★ Wait. A Teenager Made a Mistake? Wow. I’m Astonished!

Tonight, one of my close friends was let go from what many would call, “a teenager’s dream job.” He was an intern for the popular and widely respected technology blog, TechCrunch. My friend’s name was Daniel Brusilovsky. A lot of people in business use “friend” lightly in conversation but it usually involves a scale of good, great and close being added before the word friend as a way to one-up the other guy that you know said “friend” better than they do. It’s a pet peeve so of mine but for the sake of this post, Daniel was a very close friend of mine for many years.

Daniel was a friend. In fact, I wrote about him only 48 hours ago. Here’s what I said:

3. Daniel Brusilovsky – Daniel was barely 14 when he and I started chatting over email in 2007 or maybe it was 2008. I honestly can’t remember. He interviewed me for The Apple Universe Podcast and did a great job quizzing me about Apple and Macworld. We chatted on and offline for a while about tech and otherwise. When I moved to San Francisco, Daniel was always there to introduce me to his business contacts and I can rely on him to put me in touch with some of he harder to reach people via email or phone introductions. Daniel is more than a lubricant for my self-promotion. He’s also a guy who’s listened to my gripes and criticisms and even taken the initiative to take me out to lunch after we hadn’t caught up in a while. Daniel has helped me feel less alone as he went through and is going through many of the things that I am. It’s a big industry and making waves isn’t easy. Daniel gets that and is always there to lend a helping hand. I had dinner at his house with his Mom and Dad. Both of Daniel’s parents are wonderful people. They’re kind, respectful and honest and Daniel is lucky to have a tremendous support system in his parents. Daniel has been a true friend.

Tonight, Michael Arrington, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of TechCrunch posted this announcement: (the gist)

On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.

After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post.

The intern in question has admitted to some of the allegations, and has denied others. We suspended this person while we were sorting through exactly what happened. When it became clear yesterday that there was no question that this person had requested, and in one case taken, compensation for a post, the intern was terminated.

It didn’t take long for the web to figure out who it was. I knew immediately. Speculation began and soon, the blog post will surpass 300 comments (possibly 500 by morning) and 500 mentions on Twitter. Everyone has an opinion. Most of the comments are applauding TechCrunch’s integrity of posting this. Other comments are targeting Daniel and placing him in a few categories of what kind of person he is to push their own agenda (teen, kid, victim of the public school system, web 2.0 celebrity).

The only thing blatantly apparent through all of this is that everyone loves a good scandal or maybe it’s controversy but whatever, people are soaking this up. For the sake of wrapping up the story before I move on to my own opinion, Daniel posted a statement to his blog:

In some way or another, a line was crossed that should have never been. At this time, I do not want to go into details, but I will publicly say that I am truly sorry to my family, friends, TechCrunch, and especially the tech community. Since 2006 when I first got into the internet, I have felt comfortable, and working at TechCrunch has made this experience even better. TechCrunch is not to blame for any of this — TechCrunch has given me the opportunity of a life time. I can never say thank you enough for TechCrunch for the amazing last nine months I’ve had.

————————————-

Now that everyone is caught up on what happened and I’ve been extremely clear about my past relationship with Daniel, this incident has brought up a subject that I touched on before but never revisited and my past 3 months have made this statement even more important.

Live by your means, act your age, take care of your body, expand your mind and learn to respect and love those who are far better off and far worse off than you are.

At the end of June I wrote, “A Letter for The Kids” In that post, this excerpt applies to my point:

The path of life is interesting as well. Everyone is on a different path but, as my Father taught as a young age, every movement is a ripple in the water that affects everyone. As a human, it’s natural to be self-absorbed and self-serving and don’t worry, we all do it but I’ve tried to be mindful of others while still being successful and what I’ve learned about success is that it’s the most challenging aspect I’ve experienced in life. Moving across country was easy, finding the most amazing woman was easy and making enough money to get by is always easy but sucess is more than work, it’s the responsbility that comes with it.

