subscribe How I Went From Picking up Your Crap to Reading It
March 8th, 2008By: Sean Percival
The year was 1997, I was 18 and a janitor….
As you can imagine my life and financial situation left something to be desired during this time. I cleaned office buildings and while not the most glamorous of jobs in retrospect that was a life changing time for me. We rotated buildings and after a few weeks I found myself cleaning the office of vegas.com, at the time a rather large and valuable dotcom specializing in Vegas vacation resources. Now we cleaned these office late, like midnight and beyond late. Despite the time the office was always a flurry of activity with coders coding and execs smoking cigars while they secured deals with content partners. Mountain Dew flowed freely throughout and it was common to find a few employees huddled around a pinball machine while they argue over the latest code push. My first response was “This is work? Where do I sign up?”. Not once did I question the unorthodox nature of the office and clear labor policy abuses. Instead I saw a break from the humdrum of the boring offices and jobs many of us have no doubt seen in our time.
From that point on the idea of a 40 hour, 9-5 work week never appealed to me. Far too structured and mundane, limiting even. In fact the idea of simply having 1 job never appealed to me, why limit yourself to one source of revenue? Companies certainly don’t and either should you. I’ve busted my ass for years at a time then taking as long as year off to relax and think of whats next. Knowing that eventually at some point I’ll take my earnings and retire, well before many of my peers.
Fast forward to present day and 10 or so crappy jobs later and you’ll find me at Mahalo. I won’t bore you with the details of how and why, simply tell you this is first time I’ve found a perfect fit with a job. After Jason’s post today and wild speculation (you bloggers are so cute!) I thought you might like to hear some thoughts from “behind the bars“. You can read some of my comments on Duncan’s Techcrunch post or simply ask a question below in the comments, anything you like.
Naturally I’m a little biased on the topic due to working here (and standing to gain from Mahalo’s success) but the environment here is not prison, its not hell, and most of us actually thrive in it. I’m constantly asked “What is it like to work at Mahalo?” and of course “So how is it working for Jason?”. I do my best to emphasis the uniqueness of what we have here but I’m sure always fall short. You really have to be here to see it for yourself, the feeling is more like a newspaper close to press time than a startup. We are content creators, inspired by Jason but ultimately we are driving the core of the product. Our level of dedication is matched only by the quality of work we proudly create each day. I’m sitting here in the office at 8:30 on a Friday night and I’m not the only one, do these people (and myself) have no life? Quite the contrary, some of us came in late today (flexible hours) and others are simply that engaged in the product. Employers would be lucky to have half the dedication the employees of Mahalo have.
Take all this as you like, don’t like the approach then simply don’t follow it. Can you come up with something better or is that “too much work”? If you aren’t pounding the keys until the wee hours from time to time you are phoning it in, best of luck to you because you are going to need it.
*Update: Nick and Mark have some thoughts as well.
*Update2: Coworkers CK Sample III and Chris Miller have weighed in, also Hawksdomain one of our users.
Filed Under: Mahalo
March 8th, 2008 at 5:09 am
I’ve linked you up- wish you would write more. Too bad you aren’t here in Austin (I know you are on lockdown) cuz it would be great to meet ya
March 8th, 2008 at 5:24 am
[…] Sean Percival weighs in. Technorati Tags: startups, Mahalo, 37 Signals, Calacanis, […]
March 8th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
For someone who’s allegedly happy about their job, its curious you chose to title your post the way you did. It almost suggests that you think that content that you’re creating is also crap.
March 8th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I’ve been reading with interest all the blog posts zipping through the interwebs about this thing and I’ll admit that at first I was as affronted as everyone else seems to be. Then it occurred to me that “hey, my working environment isn’t that much different (sans the lunch meeting w/ other people - yuck) and I LOVE where I work”.
We’re a five year old firm (I’ve been there for four years) that does very high-end building/site architecture, engineering and interior design. In that five years, we’ve designed half-a-billion dollars worth of construction projects and it’s the norm for our architects, designers and engineers to be handling multiple projects at a time. BTW, this is common for any firm that does great architecture and makes money. All nighters are common as well and our new hires either still work with us or leave at about 6 months so this sort of fast-paced result-driven environment just isn’t for everyone.
I love it though. I’m paid very well - especially for a college dropout (long story - I’m self-taught) - and I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from the work we do. Also, I wear a lot of hats - designer, CAD manger, IT go-to guy - which just adds to my work experience and resume.
My point in all this is that I’m w/ the firm I’m at because I want to be there and I love what I do. If, or when, I burn out, I’ll go somewhere else but I will be taking a tremendous amount of learning and experience w/ me.
March 8th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
[…] case you have no idea what I’m blogging about: Here’s a related post from Sean Percival, one of our Guides. Here’s Jason’s original post in its original form before it was […]
March 8th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
[…] I admire like CenterNetworks, TechCrunch, Tech Confidential, Venture Chronicles, 37 Signals, and Sean Percival, there is method to this […]
March 8th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
[…] of my coworkers (C.K. Sample, Sean Percival) have tossed their opinions out there, and we are all in agreement, it seems. Bird of a feather, […]
March 8th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
[…] A Mahalo guide/employee provides his own positive view on their working conditions […]
March 8th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Mahalo “a sweatshop powered search engine”
March 10th, 2008 at 8:28 am
I wonder how much your wage is…
March 10th, 2008 at 9:16 am
[…] punto 11 ha scatenato una serie di discussioni molto interessanti. Da leggere anche il post di Sean Percival che lavora in […]
March 10th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Just to pick on two usage points. You mean “peers” not “piers,” and “biased” not “bias.”
March 12th, 2008 at 4:38 am
[…] (working them like slaves or merely encouraging the best out of them) — turns out that the Mahalo worker bees are looking for just about any content/fodder to create indexable pages, and that includes stuff […]
March 12th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
[…] beste aber ist, dass auch ehemalige und Noch-Mitarbeiter sowie Freunde von Calacanis einstimmen (hier, hier, hier, hier, hier und hier) und ihre Erfahrungen von der anderen Seite zur Gehör bringen. […]
March 13th, 2008 at 12:12 am
[…] haben sich auch aktuelle und ehemalige Mitarbeiter in ihren Blogs in die Diskussion eingeschaltet (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Insgesamt also eine sehr interessante Diskussion, die hinter die Kulissen der Web […]
April 5th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
@grant thanks!
Humans, known to make a mistake or two. 
April 5th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
@alex my wage is 35k
This about half of what I made at my last job, however not with mahalo for the salary. I’m here for the experience and large payout once we finish our work.
I also have other sources of income from the web so I’m doing just fine
April 15th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Emory…
Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualize not what is…