Between the intern who doesn’t know how to apply for a job and now this story, my blog is in danger of becoming a running example of dumb email exchanges. But, frankly, I couldn’t pass this one up.
Tech Crunch posted the email exchange between an employee who politely and professionally resigned and the company CEO’s nasty response. Not only is this a good read, it’s an example of how email conversations can become big PR/HR nightmares for companies. Here’s what happened.
Evan Culver sent an extremely nice and professional resignation letter to his superiors at the search engine Mahalo. The company’s CEO Jason Calacanis sent a nasty email reply to Evan telling him to leave now and that he is horribly disappointed in him. (see entire email exchange below).
The thing that amazes me is that this CEO is a former Blogger and by all accounts is someone who is quite familiar with the nature of the web and how often sensational exchanges like this become public. Yet, he was so angry that an employee would actually leave him, he jeopardized his company’s reputation and future recruiting.
I know how frustrating it can be when an employee leaves – especially when a lot of time and money has been invested in that person. But, no good comes from burning bridges – from either end. And, this CEO certainly did that. With Gawker and Tech Crunch and countless other major blogs picking this up, any future employees will surely see this in their research and I’m betting they go elsewhere. I sure would.
