Sequoia Capital, the backer of Apple, Yahoo, and Google, ordered its startups to slash their payrolls this fall. We hear one CEO fired people so enthusiastically he had to retract some of his pink slips.

AdBrite, the online-ad network best known for its quirky founder, FuckedCompany creator Philip "Pud" Kaplan, is hiring an in-house lawyer. This is odd only in that last we heard, the online ad network already had one. Current general counsel Rebecca Eisenberg is just one of several vice presidents leaving the company, according to a tipster. Engineering VP Mike Reaves left in February, a month after HR chief Melissa Vernon. We'd also heard that cofounder Gidon Wise is out the door.Our source speculates that Paul Levine and Jim Benton may be next to go. The tipster suggests that AdBrite CEO Iggy Fanlo is replacing Benton with a yet-to-be-hired SVP of sales. This strikes us more than the usual amount of startup churn; when there's money to be made, Valley executives make a habit of sticking around for the payday. There's talk of an AdBrite IPO, but the enthusiasm for online ad networks on Madison Avenue and Wall Street is cooling fast. (Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)

Philip Kaplan once ran the website InternalMemos.com, a compendium of leaked company missives. Now Valleywag has obtained one from AdBrite, the online-ad network Kaplan founded. AdBrite is now run by CEO Iggy Fanlo, who earns our Silicon Valley Tool award for railing at his employees about their work hours: "I continue to see too few folks here at 9 AM; and too few folks here at 6 PM." Let's leave aside the issue of whether Fanlo is violating California overtime laws; long hours are part of the startup culture. We just want to know if Fanlo has considered that employees might be avoiding the office in order to minimize contact with the company's erratic founder. The full memo, as Kaplan himself would have run it: