How I Went From Picking up Your Crap to Reading It

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 piers.

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 bias 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.

2026 note: this post from the archives is where the whole "janitor to Myspace VP" thing started. Written from inside Mahalo, five years before Myspace and long before Norway. The original comments (and the trackback economy) are lost to time. The early-retirement plan hasn't happened either— instead there are candles in Oslo, an olive oil with experience, and Shopify apps. Why limit yourself to one source of revenue, indeed.