I woke up this morning to a complete clusterfuck.
People are leaving comments calling me everything they can think of in response to the redesign of the TechCrunch.com blog.
We relaunched TechCrunch last Friday morning. The goal was to clean up the advertising (it was all over the place before) and to expand the text area to allow for bigger screen shots. That’s it. Nothing else.
People screamed, in the comments to the post above and elsewhere. That’s ok, people scream at me all the time. I try to delete the comments where people threaten to kill me, my dog or my family, or rape my mother (approximately one per week, and no, I’m not exaggerating). I also delete comments that attack other people unfairly. But for the most part, if you want to take a shot at me, I’ll leave it up. I’ve grown a fairly thick skin. The comments that discuss raping my mother still get to me, of course, but I guess this is all part of having a blog.
So when the negative comments came in I just sort of rolled with it. A number of people made some good suggestions which we implemented. Other ideas were still baking and may or may not have made it eventually into TechCrunch. Anyway, I spoke at a conference on Friday, left for Spain, and have been offline for a lot of the last few days. In my mind, I was glad that we relaunched, I was happy with the new design and I looked forward to tweaking bits and pieces over time to make it better.
And I want to reiterate, I like the new design. It isn’t perfect, but we needed to launch and iterate from there. I was and am happy with the work that my designer did, and I supported her publicly and privately. I also stated publicly, “Everything wonderful about the new design is because of the awesome Rachel Cunliffe, my designer. Everything wrong with it is my fault for overrulling some of her ideas.”
Yesterday, Jeremy Baines sent me a private email with his vision of the TechCrunch redesign. I was impressed that someone I barely know would go to the trouble to do a mockup of the way he would have done TechCrunch. I liked many aspects of it. So I posted it on this blog.
Was I undermining my designer by doing this? Hell no. I was showing support for people that wanted to help me. If I thought Jeremy’s design was so hot, I would have implemented it. I thought it was incredibly cool that someone would do a mockup like that, and so I posted it.
But my designer didn’t see things the same way. She was upset, felt that this was somehow my way of saying that I don’t approve of her work, and resigned (I found out about it by reading a trackback on my own blog). Valleywag knew about her resignation hours before I did.
Now I suspect that my “thick skin” makes it harder for me to understand why Rachel would quit on me just because I posted a screen shot that someone sent me. Again, I want to stress that I have, many times, written about how great Rachel is.
If you think about this from my point of view, you get this: People call me names and scream over just about everything I do. What I write about. What I don’t write about. How many ads I have. Whatever. The comments don’t impact me as much as they use to. I like the new design, and haven’t waivered. My posting of Jeremy’s mockup yesterday was not a signal that I don’t like the current design. It was a signal that I appreciate people who take the time to do things like that. Nothing more. If Rachel chose to take that post as a different message, and resign in the middle of the night publicly, so be it. I would have preferred to have a discussioin with her about it, but she chose the path.
So anyway, I’m going to go back to writing about companies, which is my passion. I’ll keep doing it until the benefits no longer outweigh the costs.
I also want to make one thing clear. I like feedback, and I appreciate even negative feedback. It’s important to hear what people think about what I write. If I didn’t think it was important, I’d choose to use a different publishing format than blogging. This is a two way conversation. Yes, the random, anonymous, hateful stuff sucks, but it doesn’t suck enough to turn off comments, or edit them like some other bloggers do.
Addendum: re valleywag.com, I have to say Mike wins – good smile and great, self-effacing post.
Yikes, who would have imagined that 29 words and one image would cause so much noise.
“Mike deciding there were elements of Jeremy’s mock-up that he liked doesn’t make him an asshole. Neither does sharing said thought with the readers of his personal blog.”
But there is a problem with him sharing it. He should have showed it to Rachel before anyone else so she could have fed him her suggestions. None of this would have happened if it wasnt for Mike posting that.
Hey and maybe there is a new website in there for some web 2.0 developer! You Americans can stop blaming the Canadians and blame MichaelArrington.com! Featuring Ajax.
For her to quit in the first place over the posting of an image of a different design was ridiculous and childish and paints her as a spoiled primadonna to anyone other than other spoiled primadonnas (or people that like drama).
