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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

Withholding judgement and taking that tweet at face value, it does touch on something important. Usually when entering a job, a candidate will be excited and say just about anything. "Hell yeah I could see myself here for the next 5 years!" Who knows if that happened here.

The employer may take on certain expectations, possibility choosing a hire based on that enthusiasm and apparent commitment. Either way, no one expects a new employee to a) dislike a place soon after coming onboard, or b) abruptly take another offer. Is 12 months abrupt? Depends on the expectations.

It's a difficult situation that has to be handled tactfully on both sides. Doesn't appear to have happened here: Jason for his response, Evan for resigning _via email_.

Plenty of people resign via email simply to make it official. That's where the whole 'handing in your notice' expression comes from, people used to literally hand deliver their termination letter, these days letters are emails so it is a logical - even if it feels rude - development.

I'm admittedly assuming, based on the severity of Jason's reaction, that the email was the first he'd heard of Evan's resignation.

Had it been a face-to-face conversation, then a letter, the fireworks could have been avoided. Speaking from first-hand experience, it can be absolutely gut-wrenching, but ultimately feels like the right thing to do.

In light of the response, you could even say that mahalo employees might prefer to resign via email rather than to face the full brunt of the response in person, your assumption could easily be right and there might be a good reason for it.

In which case you have an opportunity to wake up the next day, decidedly the bigger person, wholly assured in your decision to leave, and with no regrets about how you did so.

opting to email rather than hand in a resignation is not going to undermine anyone's decision to leave.

I am sorry, maybe I'm old school but resigning by email is weak. If you think you know how it'll go, prepare, have a response ready. Maybe, you'll be surprised at the very least you will be respected for walking in the door.

and usually when interviewing for a job, suggesting you might not stick around for a long as is convenient for the company will disqualify you.

invariably hr gives you the "we're looking for someone will grow with the company ... ", and you're expected to oblige them with some reassuring "enthusiasm".

Nothing like a greencard application to show such "enthusiasm"!

I've failed to get offers when I've been up front and said, "I'll leave in two years if I'm not challenged anymore." And that's okay, because it probably wasn't a good fit.

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.

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.

> 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.

I always thought that "trophy kids" didn't refer to trophies earned for kid-competitions, but rather as an allusion to "trophy wives".

It's just thinly concealed envy. Older generations have always looked down on the young.

> For all we know, the guy might have done something quite bad.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter; Jason has a poor reputation here anyway and, assuming this is the full email conversation, this goes a long way to proving why.

How you treat people that piss you off is important in any business; acting like that looks immature and hissy. Polite anger would seem the correct response (if he was angry) - otherwise it just looks like your throwing toys out of a pram.

From the source's mouth: "I've never worked with such a great team and learned so much in such a short period of time. I owe all of it to the opportunity you've given me, Jason and I thank you immensely for that."

So we have a one-sided story, from a source who contradicts himself. I'd rather not jump to conclusions just yet.

Where is the contradiction there? It seems like a standard "it's been great but I have an even better opportunity to go for" email.

In fact; it could well be complete bunk. He might have hated working there. But if so it's an example of how to deal with these situations - polite and positive.

I've been "burned" by exactly what pg just said, on Reddit too. And I agree, because with the labor laws, the employer has more to lose than the employee if they aired certain things. For our non-US people, in California, there are laws that specify that ex-employers cannot say bad things about an employee (a bad one or not), to the employee's next prospective employer.

As the employee, you get away with some things that "structurally" (as pg said) from the legal perspective that employers cannot.

Another perspective: in some states, such as Pennsylvania, employment by law is "at will" and you can be fired/sacked/relieved "without cause."

So you might lose your job. You'll get a reference but nothing that your future employer is really going to base a hiring decision on.

I'm not convinced that the old employer loses any money by replacing and retraining employees once you subtract raises that would have been earned and benefits, so I tend to think there's still a tremendous amount of power on the side of the company rather than the employee.

Almost every state is like that, with a few exceptions only.

The corporation is favored by law over the individual in almost every law that governs corporate-individual commerce, of any kind, in the US.

And they wonder why their employees don't feel loyal.

I'll keep this goal in mind, and try to remind participants here not to jump to conclusions based on first, partial reports.

BTW, the comparison to how skeptically we read forwarded emails makes the point well. We should treat most blog postings, and especially most viral tweets, in much the same way.

> For all we know, the guy might have done something quite bad.

Line 46-48 in that email are pretty clear.

Gracious and leaving, maybe in person would have been better, but as those emails come it is pretty good.

It's not as though he was fired.

Yes but for all you know he could have just spent thousands sending him to conferences or some other specialized training only to have him turn around and quit for a competitor. (I have no idea if that's the case but have seen things like that happen at other businesses) Either way it would be nice if hacker news didn't focus on this drama.

I've been an employer, and even though stuff like that happens, that's life and you have to calculate that in.

But Evan clearly does not seem to be aware of any reason like that, he's literally clearly confused about the amount of venom that gets thrown his way, for exercising a right that every employee has, to hand in their notice.

To go to work for a large company like Yahoo and to be allowed to work on an open source project is in and off itself plenty of reason to switch and any mature employer would recognize that.

we're still outside looking in, because writing good emails doesn't reflect a person's actions in real life. I've seen it before, people lying through their teeth .. much less just typing good emails for proper documentation purposes.

I don't care so much about fairness--tabloid culture makes it impossible and is not going away--but I am saddened for such a "story" to rise so quickly on HN.

As much as Mahalo is a total diarrhea stain on the internet, and as much as I'll vote up articles about yet another angle of its spamminess, Calacanis' internal business stuff is simply not apropos.

It's only more from one side of the story, but Evan noted on his Twitter feed that there was previously no anomisity between the two of them. FWIW.

Even if this is the whole story, the pose of righteous anger by many commenters is silly overkill.

So, Calacanis got emotional and snippy about losing an employee. It shows he cares. Despite the armchair philosophizing about its effects on morale or recruiting, it might be a net win for the Mahalo team for Calacanis to show a little anger/disapproval/impatience when this happens.

You'd think some of the finger-wagging fuddy-duddies had never heard the stories about Steve Jobs' "soft touch" with employees and partners...

Even Steve Jobs was smart enough to use reality distortion rather than lose his temper when someone quit: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

There are plenty of reports of Jobs berating people mercilessly, and firing people on passing whims.

Compared to that, Calacanis making the resignation effective immediately -- often a good practice for other reasons -- and taking a couple parting potshots at an employee's choice/tenure-length and new employer is mild.

I think I give some reasonable perspective on the overall issue at the 1:34 minutes mark in this YouTube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf9DUK_4fbg

While the email was obviously a mistake on my part (I would take it back it I could), it was a personal message from me to an employee who I was very disappointed in. It was real--perhaps too real--and it is based on my passion for young people and their potential. Nothing more.

There's a ton of backstory, but I don't want to make this anything more than what it is: a personal issue between a startup founder and a kid with a lot of potential who left to do something else.

Rock on HN

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