I Can’t Work Under These Conditions

"Kick someone's ass on the first day, or become someone's bitch. After then, everything will be alright."<p>This seems to be Michael asserting his place in the pecking order, in his own mischievous way :-)

Obscure clause on Page 47 of the M &#38; A documents:<p>"This deal becomes null and void if any internal AOL documents end up on Techcrunch.com before the end of the due diligence period."<p>&#60;/just kidding&#62;

After noticing this was written by Arrington, I think this was clearly tongue in cheek, and partially meant as a display of "Look, here's some proof that TechCrunch is not really changing and is not going to censor stories due to various financial interests. We're still going to complain about things that are dumb, and I think meetings are dumb."

Apparently the smiley was left of the HN Title.<p>Considering Michael Arrington put a Dilbert cartoon in the post, I assume this is meant as humor.

<i>Ok, I’m off to go review HR policies, or something. On the upside, there’s a guy here named Brian from corp dev and I think with enough pressure he’s going to tell me all the other acquisition deals AOL is working on.</i><p>It pays to be an optimist.

Wait, you think your company can be bought out by another company and NOT have a meet-n-greet?<p>I would think it seriously odd if everyone tried to ignore the change and the new overlords didn't introduce themselves.

Arrington seems to be unreasonably excited about the gifts. What will he do when the dump truck pulls up with all of the 'recycled' AOL CDs as gifts. :-)

I still think that at some level Michael Arrington approved this deal because it meant one more story he could break. He's clearly crossed from dedication to addiction.

This smells contrived, as if TechCrunch will somehow be cooler if it rebels against its parent a la Reddit v. Conde Nast.

Can someone explain what "Working Session" means to me? There's nothing listed for them to work on.

Just don't forget to turn in your badge when you leave.<p>AOL took like $50 out of my last paycheck for mine!

I think he just wrote a blog post. He can apparently work under these conditions.

We have a big meeting coming up soon where I work. I can very much relate. I was recently thinking "That something like 1500 man hours wasted on all this togetherness when we could be accomplishing something."

This article is a better put "Service Temporarily Unavailable" message. Way to make news when you're too busy to do real journalism :-)

Did anyone else find it hilarious that an entire section of time is blocked out for "Administrative Happiness"?

So, we can assume there will be nothing worth reading on TechCrunch tomorrow.

Am I the only one who thinks it's funny that he published the agenda of their internal all-hands?<p>At least where I work, these things always have "confidential" in tiny print in a corner for no obvious reason.

Gifts, what could it be? A mobile built from AOL CDs perhaps?

I hate HR orientation :(

Lest anyone forget the absolute utter dirt bags running the show at AOL, let me regale thee with all time hit #1 "Cancel the account" <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY</a><p>Good luck Mr. Arrington, and better luck getting out.

2:30-3:00 Return to their desks and start looking for new jobs?

I wonder how much he is being paid to attend that 3 hour meeting

"STFU and go cash your check, numnutts."