For her to resign on her blog, in public, without ever speaking to Mike in person (phone, e-mail, etc.), was completely 100% unprofessional, and any smart business people reading your site (and there are many) would never knowingly choose to work with someone with that kind of attitude and unprofessionalism — regardless of how good or bad her design is. She could have been the Pablo Picasso of web design, but I’ll certainly not hire her. (Of course I have my own designer anyway, but that’s beside the point.)
Basically, I think she just blacklisted herself from any decision makers that read your site.
Keep up the good work Mike!
Web and startups is totally not my thing and I’ve commented on this before.
But you’re awesome writing and intriquing site has gotten my attention and interest in a whole new thing.
Mucho Props to you.
Next time Mike, hired a woman or a man to design your site, and not a girl. She was hired to do a job, and when you paid her, the job was over. At that point you could have immediately chucked the design and implemented another. This is BUSINESS. Grown, professional women understand that; little girls don’t. And they throw embarrassing public tantrums. This is why people have negative stereotypes about women.
Why should he have shown Rachel? Rachel was hired, most likely, as a contractor. Once their contract was up–and it seems to have been–he has no obligation to her. This was his design to do with whatever he likes, and his website to do with whatever he likes.
Maybe he should have shown her first if he didn’t want her to quit (which was her best move if she was unsatisfied), but not showing her doesn’t make him a jerk. Still, nothing he did was wrong.
I am honestly rather suprised by how irrational such a large group of people have been over this.
Actually most of the top webloggers act like assholes. It sells in weblogging. I wouldn’t feel singled out.
There’s more to this story than is showing just in the weblogs. I would say that if the designer had been overriden enough, she may have had concerns about her name being associated with the design in the end. When the re-design was turned into another opportunity to generate buzz, and not necessarily directed in a positive manner, it must have been very difficult to observe.
Michael you did not help by mentioning how much you loved the old design, and any ‘bad’ bits are yours. This encouraged just the behavior you received — a lot of negative commentary. But it also generated a lot of buzz, so though it was tough on the designer, it was good for business.
All that green, you know.
In the midst of all of this, then you post the mockup of the other designer, who in the first comment offers to step in, for a fee of course (don’t take your eye off the green).
To be honest, depending on the level of communication between you at this time, perhaps the resignation was the only move that Rachael could take. You didn’t give her any other.
You did not handle this well. When you roll out a new design that someone else helps with, you say you’re happy with it. Period. You don’t leave the door open for what happened.
Then, in the midst of all of this, you don’t publicly post another design, say how you’re going to take good bits from it, implying that maybe your current design doesn’t have the good bits. I wonder: is it because the second mock up is perhaps closer to what Rachael recommended, but you overrode her? I’d be pretty peeved too. So would anyone else on this list.
But I don’t know what’s happened between the both of you ‘off weblogs’. And neither does anyone else making snap judgments in this list.
What is out in the open, is this generated buzz. This is how we measure success in this environment. You’ve kept your eye on the green. You’ve taken care of business.
Aren’t all these bleeding-edge, early adopter-types supposed to be getting all their blogs through their feed-readers where design don’t count for nothin’ anyway?
(That’s the SitePoint.com Forums, of course
).
(Crap, disregard that last post, I thought I was on another page… d’oh)
It’s amazing how many comments this whole saga has engendered given the completely trivial and mostly benign nature of the dispute.
Two key points that I think people are missing is that Rachel did not “resign via Valleyway”. She made a post on her blog, and Valleywag got tipped off to it. Also she presumably emailed Mike her resignation before posting on her blog. She probably did overreact, probably because she didn’t realise that Mike hadn’t seen all the melodramatic designers who thought they could have done better ragging on her on various other blogs, and she was feeling that Mike should have been sticking up for her rather than posting some other guy’s design on crunchnotes.
But really, this little misunderstanding between client and designer did not warrant the blogosphere wasting hundreds of hours pouring their collective heart out into the relevant comment sections.
If this is what it means to be a Web2.0 superstar, I think I’ll give it a miss.
Shelley, you’re being unrealistic. Mike runs a blog. It survives on user interaction. To think that he can radically redesign and not get comments from his readers is absurd. To suggest that he not act on those comments (i.e., ignore the will of his readership) is stupid.
Josh, it would have been far smarter of Mike to post a series of “ideas” on the redesign matter than take one example, as others have pointed out could have been closer to Rachel’s original idea, and undermine her already challenged work.
It is incredible to continue to see comments about Rachel being childish and that she resigned publically when it’s been stated numerously that this wasn’t the case.
