I doubt AOL told them to do this, beyond maybe a vague "have fun with the acquisition." But this isn't really insubordination. He revealed almost nothing about the actual meeting. He just made a bunch of jokes because it's fun and they're trying very hard to show that they're still the same old TechCrunch despite their new owner.
It'd be AOL-sanctioned and the intention would be to quickly give readers the impression that the acquisition won't change TC. Of course, by doing this, TC have changed.
Wow, playing with fire, though it's somewhat entertaining from this side.
Keep in mind, AOL has no problem firing people. They used to have tens of thousands of call center workers in the states. Now all those workers are gone and replaced with re-routed overseas calls.
The rest of the meeting, though, was designated as an “internal AOL meeting” and as such was strictly off the record. However, after giving that warning, the very next thing that Eun said was that we should all “keep doing what we do”.
Here then are the details of the meeting…
This is very funny.
I wonder if he's actually putting himself in legal risk if he signed an employment contract and still did that.
There's no risk. Even if this isn't part of image maintenance, "AOL's TechCrunch fires writer for leaking orientation details" isn't really the headline I think anyone over there is looking for.
And even if AOL were that bone-headed (they aren't), Paul Carr could ride the wave of the ensuing press to any other gig he wanted.
But AOL management/HR is that "bone-headed". When they closed their callcenters they gave no notice, everyone (1200+ people per center) showed up one day and they were all fired, even people who worked there for a decade or more.
AOL has had scant need for callcenters for quite awhile, so I'll go out on a limb and guess this was a few years ago. So yeah, pretty boneheaded.
Whenever it was, that may as well be a different company. Tim Armstrong's AOL, for example, offered buyouts to staff this year, and 1,100 took them up on it, before formal layoffs went down. So no more blindsiding, I think. Say what you want about AOL's clueless past (lol Randy Falco, etc) Armstrong is emphatically not an idiot and he's starting to earn my respect in the impossible job of turning that ship.
Layoffs aside, remember that the TechCrunch acquisition has Armstrong's personal attention. Paul Carr isn't a mailroom clerk at a satellite office – he's a high profile component of a crown jewel that AOL has spent some real money to snag. That money was an investment in both people and reputation. Pissing away both over a little mischief that only furthers the public perception of the investment is just unfathomable. It would never get as far as AOL HR.
I wonder what the breakdown of the payout is. I'm sure Arrington got a nice chunk of cash/stock, what about the other writers, developers, ad sales people, etc...