When you become successful, you give up a piece of yourself. Everyone loves hearing a success story and as I succeed in more projects, I’ve had to bring on a new responsiblity of recognition which means more people following your every word. I’m not a celebrity and I’m glad because every opinion, thought post and move is criticized by a few dozen people. It grows every week. Also, making money can be easy but when you make money, the more tempted you are to take bigger risks for higher returns and I’m very guilty of making money and losing it on a bigger and better project. I need to step more carefully on this.

As you grow older, breathe more, learn more and explore more. Never stop exploring. I was speaking to a friend that works for himself, he’s 25 years old and travels a lot. He’s not wildly succesful but he makes enough money to spend half of his year traveling. It’s interesting to hear of his travels but also of his advice. He’s told me countless times that travel and exploring doesn’t shape you any way because of where you go. Going anywhere but where your home is can affect you enough to realize home, family, friends and stability is what makes life so amazing. A month in Ireland can be a fun experience but returning home is more rewarding than the trip itself. Remember that as you grow older and want to move out of the house, do something spontaneous and have zero responsibilities. It sounds interesting and fun but it can be tiring and actually age you before your time. Wisdom is one thing but age is another.

And this line:

The only way you can rise above the hardships and pain is to remember where you came from and always be sure of where you’re going but never, ever stand still because when you do, that’s the moment life stops and just as a still pond grows algae, our spirits will grow sour every moment that you sit still.

It’s easy for me to force Daniel and other kids in his situation to read and apply what I’ve written but the reality is that this was written by me AFTER experiencing and making mistakes. It’s easy for us old fogies to preach, teach and lecture those young kids but it’s experiences that shape our lives and this experience will shape Daniel’s for many years to come.

I don’t wish failure or embarrassment on anyone but, without a few missteps, we won’t be able to truly realize how lucky we are to be alive, employed, loved or respected.

Daniel was put into a position of power time and time again at a very young age and I still believe he deserved every bit of success because he went out and took it and he worked his ass off to get where he is. He didn’t work his ass off to one day get a free computer. What drove Daniel is the same thing that drives all of us no matter what industry, school, project or goal we have. Daniel was driven and the sky was the limit.

————————————-

The first thing I’d like to say is regarding the comments and commentary. Your love of scandal and joining in the mob got the best of you. If you can safely say you’ve never done anything immoral or illegal in your life, then feel free to criticize the hell out of this. Using the excuse, “well he’s on TechCrunch and should be held to a higher standard than I am” is no excuse.

Let He Who is Without Sin Cast the First Stone

Simply keep your mouth shut unless you’re willing to admit something that you did wrong as well. We have all done stupid and irresponsible things both as adults and children. It’s safe to say that this was the first of many “stupid mistakes” in Daniel’s life not because he is a bad person but because he’s a person and each of us makes mistakes.

Someone earlier told me they had lost all respect for Daniel after hearing this news. Trust me, there are many more people that you’ll respect at some point in your life that have done or will do far worse things than what Daniel did. I can guarantee someone you look up to will do something horrendous and you may never find out.

Before you can criticize someone else, look inward and make sure your conscious is clean.

————————————-

I’m going to go out on a limb here and most likely piss off my friends, Daniel and his parents by saying this incident is far from the absolute worse thing that could have happened to Daniel. This is petty. On the list of “bad things” a person can do, this is nothing. He’s an intern under the age of 18 that took a bribe to write a blog post for a company that he most likely already favored just based on the founders, the product or some other reason.

However, despite the fact that this was a petty incident, I’m happy this happened as I’m sure many more people are. I’m not happy because I want Daniel to fail. I’m happy because I want Daniel to succeed and I breathe a sigh of relief that it was only a “bribed blog post” and not something far worse. However, the incident is big enough to alter how Daniel lives his life from now on but not so bad that we won’t see him for 10 years as he’s stuck in a jail cell.

