… first as a freelance blogger, then as Managing Editor of Netscape, and now as Editorial Director of Mahalo, I can say that Duncan Riley’s post about Jason (which I’m not going to bother linking to, b/c I avoid linking to garbage online) on TechCrunch is totally out of line.
I normally don’t weigh in on these types of discussions (I almost didn’t post this), because I strongly believe in not feeding trolls, whether they happen to be comment trolls, blog trolls, or good guys who normally write good pieces who suddenly fall into bad form / trollish behavior that borders on slander. I also know that Jason is perfectly capable of handling these discussions himself and my time would be better spent focusing on doing what I do well: supporting and growing my team and helping them create good online content.
However, I’m personally insulted by Duncan Riley’s post and the bile that I’ve seen online as a result of it. It implies that Mahalo is something it isn’t. That implication, in its flailing, badly formed attempt to defend the people who work at Mahalo, insults all of us, and what’s worse, distracts our audience from the good hard work we are doing, thereby potentially undermining our continued success. Don’t be fooled. None of our employees benefit from Duncan’s post. None of the families who make money at Mahalo, working hard to make search a better place, benefit from it.
I work with a great team of good people at Mahalo. We eat lunch together. Sometimes some of us aren’t in the mood for what was for lunch and we go out to get food on our own. Sometimes we work late. Sometimes we come in late. We drink coffee from the expensive coffee machine and it’s great. Some of us walk to Starbucks because some of us prefer Starbucks. Sometimes we take a walk outside in the afternoon and enjoy the Santa Monica sun for no reason other than to do so and because we can. We often go out to dinner together. Whenever we can, we all get together for a night at the movies or for some karaoke. None of us are enslaved. None of us are downtrodden. You can watch many of our Mahalo Daily episodes to see several of our enthusiastic employees having fun participating in our podcasts. I think all of us are smiling and laughing on a regular basis working hard on a great startup.
In case you have no idea what I’m blogging about: Here’s a related post from Sean Percival, one of our Guides. Here’s Jason’s original post in its original form before it was totally misrepresented by Duncan on TechCrunch. If you haven’t read it yet, you should, and you should also see this follow up post.
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