It’s pretty sad when you hate someone or something so much that you seem to create “facts” to bolster your negative opinion of them. It appears Mike Arrington did that in his recent screed entitled: PayPerPost Abuses Declining Job Candidate.
Relying on information contained in Arrington’s story, posts at the PPP board, and the “candidates” clarification in comments it appears the truth is: Pretty bad reporting. Arrington’s story isn’t just an opinion I disagree with. It isn’t just biased reporting of things that actually happened. It is an attempted hatchet job on PPP that relies on manufactured, entirely false “facts”, which could be uncovered easily. You betcha’! Let’s look at the numerous specific details that Arrington got wrong: Nope, this didn’t happen. Lori Friend-Smiles did not forward a Salberg’s email to anyone. This may seem a trivial error on Arrington’s part, but remember: Many consider a head hunter forwarding private email to a third party professional malpractice. So, to “break” this story, Arrington unfairly, and falsely besmirched Lori Smiles’s professional reputation. How did I unearth the truth? Lawrence Salberg volunteered this information in a comment posted at Techcrunch, saying “As far as I know, Lori (referred to as the ‘headhunter’ by many here) did not forward the email to PPP. I copied PPP (to their general email info box) in my response.” Presumably, if Mike Arrington had asked Lawrence how Peter Wright obtained the email, Mike would have “uncovered” this tid-bit of information! (But as we shall see, that would have dramatically changed Arrignton’s later accusations!) In any case, given the nature of most company general email info boxes, Salberg the “job candidate” basically sent an a abusive email to the general inbox at PPP, where its remarkable contents, containing personal attacks on every employee must have circulated quickly. This is false in two regards. First, Peter Wright responded to an email sent by Salberg to PPP. No one considers responding email sending “unsolicited email” In fact, when I send email to a company’s general contact box, I hope to get an answer! Second… “on going email exchange”? That sure makes it sound like Peter Wright is holed up in his office, neglecting important PPP work and wasting time exchanging email with Salberg, right? That would fit right in with Mike’s constant talking claim that PPP management wastes time on silly things. In fact, the exchange of email was not “on going” at the time Mike published. Peter appears to have responded to Salbergs first email to PPP. Salberg then sent Peter another vitrolic email where Salberg further argues his position with prose consisting of statements like “Blah, blah, blah….” (That’s really a quote, which prefaces a rather snide paragraph.). Peter appears to have ignored the second email by Salberg and is continuing to ignore the man. When Peter did not answer, it appears that Lawrence Salberg, may have wished to find some means to continue the conversation. After all, somehow, Mr. Salberg’s email managed to come to the attention of Mike Arrington. (Though Arrington, relying on passive voice, avoids telling us who sent him the email. ) So, the truth: The only “on going” aspect of the email exchange was that “someone” not associated with PPP was forwarding the email to Arrington! (Update 9/25/00: In comments, Salberg says he did not wait until Peter Wright failed to respond to his email response. He pro-actively blindcopied Arrington on his response to Peter Wright, so Arrington received it at the same time as Peter, the timestamp indicated in the PDF is 1:57 PM PDT; the meta data indicates Arrington’s post was published at 10:14 pm. ) Well, I guess whether or not a response is an attack is a matter of opinion. But let’s examine the exchange, a portion of which is available here: In the letter Salberg zinged off to PPP, Salberg said this: Quite frankly, who WOULD want to work in a place like that? Only kids with no brains, no education, no self-confidence and who want to write letters home to mommy and daddy telling them about their great job (read: paycheck) at some “cool” web company”. And However, you didn’t say there [sic] were a modern day cotton-picking farm and that employees are to be viewed as the “negros” out pickin in the fields. Salberg’s entirely unsolicited email to PPP contains additional barbs which many would consider inflammatory. Peter Wright responds by defending his staff, saying: .. I take offense at that. We have an incredibly talented team of people here, programmers w ho have developed stunning technology the likes of which you have never seent before. You’ll see them when we release Argus in August in November. We have ex-military programmers, specialists in data forensics, published authors and speakers, highly popular open source tools authors - the list goes on and on. Smart people. Brilliant people. This, dear readers, is the sort of conversation Mike Arrington characterizes as Peter, of PayPerPost, “attacking” Lawrence the “engineer”. This appears to be far from the truth. To be a “declining candidate”, a candidate must have an offer. The reality is: PPP never extended an offer to Salberg. But it gets better. After all: To be a “job candidate” the company must at least consider you for a position. Did PPP ever consider Salberg? Did they even know he existed? It appears not. In discussion at the Postie board, Peter Wright (aka Froogle) reveals:
Can I demonstrate Arrington’s “facts” are just flat out wrong?