I for one am getting really bored with some people’s poor interpretation of these events when they simply don’t have a clue.
Your biggest mistake was doing a complete redesign. The site only needed minor modifications.
I find it ludicrous that in this stage of people’s professional lives they have such “high school” actions. You’re the client…paying the bills. If Rachel had an issue with your post on your other blog about a submitted idea, she should have brought it to you and discussed the problem like an adult. I don’t know the inner workings of your relationship with her, so I can’t say much that actually means anything. But the uproar across the blogosphere about this is comical at best. Just my two cents.
I find it amazing that all this drama came from one post that has a screenshot of a modified design submitted by a reader.
I saw the blog posts critiquing M. Arrington for ‘dissing’ his designer and they all link to that post with the one screenshot saying “I like some elements of this design”.
I keep going back to that blog post to see what Mr. Arrington wrote there that was so offensive and couldn’t find it. He never says “Rachel’s design sucks”. He never says “I dont like the redesign”. He just says “I like some elements of this reader-submitted design”. And that’s what all the drama is over?
Designer does design. Designer gets paid. Gets upset that client doesn’t like all aspects of the design and plans on changing it. Guess what? That’s 100% fair and he has every right to change it.
If this is how all designers behave, then I’d hate to ever hire one.
Regan, it certainly seems true that if Mike wanted to keep Rachel as his designer, he probably shouldn’t have done what he did.
As for Rachel–I don’t think she is childish. If she decided that she didn’t want to work for Mike anymore, then she did the right thing to quit.
Since none of us know what their working relationship was like, this is purely speculation, but it seems to me that there must have been something else going on than Mike just posting up that other mock-up. Most designers I know (and I am a moderator at a forum with over 100,000 of them) would probably call Mike up after seeing that post and ask him what he wanted done–you know, to collect another paycheck. That leads me to believe that something else was up, especially since she made the post on her blog stating that she had resigned, which appeared to be an attempt to elicit the sort of responses she got–a way to validate her decision to herself, if you will.
Josh- I agree; I feel like there might be some stray things happening in the background that we might not be privy to. I also agree with your argument that you are a moderator of a forum.
Web 2.0 circles have grown too small for comfort. That is all.
Of course there was something else going on and Mike undermining Rachel’s work was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Posting that she had resigned on her blog was nothing more than a news announcement to her readers. It wasn’t done with fanfare and she has moved on.
I’ll caveat my comment with the assumption that there was nothing else going on behind the scenes that hasn’t been disclosed. I can’t believe how your designer reacted. As an Art Director, I can in no way sympathize with her. To say she over reacted would be an understatement. To quit on her client in the middle of a project via a blog announcement tells me all I need to know about her. I wouldn’t sweat this. I’m sure you’ve had several offers, but if you need any design work, shoot me an email.
I don’t think this conversation is complete without examining the recent Paris / Britney rift that’s come to light. I mean, what’s up with that?!?!?!
I cannot at this point imagine ever hiring a designer to work on any of the products/services I am currently creating. I will instead do all the work myself – I find it to be infinitely preferrable to dealing with people such as this. Many thanks to the designers and designer sympathizers for this important lesson.
I do not know your designer, but what she did is f***ing bulls**t… ASSUMING that there has been no trouble beforehand (i obviously do not know). resigning in the middle of the night, on a blog, is juvenile. period.
This has probably been said at some point, but I side with Mike. Personally, as someone who has hired many designers over the last 8 years, I find Rachel’s actions completely unprofessional and would never choose her as someone that I would hire for a project I’m working on. Lacking the profesionalism to even discuss an issue with her client before quitting is just plain immature.
Best of luck Mike. At this rate, it looks like you’re better off anyway.
Mike, you’ve been fair and magnanimous throughout this whole thing, and I agree with the large majority of the responses posted here — you’ve handled yourself professionally. What I really like is that you leave yourself open for criticism and show due respect to your doubters, and as long as you keep on doing that you’ll have my support.
There is way to much to this story. The Techcrunch bubble will be bursting shortly (this thread is an indication of it). The fact is that Mike is a dick to work with and Rachel came to that conclusion (as did many others). Mike is doing great as basically an analyst. Calling him a tech figure is funny.
This whole saga is just SO FUNNY! It’s like watching school kids argue about something SO STUPID. I can’t believe people are attacking Arrington or his rather sensitive “ex” designer. GROW UP PEOPLE.
