-known and successful entrepreneurs in the world and complaining because of too much pressure? What might their net worth be today? Another, semi-unrelated question: just how far do you think a person can get on the bare minimum of effort? How many successful people do you think got their success just coasting along?
For my part, I’d rather work hard and experience the answers to those questions firsthand than make sure not to work one second longer than my weekly 40 hours and find myself trolling message board and complaining about what a jerk my boss was. The point, though, is that I have a choice. But hey, complaining is a popular hobby, so all you wags out there: kvetch away. I’m pretty sure Mahalo can take it. ;)
I have to agree with Jason on the two monitor recommendation. We’ve recently enacted this policy and it has been great. The amount of time I save having two monitors is amazing.