Also we never interviewed him, or phone screened him. He was merely pointed at the sites by a recruiter to see if he wanted them to push him here for interview. First I heard of the guy was when I got his email.
Peter’s assessment is consistent with what we read in the email exchanges Arrington supplied with his post. In those, we read Lori Smalls, asking Salberg:
“Please take a good look at a few episodes of “www.rockstartup.com” and then let me know if you would like to move forward with Pay Per Post.
Salberg was “a candidate” in the sense that Lori, a busy, but friendly, recruiter, read PPP’s job posting, read Salberg’s resume and thought she might be able to get PPP to consider him as a candidate.
I’m sorry, Mike, but that means Salberg was not a PPP job candidate!
Well, Salberg is not an engineer; in comments at Techcrunch, he describes himself this way: “I’m not an engineer. Just a web developer / designer very normal average guy.” At his blog, he describes himself as “The Small Business Expert”; his most recent is “Sticky Notes Finally Good for Something”.
Of course, Mike Arrington may have this bit right: Salberg is likely still on the job market.
Lessons Mike Should Learn
Mike: It’s never professional to run a controversial story without checking the facts. It’s never professional to smear a third party professional reputation without checking the facts. It’s never professional to appear to be trying your darndest to be carrying out a hatchet job on a company that compete for your revenue stream: that is, advertising dollars.
And, if you really think Lawrence Salberg is a smart engineer, maybe you should hire him. Because after this, I doubt anyone is going to take your staffing recommendations seriously!
Mad drama.
Gee. You keep describing yourself as an “ex-postie” on two lengthy responses to the T/C article itself, and here you go into a tirade that arguably may have outdone my own. I hardly think it matters at this point, but having no idea what a “postie” even was until this past week, I’m not sure where the rage comes from. I wasted 3 hours of my time being solicited by PPP’s recruitment firm for the position. You’ve wasted at least that much. Why?
Your anger here seems mostly at Arrington, although for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Again, like many who posted to the T/C comments, you seem to think he has some duty or obligation to uphold some standard of journalistic ethics - that he must check, and double-check his facts, that he must ask probing questions, that he must write pieces that are not incendiary in nature, etc. Except that he’s not a journalist and never claimed to be. I fail to understand how you, or especially a blogger of any merit, can write stuff like the above on their OWN blog and think TechCrunch should just roll over and become the boring New York Times. Your own post here - full of vitriol, opinion, and all without the same probing questions or fact-finding that you demand of others (i.e. you never sent me an email or called me to verify some of your incorrect statements above) - is taken as it should be… a blog post by someone who knows how to type and use FTP. Big deal. We all do it. And we all have the common sense to see it for what it is - just that. You are practically advocating some kind of outside regulation of the blogosphere when you start imputing these standards of yours to other bloggers - standards to which you don’t adhere to either. Just read your own blog (as I have) with the same critical eye and you’d see that.
Before I clarify a few things you wrote, it occurs to me that anyone here could just go and read the actual exchange just as quickly as they could your commentary about it. The whole idea of a review is to encapsulate a larger volume of work so that others can get an idea of what it is about. Of course, it helps to be accurate, but brevity is a worthwhile attribute to shoot for as well. This isn’t a review - it’s a rant. Just like mine was. Talk about calling the kettle black.
In response to your “points”:
1. I didn’t “send” the email to PPP, in so much as I copied them when replying to Lori. In other words, I’m all for open communication and didn’t feel comfortable saying things about a company that could later be interpreted as a “back-stabbing”. If I’m going to say something, it is going to be to their face. I would have sent it only to Ted Murphy’s email box if I’d had it, since the email primarily discussed him and his company. If it’s PPP’s practice to share their internal emails with the “entire company”, that’s their business. I can’t recall working in a place where I got to see emails of customer complaints and responses of job candidates to HR, but so be it. I think Arrington just naturally assumed that’s how it happened. Had he asked me, I would have corrected that assumption. And I even took the time to do so in the comment thread later. Not to bash Arrington, since I think it was a natural assumption, just to be fair to those who had previously bashed Lori for forwarding it. As I mentioned there, I didn’t have a problem if it had been forwarded by Lori, but as far as I know, she didn’t do so.
