He also mentioned that the CTO of Mahalo quit. The CTO of a technology startup does not normally quit after 3 years! That would be far more shocking to me than a programmer quitting after 1 year.
Evan Culver as much as said Mahalo was a shitty place to work (http://twitter.com/evanculver). If the CTO is quitting it can't be that great for a programmer.
My impression of Jason is that he underpays people, overworks them, and doesn't hold himself to the same standard. Does he take a significantly below market salary (or no salary?) Does he actually clock in 9+ hours a day on Mahalo? Is he the first one there in the morning and the last one out?
From the outside it seems like he spends a lot of his time playing around on his side projects. Hanging out with cool people. And generally taking it easy. No one wants to kill themselves working for a guy that seems to be having fun doing unrelated things. VCs are even less okay with that, as far as I know. How long will they put up with him launching/running side companies?
My guess is that within 18 months he will not be the CEO of Mahalo. He will be much happier doing things he genuinely likes and is genuinely good at, such as This Week in Startups.
I definitely see a lot of truth in what you say. I enjoy him on TWiS but he barely mentions Mahalo in passing on the shows except for some metric like 10M uniques.
Mahalo has been going backwards in my opinion. About a year ago it seemed like a prettier social news site. Now it seems like a flashier/social yahoo answers clone.
The big ask a question box on the homepage has to go.
My quitting Mahalo was in no way a comment on either Mahalo or Jason -- it was about me, my life, and stuff going on in it: and what i wanted to do next.
Jason is telling it like it is. And I'm totally stoked about ThisWeekIn and it fits much better with where I want to do -- and I'm frankly delighted to be working with Jason on it, given both our friendship and his experience. And he has a gun to my head and made me write this :)
(In all seriousness: JCal is telling the truth, I promise.)
He may not have quit Mahalo, but he clearly quit his job as CTO of Mahalo. You can spin that if you want, but it's not generally considered a good thing when the CTO of a tech startup resigns his position.
So people are not allowed to leave their position after three years? Wow... you're more hard core than me!
Seriously, you have no idea. Mark and I have been close friends since 1994 or 95 and I think I might know the situation a little better than you.
I mean, it feels like you're looking to make this into something bad... I think it's GREAT if someone I work with moves on to another company I'm associated with.
Jason, what makes this site nice is that we generally don't accuse each other of having ulterior motives. Everything I said should be taken at face value. I'm not trolling. I'm just calling it like I see it, and I certainly admit I could be calling it wrong!
What I see is you perfectly okay with your CTO resigning his job after 3 years, but coming down harshly on a programmer for resigning after 1 year. That seems unfair and hypocritical, and that's why I pointed it out. You can safely ignore me, or point out why I'm wrong. You don't need to resort to name calling or get upset.
Evan Culver as much as said Mahalo was a shitty place to work (http://twitter.com/evanculver). If the CTO is quitting it can't be that great for a programmer.
My impression of Jason is that he underpays people, overworks them, and doesn't hold himself to the same standard. Does he take a significantly below market salary (or no salary?) Does he actually clock in 9+ hours a day on Mahalo? Is he the first one there in the morning and the last one out?
From the outside it seems like he spends a lot of his time playing around on his side projects. Hanging out with cool people. And generally taking it easy. No one wants to kill themselves working for a guy that seems to be having fun doing unrelated things. VCs are even less okay with that, as far as I know. How long will they put up with him launching/running side companies?
My guess is that within 18 months he will not be the CEO of Mahalo. He will be much happier doing things he genuinely likes and is genuinely good at, such as This Week in Startups.