Yesterday Jason Calacanis wrote this blog entry with 17 tips for running a startup. I didn’t have his blog in my RSS reader and I think I stumbled upon this entry through Techmeme or Valleywag. Anyways the whole thing raised a big stink and he got totally ass raped by a bunch of other bloggers out there.

Honestly, I could care less about Mahalo or other startups he’s been a part of and am gonna give my impressions (for what they’re worth) on his 17 tips. I have never worked at a big company, only startups, so I’ll come at it from a startup employee’s point of view. Here goes:

I paraphrased tips from Jason Calacanis’ blog.

• Buy everyone a Mac to save on IT costs.
  I’m a Mac convert. I switched about 4 years ago and haven’t looked back. I totally agree with him here. Even if some of the “free for all” workstations happen to be a Mac Mini. Over at Fuzz we have a mix. All the engineers & marketing folks use Macs and a few execs have Windows boxes. Our Macs are all fine and dandy but the PC’s like to fuck up every once in a while for no reason. Also - a HUGE benefit to using a Mac is the fact that MS Office costs $325 whereas 5 licenses of iWork set you back a mere $78.

• Buy second monitors for everyone.
  I’ve recently switched to using 2 monitors (with my MacBook) and, eh, it’s not that different. The caveat being that I’m a power user and have religiously used some sort of desktop management software for the last 12 years or so. As an engineer the higher resolution the external monitor supports is nice. This gives my IDE more pixels to play in enabling more stuff (panels, views, drawers) to be open at the same time. However, maybe I’m a dick, but I see no benefit to someone having a browser or mail app maximized, occupying 1680 pixels.

• Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy.
  Long and lame meetings suck and are definitely a waste of time… but no meetings? Again, coming from an engineers perspective, I find quick powwow very useful. Also, discussing stuff with the marketing team is very useful and needs to happen. I couldn’t see combining all this talking into a 1 hour session over Happy Meals. If there was only an engineering team sure; but I highly doubt the marketing team wants to or needs to hear about some geeky stuff. Ya, maybe it would do ‘em some good but I can easily see them waxing down their McNuggets and heading back to their tasks before the eng. team was ready to discuss inter-team issues.

  But, I’m all about the free food and am lazy enough to get excited about not having to leave the office.

• Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs.
  Yes! This $40 chair is fucking up my back. And, as long as the table doesn’t fall over and smash my workstation I don’t give a rat’s ass what it’s made of.

• Don’t buy a phone system.
  Ya, I agree on this too. That shit’s a waste of $ and you always end up with some problems. With $99, unlimited cell service with the big carriers being introduced I figure just giving everyone an extra $30/month to upgrade their plans would work fine. Tack on a free subscription to Grand Central and you can divorce your personal number from your work number.

• Rent out your extra space.
  Depends on the space I guess. As a startup guys I’m conscious of the burn and all that but can also see having strangers around as a bit whacky.

• Outsource accounting and HR.
  Word up… but as an employee I wanna know who to get a hold of and when so the firm better be good and a clear contact person needs to be established. If something’s up with my dental plan I wanna know who to get a hold of and want an answer in a reasonable timeframe.

• Don’t buy everyone Microsoft Office.
  I touched on this above. If everyone has a a Mac then iWork is your friend. It’s cheap and can export to MS Office formats… and Flash and PDF. Its nice.

• Use Google hosted email.
  I’ve never used it so I can’t comment directly. At a previous job we used MailStreet and it was annoying as hell. I’d recommend getting your managed hosting provider to do this (assuming you’ve got a managed hosting service). We use Contegix and they’re amazing. They rock… can’t recommend ‘em enough.

• Buy your hardest working folks computers for home.
  This makes some sense. A few engineers fall into the “the mechanic’s car’s always broken” stereotype… but some/most don’t. It would suck if something went wrong, you get the call and realize you can’t do anything about it b/c your home machine is crap. So, it makes some sense and ya, I could see it getting people to work from home some more but why not just buy everyone a laptop since you’ve already purchased everyone a second monitor.

  Getting a free machine as a “signing bonus” would be pretty sweet though as long as it’s better than what you’ve already got.

• Fire people who are not workaholics.
  Ya, fuck ‘em. Seriously, fuck ‘em. I understand that people have non-work stuff going on in their lives but this is what you signed up for. It is… you took a job at a startup. It is what it is. It pisses me off if me and my team are working late and I see some people pulling the 9-5 bullshit. Sack up… work you balls off and do what you can to make our lottery tickets stock options worth something.

  If you wanna work 9-5 go get a job where you’re not 5-10% of the entire workforce. I’m counting on you to help make this into something. If you’re not up for it then go away.

  Ya, people have lives. I go to band practice and meet up with people for dinner and all that but I more than make up for it on other days. If I leave at 6pm on Wednesday to practice with my band I make sure my shit’s done and on time by busting putting in extra time Monday & Tuesday.

• Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office.
  This is nice and I’d use it… but I’m still gonna go to the coffee shop (assuming its within walking distance). There’s only so much I can stare at this monitor man. Plus, they won’t let me smoke in the office . A change of scenery and a quick 15 minute break to gather your thoughts is really nice. A coffee break charges me back up… and, no, not just b/c of the caffeine.

  I get a ton of thinking done during breaks. At A
  Spoke the whole eng. team would make a daily, 4pm pilgrimage to Startbucks. Guess what we talked about… WORK. How to solve this, or what problems we have,m we’d trade tasks, offer help, get a general feel for who’s doing what, trade tasks, come up with ways to generalize a solution for 2 problems etc. Those breaks were very valuable. I suggest anyone who thinks engineers go to Starbucks get waste company $ should cruise along some time. You’ll learn a ton about your team. As long as you’re not a douche they’ll act the same way whether you’re there or not and the insight will make you a better boss/leader/executive.

• Stock the fridge with sodas.
  Yes! No excuse for an empty fridge.

• Go to each of your vendors every 6-9 months and ask for 10-30% off.
  Sure, lower burn = more better. Worst they can say is “no”.

• Don’t waste money on recruiters.
  Word. We used a recruiter for a while and go nowhere. They actually talked to me about being “too strict”. It’s like “dude, bring me better people”. The folks we did end up hiring were either through craigslist or referred in.

• Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm.
  Ask our CEO. I have no idea if we have a PR firm.

• Outsource to middle America.
  Depends on what they’re doing.

So, FWIW, that’s my take on the 17 points. In generally I agree with him but there’s a few things I’m not quite sold on. Point #11 seemed to be the stickiest one but it’s the one I agree with the most. The chair thing is great too.

I dunno why people tore him a new one. He’s entitles to his opinion and can run his ship any way he wants… and hey, if you think he’s retarded, then don’t work for him.