2. Here’s YOUR first assumption that you got wrong. “You should have called! You should have asked!” Isn’t that what you told Arrington? I had no interest in a response from Peter. Even a precursory reading of my response to him would demonstrate that. It was pretty black and white. I blind-copied Arrington on my response to Peter - without comment or introduction - and all on the same email. In other words, there was no waiting for a response. I never expected one. The blind-copy was on the same exact email. I felt he should know what this guy, a VP of PPP, was saying about him. That was my only interest in doing so - full-disclosure. At least I copied PPP in my comments when I said “negative” things about them to Lori. Peter did not, as far as I know, copy Arrington. So, I did on my response back. I have no idea who Arrington is - beyond what we all know of him. I had to hunt around on his website trying to find an email address, and even then, I assumed it would probably get flagged as spam. I didn’t forward it to anyone else. The only reason the outside world even knows about it is because he asked me if I had a problem with him publishing it if he removed the email addresses. My single response: “I don’t have a problem with it. I just thought you should see the hate these guys have for you (ha ha)”. Quite frankly, based on what I see here, you would have happily published a similar episode if it fell within your bank of opinions. Mike has an opinion about PPP (which I happen to share). Would I have written the article differently? Sure. But then again, that’s why I’m little ol’ me and that’s why he’s who he is. And nobody cares what I have to say (or you) compared to him. He got that way by being opinionated and being outspoken. I don’t know why this is such a surprise to you (as it seems above).
3. In response to number three, you are just playing semantics here. If you want to call an attack a defense, whatever. You chose a very non-abrasive quote of Peter’s. Any person who cares can just go read Peter’s whole reply. It speaks for itself. And I even corrected myself on that one paragraph you quoted in my response to Peter: “Okay, that’s my fault for being upset at Lori & Co. for wasting 3 hours of my time on a lark. First, I shouldn’t have said ‘no brains’. I didn’t mean their technical skills. I fully believe you have a talented staff in that vein. I meant ‘no brains’ in the aspect of not having the common sense to refuse to work until 3 AM for a web project.” But you didn’t quote that, did you?
4. Again, semantics. By a stretch of the imagination, I suppose you can say what you said. But the practical reality for those of us who live in the technical world is that recruiters are nothing more than an outsourced HR department. Lori billed herself - not as a headhunter - but a recruiter for PPP. So, if you want to define here when you feel a candidate becomes a candidate, feel free. I would say, as do millions of other people, that when a representative of a company contacts me and asks me to send them my resume, and does two separate phone interviews with me, that I’m a candidate. It doesn’t matter to me whether it is an actual employee of PPP, as long as it is a representative. Why you get all upset about this is beyond me. I could make a lot of analogies here to prove the point, but it is what it is. Semantics over nothing.
You also put words in Arrington’s mouth: saying that he thinks I’m a “smart engineer”. That is untrue. I never billed myself as an engineer. He was probably thinking software engineer. And I’ve been around enough of those guys to know that just being “techie” doesn’t make you smart. You don’t like my email to PPP, but you do the same here - proclaiming that no one is going to take Arrington’s staffing recommendations seriously. Huh? The guy runs his own company. What are you even talking about?
You do the same smears you accuse Arrington of throughout this thread: “Salberg is probably still on the job market”. I wasn’t on the job market to begin with - I work for myself. For all your badgering of Arrington, at least he fully admits that he wants to see PPP close its doors. You accuse him of being unethical, and yet he fully discloses his own opinion - as did I in my two emails that started this whole debacle. And then, here and on the T/C comment board, you go into lengthy word-dissecting “reviews” of Arrington’s post. You can almost here the screams of “Where’s the justice?” in between your lines here.
I don’t entirely get you. I’ll admit that I think I would like you were we to meet face-to-face. I read quite a bit of your stuff (just trying to figure out who the heck you are). Mostly because you were one of the more lengthy responses to the initial post and because out of the 140 some comments on T/C yesterday about this, there are only a a handful (about a dozen) that point to actual blogs. I kept thinking I was going to stumble upon a “I hate Arrignton” thread somewhere in your past, but I’ve yet to do so. People all just need to get along. I don’t like Ted Murphy’s management style (if you can even call it a style) and I don’t like his company. Big deal. So what. Nothing against him as a person, nor would I think he would take it personally. Peter did - which surprised me and a lot of people, but as I started off my response to him, I have no problem with him. All this drama, but I for one would have no problem just shooting the breeze with anyone involved (so far). Some people take complaints about their operations too seriously, I think. You know, call me crazy, but they COULD actually improve PPP and make it a really great company. It’s happened at many other companies. Then we could all be wrong (about its future demise). But improvements can’t happen when everyone is running around playing “PR” rep for the company rather than changing the real problems.
Eek bad research bites some one on the bum. For a change it is not me. But it does do one thing for the guy - it get’s him blogged about.