Leaving in a Huff

Eric was actually talking about this the Rick Emerson Show (rickemerson.com) some time last week. I don't recall which day it was, but he shared the experience with the whole internet reaction to the email snip he posted that AOL subsequently responded to by claiming "oh no, we're not forcing anyone to work for free or be fired!" and then laid off the person who originally sent the email that was snipped from.

It was a sad and frustrating story to hear (though amusing and snarky as Eric tends to be, from my limited experience).

I'm a big proponent of doing what you love because you love it (like running a forum or BBS or online service or writing) rather than trying to suck every last penny out of something that you can. But when someone else is making every last dime on something while expecting your contribution to be entirely uncompensated, save for "but you'll see your name on a byline!", it is almost downright sickening.

Unfortunately, this is a trend on the internet. It seems that fewer places are willing to pay for writers or even photographers, anymore. You should be thankful that your work is going to be used at all and then you can use the fact that someone published your content as leverage to promote yourself into something that does pay, somewhere . . . unless those people want you to work for "ego", too.

It's very difficult to justify not paying content creators when you've just made a few hundred million dollars off of the "they should thank me for printing them!" model. Or . . . maybe that's exactly why it's so easy to justify. Why pay when they're giving it to you for free?

I'm grateful I never entered one of these industries. I grew up with dreams of being a writer. Then I had dreams of being a radio broadcaster. Then I had dreams of being a video game developer. I went into the world of enterprise software and unix and linux, instead. A world where there is competition, but people aren't practically throwing themselves at you to do the job for free, because it's "fun".

Sure there is, but quite honestly this isn't something most people would value for the plotline. It's something you will enjoy reading because the story's prose alternately moves and amuses, portraying the situation as a tragi-comedy. I can tell you that BigCo buys LittleCo, merges LittleCo with MiddleCo, brings in Chainsaw Huffington to fire hundreds of people, and along the way there are SNAFUs as the company tries to restructure things. Those are the ostensible facts.

But that plot is played out somewhere every week, it's not worth reading unless you have a personal interest in the people or the companies, or unless the story is told in a way that moves you. Thus, I suggest you stick with it and read the entire thing. Or if you're too busy to read the entire thing, skip it: There'll probably be a story just like this about Yahoo! shuttering one of its acquisitions in a week or so.

Holy crap, Eric Snider used to write for the BYU student newspaper and I loved reading his column! I even bought his compilation books: http://www.amazon.com/Snide-Remarks-Eric-D-Snider/dp/B000REH... and http://www.amazon.com/Snide-REmarks-II-Electric-Boogaloo/dp/...

You won't be disappointed to read him.

Why the heck is this crap on Hacker News?!?!?!?!

The issue behind the scene here is that AOL is creating significant financial liability under U.S. labor law when it tries to shift paid workers to "free" unpaid workers. I'm sure that's why AOL fired the editor, it had nothing to do with the internet blowback, rather legal had to circle the wagons to protect AOL corporate from future lawsuits for backpay.