Most startups have employees working 60, 70, 80+plus hours a week.

What’s the definition of insanity?

Everyone who has actually ran a business or worked for a boss who was a similar to this knows that a good majority of the businesses eventually failed.

Jason Calacanis, der Gründer von Mahalo, hat einen Artikel mit dem Titel “How to save money running a startup” (Wie man bei einer Startup-Firma Geld sparen kann) in seinem Blog veröffentlicht, der zur Zeit sehr kontrovers in der englischsprachige…

Combining passionate people with a flexible workplace is a great way to succeed and I hope everything works out great or you guys.

Appreciate what Calcanis has to say but am pleased his excess love of self has come back to bite him hard in the ass; whether it taints him or not long term time will tell but at least it’s a lesson for valley legends and other superstars. We all come in to the world in the same way and we all go out in the same way; we now know what the media’s epitaph will include for Jason when he bites the dust. **A@#HOLE**

My name is Ray Manukay, I’m a husband and father of two…… and I happen to work for Mahalo as a guide.

Unfortunately I didn’t respond to this earlier, but the fact is…. I have a family life….and I generally don’t spend my free time reading tech blogs and feeding ignorant trolls….but I accidentally stumbled onto this conversation and I can’t in good conscious sit by while people unjustly attack a person who’s been nothing but supportive and accommodating to my family and my needs as a father.

I’m actually very surprised that Jason hasn’t brought up my personal experience at Mahalo….it would actually be very easy for him to discredit many of the opinions that people have about him by simply pointing at me.

But I guess it actually speaks to the man’s character, and says alot about him that he didn’t bring me up, I’m sure he probably didn’t want to involve me in all this silliness.

Sorry boss… but I’m stepping in.

As a father I’ve found Mahalo to have an extremely flexible schedule. For instance, if I want to work in the morning…..then take the afternoon off to take my son to the park or my wife to a doctor’s appointment, then finish up my shift later in the evening, I have the option to do that.

If I want to take a day off during the week…and make it up on the weekend… I can also do that.

If my wife is extra tired and needs a helping hand at home….I’ve actually been given the option to work from home.

Maybe I’m naive….but that doesn’t exactly sound like a slave driver to me.

Mahalo also provides medical benefits for me and my entire family, which was especially helpful recently when my wife gave birth to my daughter in January.

When the time came to take some time off for that event, I was personally encouraged by Jason to take as much paid time off as I needed to tend to the needs of my family, at no time did Jason EVER pressure me to return before I was ready.

He was actually surprised when I came back when I did…and encouraged me to take even more time if I wanted.

Not only that…he gave my family a very generous monetary gift to celebrate the birth of my child.

The only time I’ve ever felt anything remotely close to pressure to spend LESS time with my family……. is when Jason personally offered me free courtside seats to a Clippers-Knicks game.

When I turned it down because I had to pick up dinner for my family…. Jason’s response was….”I understand family first…..don’t worry I’ll take you again next time.”

Yeah….horrible…I…. know….

Of course it’s not all fun and perks at Mahalo, we have a hard working bunch. I’m not going to sit here and say I never work overtime….but I work hard because I NEED the company to succeed…. for the good of my family and my fellow friends/co-workers.

We’re building pyramids at Mahalo…… with our bare hands…..that doesn’t happen by phoning your work in and staring at the clock waiting to go home.

And It’s not like Jason doesn’t recognize hard work. I was actually one of the first winners of the very generous monetary Employee of the Month Prize.

So for all those critics out there please….give us all a little more credit…..everybody here knows exactly what they signed up for, I think it’s insulting for anyone to imply that the employees at Mahalo are being taken advantage of because they don’t know any better.

Truth is Mahalo is the best job I’ve ever had….the people here are the best and brightest I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. My life is better for meeting each and everyone of these people that I work with and I truly believe that we as a group are all destined for greatness.

So if one is truly concerned about the working conditions at Mahalo….please do something useful like using our site.

My family and I would appreciate it.

Duncan, now this one should be your favorite….

Problem is, Mahalo is going nowhere and this guy will never be more than your average pompous ‘entrepreneur’

What saddens me is when this becomes so accepted it is the norm. Because we all know that most of these companies don’t make it. So, how can you expect this type of passion from everyone? I get the sense that most of the more accepting posts here, and those supporting Jason, are younger and have not yet been burnt. Those against are likely those who worked at Pets.com, then Webvan, then XXX.com. The equation doesn’t always work out. In fact, statistically speaking, it rarely does. Even for successful companies, those programmers taking a 100K PER year pay cut for stock options, after 3 years, if they do WELL, may make 500K on their options. Maybe a million. The rarified few will make millions and enough to retire. But the vast majority won’t. And they gave up a sure 300K extra for this risk. Was that worth it? I’d say no.

I have done 6 startups, 3 of my own, 3 others. I have seen all work environments. I’ve lived at the office, and I’ve balanced the equation. And, frankly speaking, the most successful in terms of pure output - product, code, quality (as the business success can vary due to many externalities, but we can at least measure the building of the product we set out to build) - were the ones where people worked 40 hours a week. Maybe 50. Maybe this is surprising to a lot of people, and anathema to Valley culture, but it’s the truth. And I’ve heard it from many other people (quietly). It’s quality and focus, not quantity. I’ve seen studies by the US Navy and others on effective time a person can spend doing quality mentally heavy work. Great authors - heard them expound on this. And the result is 6 hours or less a day! Yes, we can all crank for a month or two, but you can’t keep it up. And the errors and wasted energy and time I’ve seen in the 80 hr a week teams end up causing more problems and MORE time and slowing you down further than the 40 hour a week teams I’ve had.

Every person can make their own decision. No one is forced to work at any of these companies, and yes, Yahoo, Oracle, and others are out there with pretty standard hour, balanced life jobs without the *possibility* of that multi-million dollar reward. But the simple fact of the matter for me is - it’s just not efficient. People actually work better when they work less. When they take time off. When they relax. Those fewer hours they spend are worth so much more. It’s like we all know - the best coder on your team is worth generally 5 to 10 average ones. Maybe more because it’s more efficient to code with less people. And in today’s era of much more focus and weight on the DESIGN of code (OO has led us here largely finally) - and the design of systems - clear thinking, and getting it right the first time - is that much more important. Because each error you introduce in phase 1 of a project is compounded 10x in test/debug. And that much harder to fix.

Sorry if I rambled a little here. Ultimately, I think guys like Jason forget what it’s like to be the coder who is asked to swallow someone else’s vision and spew back out all that passion. What it’s like to be the little guy who stands to make 200K, not 200 million, and how the equation balances very differently. And ultimately, I think their vision of success and what it takes to get there is a bit skewed by popular culture of Netscapers sleeping under their desks.

1 in a million is Netscape or Google and makes 2000 multi-millionaires. The rest just exist and can provide good work for people for years to come, or disappear. And the average worker has that to think about.

I swear the blogosphere is full nonsensical discussions and thugery these days.

Cezanne