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How to Resign Gracefully

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Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#41

Post by exit »

DanielRibeiro wrote: post #13

Statiscally speaking, it is a sad episode for both Jason and Evan: the former will be condemned by several people for handling the matter not in the best possible way, and the later for making its employer's inadequate response public. Which is relevant, as Jason, being more well known, is more likely to actually suffer a bigger impact from this bad press than the engineer. Not a win-win situation by far.

i'm pretty happy jason's character is being exposed. hopefully every future potential hire will see this.

Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#42

Post by khafra »

cletus wrote: post #30
prodigal_erik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not talking about conflict. He's talking about yelling, which is a monkey dominance game for someone who has lost interest in finding the right answer. It's just a hair below shoving on the "cannot control himself, belongs in a cage" scale of warning signs. What am I made of? I'm a human being, not a slave, so I demand zero tolerance for this in any workplace.

And the relationship analogy still applies: sure most (hopefully) conflict isn't settled more amicably but tempers do blow up and things get said in the heat of the moment. Expecting that to never happen makes you look thin-skinned, naive or both.

I've been in a relationship for two years that hasn't involved any yelling. The year-long relationship I had before that didn't involve any yelling. The 1.5 year relationship before that was mostly long-distance, but didn't involve any yelling, either. The one before that had some yelling in it, and I found it unpleasant enough to avoid yell-prone relatioships from that point forward.

Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#43

Post by donw »

swombat wrote: post #36

Let's play word-replace... A lot of comments on SocialCrunch revolved around being treated badly. If you’re lucky you have a husband that’s passionate about you. If so, such husbands will get heated and yell because they care. Yeah, sounds just as lame.

This is one of my favorite techniques in showing why some arguments are asinine; well played.

Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#44

Post by cletus »

dennykmiu wrote: post #17

Jason needs to chill. It is not clear to me if Evan has damaged his brand as an individual. But it is clear that Jason has damaged Mahalo as a brand. As the CEO, Jason has responsibility to his shareholders. If you promote someone and still he leaves, you need to find out why and you need to ensure that the team left behind is still motivated. A good CEO does that by inviting the departing employee to a face-to-face…

Mahalo is no better or worse off for this incident.

The people who hate Jason and/or Mahalo still hate them. The people who like Mahalo, well, I can't imagine they quite match up with the profile of the average YC reader...

Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#45

Post by cletus »

ErrantX wrote: post #39

> Had it remained private, which it should’ve, Jason may have calmed down and mellowed about the situation over time. Honestly, I find that highly unlikely. Why shouldn't the guy post it online, really? I believe he was "verbally" abused on twitter and "yelled at" rudely in an email. It's important to know these things about an employer. > you that if there was anything urgent there (eg prescription medication) that…

> Why shouldn't the guy post it online, really?

Because now on the first page when you google his name you'll find a post about him leaving a company after 12 months and posting a private exchange with his (former) boss on his blog.

Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#46

Post by russgray »

cletus wrote: post #44
dennykmiu wrote: post #17

Jason needs to chill. It is not clear to me if Evan has damaged his brand as an individual. But it is clear that Jason has damaged Mahalo as a brand. As the CEO, Jason has responsibility to his shareholders. If you promote someone and still he leaves, you need to find out why and you need to ensure that the team left behind is still motivated. A good CEO does that by inviting the departing employee to a face-to-face…

Mahalo is no better or worse off for this incident. The people who hate Jason and/or Mahalo still hate them. The people who like Mahalo, well, I can't imagine they quite match up with the profile of the average YC reader...

Mahalo are worse off. There are plenty of people out there - me included - who neither knew much nor cared much about Mahalo but may have considered working there had an opportunity arisen. I wouldn't work there now though. That might not give Jason any sleepless nights, but I bet many better developers than I have watched this play out with great distaste and resolved never to put themselves in the way of the people involved.

Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#47

Post by elblanco »

chime wrote: post #16
elblanco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish your reply hadn't been deleted, I was about to reply with: http://www.watergate.info/images/resign.jpg

I don't know which reply of mine you say was deleted. I haven't deleted anything.

No, the reply to you. Sorry, wasn't clear.

Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#48

Post by dennykmiu »

russgray wrote: post #46
cletus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mahalo is no better or worse off for this incident. The people who hate Jason and/or Mahalo still hate them. The people who like Mahalo, well, I can't imagine they quite match up with the profile of the average YC reader...

Mahalo are worse off. There are plenty of people out there - me included - who neither knew much nor cared much about Mahalo but may have considered working there had an opportunity arisen. I wouldn't work there now though. That might not give Jason any sleepless nights, but I bet many better developers than I have watched this play out with great distaste and resolved never to put themselves in the way of the people…

That's exactly the point. If Mahalo was a restaurant and I am a dish washer, I probably won't think too much about who I work for and who I work with. But if I am a technologist then I would have to choose to work for a startup. Life is too damn short to be working for a dick.

Re: How to Resign Gracefully

#49

Post by ericd »

kelnos wrote: post #37
ericd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is probably accurate for most megacorps, but I should hope that employees at a startup or company of less than 10 people don't feel this way about the company. At that level, it's very much a personal relationship rather than a company-employee relationship where loyalty only goes one way. Not all companies are about the creation of profit at any cost... some actually like creating an environment that is pl…

It's a personal relationship with the people, not with the company. You feel a personal connection with the founders, with the other early employees. You're passionate about the product. You want to build something amazing, and make more money out of it than you put in, and maybe change the world doing so. Your CEO probably cares about you. It probably kills him when the company is running out of money and he has to…

My point was that when the company is the founders, it's not really possible to separate loyalty to the founders and loyalty to the company. At that point, it's very possible that the founders/company will act out of loyalty to you rather than purely out of self-interest, at least until their ability to do so runs out.

And I disagree vehemently that one should feel no loyalty to their startup. I know of at least one startup that has run out of money without sacking their employees, and the employees agreed to waive their pay until the startup was able to get its cashflow going again. Had they all immediately bailed as you seem to imply they should have, that startup would be dead now. Instead, I believe its current valuation is around a billion.

I would hope my employees would do the same for me.

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