Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

centernetworks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#71

Post by artsrc »

xsmasher wrote: post #64
bad_user wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm a flake - hey, what can I say; I get bored easily and feel the need to switch projects often, especially when the project enters maintenance mode. I also have a free advice to entrepreneurs - since I'm working remotely as I don't live in the US, I have to be much better / work much harder than US developers, just so I can take home barely the minimum U.S. salary in this industry. I also don't get any equi…

>I get bored easily and feel the need to switch projects often, especially when the project enters maintenance mode. Points for honesty, but I'm wary of any dev who says that. How do you know what maintainable code is if you never stick around for the maintenance?

I have heard that issue raised by colleagues during the hiring process. At the time I was suspicious about this kind of generalization, but had not been particularly sure how to evaluate the impact.

Subsequently my experience is that developers who have been in the same job for a very long time, have a higher chance of being totally clueless. And also generally not confident with new ideas, not aware of alternative ways of doing things, not exposed to the culture of the broader profession etc.

I am wary of any dev. You could go through this during the hiring process. Most programmers end up doing some maintenance even in new jobs.

But bottom line I suspect this hiring principal is essentially backwards.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#72

Post by rimantas »

jasonmcalacanis wrote: post #41

1. We're working with the folks impacted to place them at whatever company they would like to join. I'm personally reaching out to folks who might want these fine people. They will all wind up on their feet and be great additions to the vibrant startup scene in Los Angeles. 2. Mahalo is doing amazing videos with experts, but our (text) articles were created by passionate writers who are not necessarily experts. Googl…

  > Video is the future, and we're going to be the largest
  > creator of educational videos this year.
Oh no. I cannot wait for the video be the past. It may be the best way to teach some things (mainly involving physical activities or physical manipulation of some sort), but for programming topics it most often just waste of time and bandwidth. Why would I want to spend a minute watching someone to type a line of code with all mistypes and corrections, when I can glance it in a second? Why would I want to fiddle with video controls to get replay of particular section when I can reread it much faster whenever I want?

Seriously, I am starting to see this tendency to do anything in video as some sort of DRM scheme for content sites. I recently unsubscribed from thinkvitamin.com because they started to push everything to video (with annoying intro at the start of each video).

I did check your guitar lessons… Sorry guys, but with "amazing videos" you have you will never ever beat this guy: http://justinguitar.com/ (check out his beginners course or intermediate method; http://www.youtube.com/user/JustinSandercoe ) — take a look if just to see how expert teaching looks like.

I will chose the best over the largest every time.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#73

Post by sofakeekafos »

moultano wrote: post #69
aaronwall wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehehe ... with a close second perhaps being "using deceptive public relations non-sense to get ink any way possible" Good things happen to good people. The opposite is also true. Congrats Jason! :D

Jesus guys, take it elsewhere.

He's being lionized on HN for making money, while he's polluting the written heritage of the human race. Not a chance I will take it elsewhere. He needs to be called out, to his face, as does anybody who thinks he deserves HN's respect.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#74

Post by dpcan »

I find this interesting because I have never done a Google search that led me to a Mahalo site. I don't even recall seeing them come up in a search result for anything honestly.

Having heard about Mahalo through Podcasts and such, I have been to the site a few times to find some things, but usually ended up back at Google.

However, now learning of the How-To style videos coming to the site in droves, I'm definitely interested again.

So, this bad press and their bad fortune may lead to new visitors, such as myself. Probably not in the waves that Google brought, but it's "press" none-the-less.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#75

Post by moultano »

sofakeekafos wrote: post #73
moultano wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus guys, take it elsewhere.

He's being lionized on HN for making money, while he's polluting the written heritage of the human race. Not a chance I will take it elsewhere. He needs to be called out, to his face, as does anybody who thinks he deserves HN's respect.

Mostly I see people expressing sympathy for a guy who had a really bad day (and a newsworthy one.) And if you think mahalo is polluting the written history of the human race, then boy do I ever have some spam to show you. Mahalo may not be the best, but it certainly isn't the worst.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#76

Post by patio11 »

po wrote: post #61
patio11 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't true. For any particular search, yes, if one site goes down another site will necessarily go up. However, in aggregate, SEO creates value . Think of StackOverflow, for example: the primary mechanism for success isn't taking traffic from ExpertsExchange -- that is just a much-remarked side effect. The primary mechanism for success is successfully incentivizing the creation and distribution of answers for a…

…except for the boats it sinks. Namely, the long tail that they cleaned up. I'm not sure I understand when you say "SEO creates value" if you mean the so-called good/relevant SEO or the low quality/sketchy SEO. I assume you mean the former. SEO can mean "help make my site easy for google to honestly evaluate and judge the quality of my content" or it can mean "game google into thinking my content is what people want…

I'm not sure how SEO contributes to a better index

Alright, by analogy: you understand how a properly functioning economy has positive effects for participants in the stock market, right? Economic growth means investors win. Do you understand that a properly functioning stock market also helps the broader economy, even if we assume that each participant in the market is just trying to manipulate the market into serving their own selfish interests? The market converges on more efficient allocation of capital than other sorts of non-market capital allocation schemes we have tried.

Google's tremendous expertise with algorithms is one reason why the experience of searching the Internet generally does not suck. The input people create to rank on Google is another reason. Good, descriptive titles are the single easiest on-page way to influence rankings on leaf pages -- they're also the single easiest way for an engine to tell what a page is about without linking signals. Thus, the practice of putting titles on pages improves the index. What's the first thing your SEO consultant is going to do? Look at your title tags. Systemwide, this converges on an Internet where most pages that people actually end up seeing have good, descriptive titles.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#77

Post by tuhin »

S_A_P wrote: post #13

Could someone tell me more about this Jason Calacanis fellow. He seems to be a very polarizing figure on this site. Really all I know is that he seemed to have a falling out with Michael Arrington and alot of articles seem to mention him in a slightly negative light. Is there some reason for this, and no I'm not trying to troll.

Just a guy who knows a lot about startups and entrepreneurship but is sometimes too blunt and on the face. People who know this nature of his, have grown immune to his antics and direct remarks and keep in touch because of his genuine wit. Who else would be crazy yet believable enough to fool the world he was actually testing the iPad before launch. That's Jason for you.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#79

Post by ericd »

moultano wrote: post #75
sofakeekafos wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's being lionized on HN for making money, while he's polluting the written heritage of the human race. Not a chance I will take it elsewhere. He needs to be called out, to his face, as does anybody who thinks he deserves HN's respect.

Mostly I see people expressing sympathy for a guy who had a really bad day (and a newsworthy one.) And if you think mahalo is polluting the written history of the human race, then boy do I ever have some spam to show you. Mahalo may not be the best, but it certainly isn't the worst.

Borderline stuff may actually be worse than blatant crap, because the borderline stuff is harder to classify as crap.

Re: A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff

#80

Post by robryan »

marcamillion wrote: post #63
forensic wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"slaved".. were they not compensated?

Perhaps, but as far as I understand it...they are compensated at a pittance with the hope that after 3 - 5 years they can leave with a nice payout and move on to 'bigger' and better. I guess my point is, this is why you should be careful who you commit to slave for (e.g. a boss that expressly says that they expect you to work like a slave) because at the end of the day - if the business ever turns down you are just a…

What do you suggest then? They carry the employees even though it is no longer economically viable?
Post reply on HN