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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:

1. PPP didn’t abuse anyone.
    
2. The supposedly abused “declining job candidate” was not only never offered a job by PPP, he was never a job candidate.
    
3. To make it appear PPP “abused” a “job candidate”, Arrington reports false “facts” surrounding the story. If left uncorrected, these “facts” could unfairly besmirch the professional reputation of the innocent third party who had the misfortune to deal with the sois-dissant “job candidate.”
    

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.

Can I demonstrate Arrington’s “facts” are just flat out wrong?

You betcha’! Let’s look at the numerous specific details that Arrington got wrong:

1. In the character assassination category: Arrington said a head hunter, Lori Friend-Smiles (of Stratus Technology Services, LLC,) “forwarded Salberg’s email to PayPerPost VP Software Development Peter Wright”.

   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.

2. In the gross mis-characterization category: Arrington tells us Peter Wright sent an “unsolicited” email to Salberg, and that Peter’s “unsolicited” email is part of an “ongoing email string”.

   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. )

3. Also in the gross mis-characterization category: Arrington tells us Peter Wright went “on the attack”. Oh?

   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”.

4. In “the trying to bolster his case by elevating the credentials of the party he supports” category: Arrington characterizes Salberg as a “declining candidate”. This makes it sound as if PPP was upset because someone they evaluated and admired turned them down.

   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:
   

   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!

5. Once more, in the the “elevating the credentials of the party he supports” category: Arrington closes by referring to Salberg as “a smart engineer” who is evidently, still in the market. He also recommends that other would do well to hire Salberg.

   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!