I Can’t Work Under These Conditions | Hacker News Reader

I Can’t Work Under These Conditions

techcrunch.com

141 pointsMazy47 comments

"Kick someone's ass on the first day, or become someone's bitch. After then, everything will be alright."

This seems to be Michael asserting his place in the pecking order, in his own mischievous way :-)

I think this has more to do with Arrington asserting his place in the industry pecking order; "no, really, see, I'm not AOL's bitch."

Obscure clause on Page 47 of the M & A documents:

"This deal becomes null and void if any internal AOL documents end up on Techcrunch.com before the end of the due diligence period."

</just kidding>

After noticing this was written by Arrington, I think this was clearly tongue in cheek, and partially meant as a display of "Look, here's some proof that TechCrunch is not really changing and is not going to censor stories due to various financial interests. We're still going to complain about things that are dumb, and I think meetings are dumb."

At least until after the meeting...

"New shit has come to light! .. I mean, there has been a new development pertaining to our expected level of professional conduct .."

Offtopic: When I read this post the first time I thought "Gee, ya think?", but then I was reminded of how obvious something can be in your mind, yet so insanely difficult to formulate.

The gist of Arrington's article might be very clear in my mind, but I doubt I could have formulated it as precisely as Zach did without trouble.

The world is a wondrous thing...

You think it was clearly tongue in cheek? Did the smiley face help you out? :-)

Apparently the smiley was left of the HN Title.

Considering Michael Arrington put a Dilbert cartoon in the post, I assume this is meant as humor.

which is funny because it's true

Ok, I’m off to go review HR policies, or something. On the upside, there’s a guy here named Brian from corp dev and I think with enough pressure he’s going to tell me all the other acquisition deals AOL is working on.

It pays to be an optimist.

Wait, you think your company can be bought out by another company and NOT have a meet-n-greet?

I would think it seriously odd if everyone tried to ignore the change and the new overlords didn't introduce themselves.

I don't think Warren Buffet or other Berkshire people do a lot of meetings after a buyout. Sure, they bring him over to show to an average worker, but they're not there to manage. If they don't believe in firm or management they won't invest in the first place.

Most of their buyouts are private because the founder wants to retire or the heirs don't want the hassle of running the company. In either case the people in Arrington's role don't stick around because they already have professional management in place.

that's actually not true, they like the founders to stick around; Buffett is great at keeping founders around long after Berkshire buys them

You two have opposing statements, and neither of you backs up your argument.

I'm sorry, I don't get it. What two opposing statements does he have?

And also I don't see what argument is he trying to make in your opinion. From what I see he makes factual rebuttal of previous (incorrect) statement.

Yeah. It's completely unsurprising. It also looks like a chunk of the meeting is getting them situated with HR. It's mind numbing but better than getting situated with HR via phone tag.

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1744273. The article (at least its title) isn't serious.

Arrington seems to be unreasonably excited about the gifts. What will he do when the dump truck pulls up with all of the 'recycled' AOL CDs as gifts. :-)

They'll do what everyone does: use them as coasters, play dangerous frisbee games, and test their quality by breaking the CDs in half with their bare hands.

Theoretically they could connect to the Internet by accidentally sticking it in a CD tray, but I suspect TechCrunch already has Internet access.

omfg - your comment resonated so well, I couldnt stop laughing. These are the very same things I used to do with the cd's.

Man this is funny, thank God I havent seen the AOL CD in a while

Then you need this AOL Help page: http://help.aol.com/help/microsites/microsite.do?cmd=display...

Having difficulty deciding if that page is a joke from AOL.

The emphasis with the red squares is a little much (see this one: http://help.aol.com/Platform/Publishing/images/insert_cd_cd_...)

You forgot microwaving them.

And you forgot charging them up on a dremel

Build a CD Tesla Turbine, hopefully - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8v_dnIn-s0

Microwave.

Followed shortly by evacuating the office for the rest of the day to escape the horrible stench.

I still think that at some level Michael Arrington approved this deal because it meant one more story he could break. He's clearly crossed from dedication to addiction.

If that's so, I bet he's pretty sore with Om Malik these days.

This smells contrived, as if TechCrunch will somehow be cooler if it rebels against its parent a la Reddit v. Conde Nast.

Can someone explain what "Working Session" means to me? There's nothing listed for them to work on.

I'm guessing that they're not going to find out what they're working on until they start. Perhaps its something like ranking all the employees.

Just don't forget to turn in your badge when you leave.

AOL took like $50 out of my last paycheck for mine!

I think he just wrote a blog post. He can apparently work under these conditions.

We have a big meeting coming up soon where I work. I can very much relate. I was recently thinking "That something like 1500 man hours wasted on all this togetherness when we could be accomplishing something."

This article is a better put "Service Temporarily Unavailable" message. Way to make news when you're too busy to do real journalism :-)

Did anyone else find it hilarious that an entire section of time is blocked out for "Administrative Happiness"?

So, we can assume there will be nothing worth reading on TechCrunch tomorrow.

Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that he published the agenda of their internal all-hands?

At least where I work, these things always have "confidential" in tiny print in a corner for no obvious reason.

Gifts, what could it be? A mobile built from AOL CDs perhaps?

I hate HR orientation :(

Lest anyone forget the absolute utter dirt bags running the show at AOL, let me regale thee with all time hit #1 "Cancel the account" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY

Good luck Mr. Arrington, and better luck getting out.

2:30-3:00 Return to their desks and start looking for new jobs?

I wonder how much he is being paid to attend that 3 hour meeting

"STFU and go cash your check, numnutts."

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