THE JOKE’S ON WHO
By Elizabeth Coady
IN SHORT ORDER, HE CREATED AN ONLINE COUPON COMPANY, LAUNCHED AN IP0, MADE A BILLION DOLLARS, THEN GOT FIRED. So what’s next for Groupon’s deposed CEO Andrew Mason?
Trolling the Internet — and maybe capitalist America?
Ousted from the company he helped founded after a “precipitious post-IPO stock decline,” Mason’s bank is still estimated to be about $200 million. That’s enough to dither the rest of his life away playing with his imaginary 20 cats, producing YouTube yoga videos, or releasing hokey how-to-get ahead instructionals disguised as 80s pop songs.
Mason has just released Hardly Workin’, a digital album of seven songs purporting to dispense real-life lessons for surviving and thriving in the workforce. But after giving a short listen to the songs it’s hard to know if the Northwestern University graduate of music isn’t just secretly mocking the bromides of business success.
“This album pulls some of the most important learnings from my years at the helm of one of the fastest growing businesses in history, and packages them as music,” Mason writes on his blog, revealing not a hint of sarcasm. “Executives, mid-level management, and front-line employees are all sure to find valuable takeaways. I’ve probably listened to the album over a dozen times now, and with each spin I feel like I learn something.”
He includes advice for “managers thinking about how to make best use of the album:”
Context is king. Sure, you can just leave copies of Hardly Workin’ on your employees’ desks and achieve an incremental increase in productivity and morale (productivity is a function of morale, people!), but I wrote this album as someone someone who believes that messages mean different things depending on the time and place they’re delivered. Try ending your next all-hands meeting with It’s Up to Us” for example. Or, having trouble communicating with a low-per/hi-po employee? A Thinkin’ of You note attached to a flash drive preloaded with My Door is Always Open might be the catalyst you need for that transformational breakthrough.
Bloggers have reacted to the release with everything from bemusement to confusion to downright unguarded cruelty. “Granted, Mason left Groupon as a man worth $200 million, so it’s hard to call him unsuccessful,” huffs the Huffington Post. “But these lyrics are overwhelmingly simple and pretty ridiculous.”
Wall Street is dismissing Mason for a second time: Fortune magazine gave it a grade of 1.4 stars out of a possible 10 and sniffed, “It’s bland, saccharine and a prime example of just because you have the means to do something does not mean you should do it.”
By far the most insightful comment comes from an iTunes poster who wrote: “Andrew Mason is famous for being a prankster. And I’m pretty sure no self-respecting man would put out this kind of music seriously.”
Get in the joke.
