As you’ve probably heard by now, Heather Harde — my boss for the past three years or so — has quit AOL. There’s not much more to say beyond what Mike already has. This is just really sad — sad because it never should have gone down this way.

Heather was far and away the best boss I ever had. She’s also the hardest working person I’ve ever met. She could and probably should be the CEO of dozens of other companies in Silicon Valley. Hopefully she’ll do that now, if she wants.

Forget myself or Paul or Sarah leaving TechCrunch. Forget even Mike leaving TechCrunch. Heather’s departure is by far the biggest blow to the company — and Mike would be the first to say that.

Given its scale (which we all built over the years) TechCrunch will survive without Heather, but it will never be the same. I honestly can’t think of a single person they could put in place that would be able to do a fraction of what Heather was able to do on the business side of things. It will be totally different now. Maybe that’s fine, but it will never be better.

Again, this is all just incredibly frustrating because it really didn’t have to happen this way. And yet, it did.

Thanks for everything Heather.

All day, I kept telling myself I shouldn’t say anything. Then I realized: what the fuck? Be honest.

I found Paul’s post tactless. And I found Erick’s response inappropriate. Perhaps both are fitting given the entire clusterfuck that is this situation. But both are also quite sad.

Many of you are watching TechCrunch unravel before your very eyes. That sucks. It sucks for me too. But TechCrunch is also too big to fail. One way or another, it will live on. Try as hard as AOL might, they can’t totally fuck it up. That’s just the truth.

Also the truth: AOL has not reached out to me once in this entire situation. You’d think they might care about something like that. Evidently, they don’t. I’m not losing any sleep over it, but it’s curious.

I appreciate the outpouring of support from everyone. No matter what happens, don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’m just sincerely worried about the state of AOL that they seem to have a total disregard for the actual situation. TechCrunch is a key property and one of the few bright spots in their portfolio. But to them, it’s apparently just numbers.

That’s a losing stance. TechCrunch may survive with that stance, but it will not thrive as it has. That’s the CNET stance. Complacency is poison.

Everyone still at TechCrunch knows this. That’s why Paul’s post is dangerous. He’s shining the spotlight on something, but he’s missing the mark. There is exactly one person to blame for all of this — and her name is not Erick.

For the most part, I’ve really enjoyed reading all the various takes on TechCrunch’s acquisition by AOL this week. Some are good, some are bad, some are just sad. But two have stuck out to me as being decidedly full of shit. Interestingly enough, both are by Robert Cringely.

Okay, yes, I know that the name is applied to multiple people these days. Still, it’s impressive that both could dish out the same type of asshatery. 

The question I probably get asked most often is: “what does ParisLemon stand for?” I usually just tell people it’s not that interesting — because really, it’s not. The fact of the matter is that it was just the random screen name I chose for myself on AOL when I was a kid. Of course, now that TechCrunch has been acquired by AOL, it’s slightly more interesting.

The full story is that I was actually kicked off of AOL sometime in 1994 (when I was 13) for “scrolling” (basically hitting a letter and then hitting return over and over again in a chat room). My original screen name, “RELGEIS” (“Siegler” backwards), was banned by the service. But I was addicted to AOL and needed to get back online, so I grabbed one of my parent’s credit cards and came up with a new name as quickly as possible. 

The name I picked, Paris Green (a pigment, animal poison, and firework colorant), was taken. So was ParisBlue, ParisRed, etc, etc. So, ParisLemon it was.