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I informally checked on this and the pay is a lot higher, but the hours are probably somewhere between normal and what you said. I also found out that the stock options are pretty good. I also did some background work and found they are pretty well financed.

Maybe the reason this company (Mahalo) appeals to me is because it reminds me of a place I worked at a long time ago. It was a large toy company that had a mix of creative designers vs engineers and was a really good eye-opening experience for me. Most of the employees at Mahalo are not engineers, but are liberal arts types doing web research and creating content. It looks like the engineers keep the server going and build specialized web tools for the liberal-arts types.

In contrast, the Google/Yahoo environment started out with an engineer-only gearhead mentality. They sincerely believe that search should be presented to the end-user from computer algorithms. (And don't get me going on AI and the promises of MIT LISP). My only point here is that the machine-only approach has serious limits. The Mahalo people are combining the machine with human editing to refine the content. Google and Yahoo used to be pretty good, but now the algorithms are being "gamed" by SEO companies. Most of people just put up with crap like this because it's all they have. It's the same reason that your VCR can't remember the time after power loss, or why you have to click "Start" to shut OFF your damn computer.

Typically, engineers have a narrow perspective and never get a chance to work within an environment like this. For that reason, most engineers reading this won't have a clue what I'm talking about. So yeah, maybe the hours are more than you like and maybe the CEO is an ass and maybe this new place isn't what I perceive and maybe you have it good where you are. Personally I'm over the hill, on the right coast and don't work with web technology. But if you are looking for a job and you can take the risk it might be worth it.

Rabid - (earning his name)

I think the work environment is somewhat (high expectations) like Codger implied, but then I found out that they are distributing 15% of the stock to 50 employees. If the company is even partly successful and maybe evaluates to 500 million in 2 years, well ...you can do the math but I get 1.5 Mil each. I know thety are ahead of schedule on their inventory of search pages. All this info is public from internet searches I did.

Also they have a lot of money in the bank, enough for 4 years.

and ... due to the cultural-specific nature of their business .. (drum roll).. they only hire Americans!!

OK you got me on the 2-year 500 Million one. I was probably optimistic, but they have to be worth 100 Mill right now based on the 5:1 venture capital ratio. With Microsoft in a buying mode, search is getting more valuable. I assume that they will build value and sell before they run out of money. The VC's will see to that.

If they didn't have a plan, I don't think Sequoia, Elon Musk, CBS & others would have invested (rather heavily). Investors like this can provide enough outside influence and partnering to make it happen. As we all know, it's the hype and perception that makes value.

They started last year with enough venture money to last 5 years. They now have 50 employees with enough cash to last 4 more years. The goal was create the top 10,000 search result pages. They exceeded their goal and are now around 50,000 search result pages. It looks to me that the site is attractive to the yuppie "pop" crowd searching for news, video games, entertainment, "how to" stuff. No pages on "how to program a Vax" , but I did find this http://www.mahalo.com/Sheyla_Hershey

More seriously, it is the simple organization of each search result page that I like, with a nice guide's summary at the top of each one.

There is currently no significant revenue as far as I know, but the plan seems to be to build a brand and a following. They are still in Beta and going strong.