An Open Letter To The Girl Who Was Fired From Yelp.

Dear Talia

I have comfortably resisted all temptation for posting to Medium for a long time, however I now feel like I have the proper motivation. Something you may want to study yourself a little. (Read Talia’s open letter to her CEO)

So let’s get the hard stuff done with quickly, then if there is time I will chuck in some sympathy, and if you want it, some advice near the end.

1. You have, far more than you think you have

I will avoid talking about myself as best as I can, but for this point it is the best reference I can make.

I live in the UK, and I have mostly lived and worked in Brighton, which people often compare to SF. I wouldn’t know about that though, I have never been.

Although I had more than adequate schooling, I didn’t go to University. At the time I didn’t know why, I just knew I didn’t want the debt and I was confident I could find the knowledge and skills I needed elsewhere.

With some help from my Dad, I got my first job about 3 months after walking away from college. It was 2007, I was 19 and it was also a customer service job. I was paid £12,000/$17,000 a year (pretty much the same as you, maybe a little less). There was no free food, not even coconut water, I wouldn’t get a private health care package at work for another 5–6 years and for the first few months I lived at home with Dad.

After a few months I got my first apartment, which I shared with a friend (I know everyone is screaming and shouting at you about doing this… so yeah… do this), which costs us £650/$900 a month. Rent prices have gone up a lot since then, I think the same flat is now about £1000/$1400 a month.

There are a few key things that separate our first years at work, I was quite a bit younger and didn’t have a degree to feel overly proud of. I also didn’t have a credit card (bad move Talia) or a desperate sense of self-worth. That came much later on!

The BIGGEST difference is that I. Fucking. Loved. It.

I had no money, an expensive commute, rigid working hours, some weird co-workers, lots of nagging people to help (my actual job) and a terrible taste in work clothes. But man, that was a great time. I was learning quickly, finding skills in myself I never knew I had, understanding how the wheels of business turned, taking pride in total financial independence and bouncing back from failure quicker than ever.

My house mate and I ate pretty shitty food, and argued about money and shopping all the time. But you have to see this stuff as a very good thing. Our little flat was the coolest thing that ever happened to us and the silly, low paid, entry level jobs we had, where we dealt with happy and unhappy customers all day, were the perfect learning ground for whatever came next in life.

To be honest, reading your blog, you already have all this and more. You are well educated. You have (had) a job, which you didn’t have to work hard to find at all, and it sounds like you have a cool place to live too.

You have just miss-judged what you have. You have taken it all for granted and assumed that life will provide you with some kind of safety net in the shape of an extended line of credit, a ‘good reason’ not to share your home and a job that thinks your skills and experience are going to re-shape the course of Silicon Valley.

But sorry Talia, it takes time, it takes hard work, it takes good decisions and more than anything, it takes a whole lot of gratitude for all these little things you have so quickly discarded.

Quick tip: Write a list of everything you have in life. Then put a little tick next to all the nice things and little cross next to all the bad things, see where it leaves you. I think you might find yourself better off than you think.

2. Memes and Twitter is not the skill you will get hired for, nor is it even close to an ambition

FUCK. This is literally the biggest part of the problem you are now facing. I have come a long way since that awesome, yet terrible customer service job. I have about three more years of life on you, I worked a lot of jobs and taken on responsibilities in the workplace that you probably don’t even know exist yet. I also earn a lot more money. And hear me now, if money is really what you are worried about, I promise you it comes. You just have to be patient and have a good attitude.

But this Twitter thing, you have really missed a trick here. I know a thing or two about marketing now, and people do not get paid because they are good at Twitter. They get paid to understand audiences, make intelligent choices about how content is created, how it is distributed and most importantly, how it contributes to the profits of a million dollar outfit like Yelp.

By all means keep posting pictures of kale pasta and ninja cats on your Twitstagram, but until you intimately understand why you want to do this and why Yelp wants to do this… just stick to answering the phones.

Please don’t see this as a put down or a ‘you can never do it’ comment, I am certain that you can. There is just way more to learn before you get that dream job of yours (which sadly doesn’t really exist).

3. Business is far more complex than you are yet to know

This is the boring but useful bit. The way you and I manage money, is really quite different to the way your company does. Just because you saved them $600 in coupons or coconuts or whatever, that doesn’t mean you can have that $600 back to pay your rent with! It really, really really doesn’t.

When Yelp invests in something, especially a person with a salary, that in-turn has to offer some return on investment (ROI). In this case your ability to save money on voucher costs or retain a customer is that ROI.

Your blog post will cost Yelp money. This is why you have been fired. People are taking to social media in force boycotting Yelp and their Eat24 app. It might not last more than a few weeks, but it will cost them money. They have probably dished out some cash to a PR firm for some help on what action to take. Plus, I saw your CEO posted some tweets in response, which probably took a while to work out. And his time is definitely not cheap.

With that in mind, Yelp have two options; sit you down and explain the consequences and help you learn about how this all works. I don’t think any of us or anyone at Yelp should think you were wrong to post this, it is simply how you feel. But saying bad things about people publicly has consequences, and ideally you should have the opportunity explore what those really are.

Yelp’s second option was to just cut you off, which they have. Chances are you have broken some major rules in your contract and that is that.

At the end of the day, no company is perfect, especially when it comes to managing people. Of all the companies I have worked for, I was always made a bit angry about something. But I am an ambitious, positive and problem solving person, so I know what to do to either get over it, or fix it. I wish you some good luck in learning to do the same.

Well done on taking action against something you feel strongly about. In my opinion I think you have just grossly miss-judged your own position in all this, you have far more than you know.

For your next step, I would recommend looking at yourself, work out what it was that made you a good customer service person and see where that can take you next.

Keep tweeting etc. If you really want to make a go of it, start studying the theory behind what makes all that branding and marketing stuff work. You know, beyond the meme.

And finally, stop worrying so much about how much money is coming in (once you get a new job of course) and focus more what is going out. Rent, bills, food etc. Changing how you do this stuff is easier than you think. You just need to stop thinking you deserve EVERYTHING right away.

Life takes time, learn to love what you have and then grow from there.

Regards,

Toby