Granted, this submission is likely receiving a lot of upvotes because the headline contains the phrase "Bashing BuzzFeed", but the concerns echo submissions that tend to be important to HN, such as the rights of individual contractors/ownership of product. Although bashing your former employer is not a good long term strategy.
Disclosure: I am currently working on a "Why I Left Apple" blog post/video, albeit much different than the examples in the article.
Serious question - can someone please explain the purpose/appeal of these "Why I Left X" blog posts/videos?
I'm from a generation where you didn't publicize this kind of stuff, and I'm not quite sure I understand the intent/social value of such posts/videos outside of the "whistleblowing" types of posts. Absent of any context, these posts/videos just strike me as self promotion.
> I'm from a generation where you didn't publicize this kind of stuff
Which is incidentally the exact reason why the posts are popular. There has been a taboo on hiring/firing literature, and only recently have people become more transparent with information that is very valuable. Having unique perspectives makes you stand out, although admittingly in the case of posts which make it to the top of HN, it's often the interview-from-hell from a Big 4 or a "my incredible journey" exit. (both of which are tropes that are not applicable in my blog post)
Because blogging and publishing videos is easier than ever. Nothing has changed about the culture.
In 1972, if someone left a company, they would willingly tell anybody who cared to ask. It is a frequent question during the interview process because it is insanely useful in helping to understand a potential hire. You didn't publicize this kind of stuff because the effort of typing it and Xeroxing it for your zine wasn't worth the reward of a reader getting some sort of insight into the company culture.
But now publishing that thought requires almost no effort beyond just typing it or saying it. That's it. It's just a personal story.
>> You didn't publicize this kind of stuff because the effort of typing it and Xeroxing it for your zine wasn't worth the reward of a reader getting some sort of insight into the company culture.
At least for my cohort, that's not the reason why you didn't do it. You didn't do it because it was career limiting. There was value placed on a person who had a sense of discretion.
I'm sure a lot of HR types Google their candidates. I'm wondering if any would drop a candidate for having posted these things.
And this is why it is interesting: the fact that someone is putting their name to something that could seriously damage their future career potential. It is ironic that you dismiss this as self-promotion -- of course it is -- and then point out that it could be career-limiting.
It was considered career limiting for my generation. Don't know if it still is now, or if the younger generations simply don't care.
Outside of the "Why I Left" posts, a lot of younger people put a lot of content on social media that my age peer group would consider "career limiting".
I think it's self promotion in both cases. A lot of people who put out these articles on how bad their working conditions were seem to be trying to turn their woes into a z-list internet celebrity lifestyle. They want to turn the controversy from these 'leaving' articles and videos into a larger social media presence and montly Patreon bucks.
Look at that woman who got fired after complaining about the conditions at Yelp for example. She tried to turn the situation into a personal brand.
It's the internet version of people that try and become Z-list celebrities through reality TV shows.
> these posts/videos just strike me as self promotion
Vanity blogging and self promotion seem to be inevitable side effects of the frictionless nature of publishing on the internet and the lack of will or resources to do thorough moderation on aggregators with public contribution.
Pretty interesting dynamic. As someone pointed out, these people are hired by BuzzFeed for their ability to be creative thinkers/creators who show aptitude in drawing attention to themselves. These are precisely the kind of people who would do something viral like this after quitting the company. As someone else noted, this kind of public airing is usually career-limiting, but it's different with BuzzFeed in that many industry folks tend to have disdain for BF, so publicly dissing BF might have less of a negative connotation depending on the nature of the complaint.
I was surprised to see that BF apparently has such strong constraints on creative's side projects. That policy apparently doesn't apply to the investigative journalism team, where reporters seem to have free reign to open source their work and share their data.
This article is more interesting than its title suggests. You think it'll be a schadenfreude-filled dish on problems with buzzfeed but no:
1. BF trains people to go for eye-catching content and personalities, so as people leave in the normal course of events they call attention to their departure as a way of helping their own career.
2. BF basically doesn't come off as a bad place and indeed seems to be teaching these people to do, well, item #1.
It seems to me a lot of these ex-BuzzFeed video producers just leave the company once they become super popular and want "more independence."
It seems like they're publicly biting the hand that fed them by making these videos: If BuzzFeed never hired them in the first place, they'd all just be no-name YouTubers.
I want to know how much these people get paid. The content industry needs some transparency. Especially after that horrible stain on professionalism Huffington Post paid its writers nothing and Ariana got $315 million. Exploitation is not cool, nor is kneecapping the real market.
An angle this article is kind of vague on that could potentially be of interest to HN readers would be how many of these people's relationship to BuzzFeed was through a new-ish L.A.-based video unit of theirs, BuzzFeed Motion Pictures.
All of which makes the place sound a bit like a video sweatshop that makes its money by grinding up talented young people and then spitting them out, so it would be interesting to know how many of the complaints in this article are from people who worked at BuzzFeed in general versus how many are from people who worked at BuzzFeed Motion Pictures.
Only slightly better on desktop, with a video player (for unrelated content) cycling adds, and then moving down the right hand of the screen when you scroll away from it.
Disclosure: I am currently working on a "Why I Left Apple" blog post/video, albeit much different than the examples in the article.