But thanks for giving me such a good laugh today!
I’m gonna say here what I said on other blogs … what’s is the big deal about this Rachel girl? I’ve taken a look at her portfolio – it surely isn’t anything spectacular… so she gets a couple of high profile clients and this makes her a blog design genius? Pffft. I see better designs on free template sites.
She’s a whiner and just is taking the easy way out instead of sucking it up and realizing she produced a(nother) not so great design on a highly trafficed blog.
Good riddance I say. When Mike first announced she did the design for this blog I almost tossed m cookies as well. It’s lame designing and poor coding.
I’ve followed this silly saga and have noticed Regan commenting all over the place … and then I realised, it’s Rachel’s husband.
From a complete outsiders viewpoint and I have no bones to pick – but it seems to be simply a case of a over dramatic designer. Very thin-skinned indeed.
The client hired her for a job and it was delivered and paid for. End of story. The collective blogosphere pretty much thought the new design was fugly. So what. Learn from it. Move on. once the design is delivered the client can do what he wants – even hack it to death. Who cares, you’ve been paid.
Clients are always going to be difficult – and as a designer you have to learn to deal with that or get out of the game.
Finally, I’ve not seen one instance of the client attacking the designers work. Not once.
Sidelines, I am interested to know where all this “drama” is that you’ve talked about from Rachel? The only thing that she has said was an announcement on her blog that she had resigned AFTER she had emailed her resignation to Michael.
Michael had contracted Rachel to do work long term, not just for the TC redesign. Rachel wasn’t resigning from the TC redesign but as the person who has been coding up his sites for the past few months. The “announcement” that she made on her blog was simply stating that she had resigned. Not that she was resigning as some tend to believe.
Rachel is up to her neck in work and quite frankly didn’t need the hassle of working with a difficult client who is desperate to get things done and then never actions anything for days and then expects jobs to be rushed and still be at a high standard.
The only drama in this entire melee is from people assuming that they know the full story when they still can’t tell the difference between a public resignation and an announcement that one has just resigned. It is a joke.
Regan, please stop this. I know Rachel is your wife and you are going to defend her. But you have to realize that all of these comments are essentially the same, regarless of which side they take. The comments supporting me/hating Rachel, or supporting rachel/hating me are just that, on both sides: hate comments. Rachel is a wonderful person and a wonderful designer. I don’t hate her or blame her for resigning. I wish this hadn’t been done publicly, but she felt attacked by me and she did it, I assume, to protect herself. In the end, she will always have more work that she can handle and lots of people who will always love her. I will always look back at the time we worked together with happiness, except for the last week.
With regard to Rachel’s resignation, yes she did send an email. As I said, I saw the resignation trackback first because I moderate comments when I wake up. I then saw the valleywag post. I then saw her email. That was just the order I saw things, and I’m sure she sent the email first before she did the other things.
What I wished had happened was this: she could have sent me an email telling me she felt hurt by what I did. I would have taken the offending post down. I would have publicly apologized. I would have done anything to keep her happy. But when the shit hit the fan, and everything was out in the open, I wrote how I felt about the whole situation.
I have never said a bad word about Rachel as a person or a designer and never will.
I want this to stop. I want the death threats to stop in particular.
Well, hey… Text Link Ads bought the 7 thousand dollar spot. So you end up okay. No need to give a real apology. $ is everything.
Hello Michael,
I’ve been a lurker for nearly a year, but felt I should comment about the recent noise that’s been going on regarding TechCrunch and the redesign.
Unfortunately, Rachel’s not the only one who saw it that way. I’m speaking with my Jane B. Average hat on, not my web designer hat.
Someone who may not realize there are other posts surrounding the redesign (i.e. finds her way to that particular link from another site or the search engines) would initially think you were taking a pop at your previous designer. I’m not saying you were, but simply, that’s how it seems.
It’s important to look at how your post may be construed from a different perspective.
While I don’t condone how she resigned (if what you say is fact), I can understand why she did it.
I certainly hope that you and Rachel can work this out cordially.
~ Teli
Ran this thru Dick Cheney who was in SF this week, and he loves the green. Case closed. EOD, Govn will pick. Sorry.
This is a classic case of not charging enough. I’m sure if Rachel’s fee was high enough, then she wouldn’t care what her client did.
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing…ego, ego, ego…