I saw where Daniel’s life was taking him. I saw his future and it wasn’t bright. Sure, he’d be running a company in 10 years, entertaining buy-out offers from Google and driving our his Tesla roadster with an up & coming LA Actress under his arms walking down red carpets but would he be living his life to the fullest potential? Would Daniel be living? I doubt it.

To some people, success is living but I know from being in this bubble for only 2 years that there’s a bigger world out there and one that Daniel has never experienced. Daniel was born in Silicon Valley. He grew up with a dad who worked for a tech company. He lives a bike ride away from some of the most successful tech companies in the world and he worked, interned and visited companies that are shaping the world and inventing cool products. It’s safe to say that he needed to live his life outside of this bubble even for a few short years before he truly began to value what he had.

I hope Daniel takes this opportunity to step away from the tech world for a while and here are a few things that I hope for him. The reason why I’m listing these things is because these are things I NEVER DID as a kid (aside from the girlfriend thing). The things I’m about to list are things I never tried or did but things i wish I had done now that I’m nearly 24.

• Find a best friend or two (one that isn’t in tech at all)
• Find a girlfriend / boyfriend and fall in love or at least learn the ins and outs of a relationship
• Read books about things you don’t care for or know nothing about. Expand and challenge your mind.
• Put down the laptop / iPhone and take a month to 6 months without technology
• Go on a vision quest or simply go camping for 15 days all alone out in the woods. Find your proverbial spirit animal.
• Try alcohol (once)
• Try cigarettes (once)
• Join a club (academic or not)
• Join a gym and focus on being in the best shape you can while your metabolism is high and your testosterone is peaked
• Go on a road trip with 2 best friends with no destination and a tank full of gas
• Go on a vacation for no reason to somewhere you wouldn’t normally go.
• Go to college and enjoy every fucking minute of it
• Admit something to someone you love that you’ve never told anyone before
• Set a physical goal and do it! (faster mile, heavy benchpress, most pushups)
• Sell every piece of technology that isn’t absolutely essential and use the money for a trip to somewhere exotic
• Backpack through Europe
• Work on a farm and learn to love it
• Build something (physical not software)
• Hold a job outside of tech and learn to love it
• Work in manual labor or fast-food. Trust me, you’ll learn to appreciate how hard these jobs really are

Ya know, this list was a hell of a lot longer than I wanted it to be but honestly this was a list of things that I wanted to do before I turned 25. I’ve had alcohol and I’ve fallen in love with a girlfriend and I did work at Arby’s for a few months when I was 16. Other than that, I have yet to do any of these things and that’s pretty sad.

I realize that Daniel is 6.5 years younger than I am. He could do all of this in the next year and then have 5.5 more years to get back into technology and have fun. He can do all of this before he turns 20 and still be further ahead than most kids his age both professionally and in life.

————————————-

What happened to my friend sucked but this will be a great thing for him and open up even more opportunities. I hope more kids that follow him and read my blog take my advice and take a break from trying to change the world until they’re at least 18 years old. I have a shit-load of 14-16 year olds that email me with dreams of moving to San Francisco and starting a company. It’s depressing because I have saved emails from where I wrote letters with the exact same words to people in their 20s when I was only 16 and no one told me to chill out and be a kid and there are a ton of things now that I regret and wish I had done instead of working so much.

I’m proud of Daniel and what he’s accomplished. He’s proven that he has the skills, work ethic and commitment to truly achieve great things even with so many factors are against him. Daniel, we all know you have it in you. Now it’s time to take a break, have some fun and grow your mind and you’ll come back to the tech world smarter, stronger and more mature. You’ll apply what you learned on hiatus with the already exceptional skills and characteristics and you’ll be successful, that’s a guarantee.

Other teens should do the same. You are all smart and exceptional people but you need to take your time and act your age. so I leave you with the statement I posted at the start of this blog post:

Live by your means, act your age, take care of your body, expand your mind and learn to respect and love those who are far better off and far worse off than you are.