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Microsoft Fires Mac Fan For Blog Photo
christor writes "Microsoft has fired a full-time temp employee after it discovered that the employee posted in his blog a photo and story concerning Microsoft's purchase of what looks to be around 18 G5s.
Check out the blog entry, Even Microsoft wants G5s, and the one that follows it. Microsoft fired the blogger, despite an offer to take the posting down. Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government. But it does present several other interesting issues, including that of the trade-off between the bad publicity that comes from the firing and whatever bad results follow when employees feel free to post such things."
The person was fired mainly for taking a photo of the Microsoft Campus and posting it online plus telling people where he worked (short answer anyhow). Why is Microsoft so secretive about what is in the different buildings? I seem to remember a few other stories of people not being able to find anything on their land because nobody would tell them where anything was... it just seems weird. But I'm sure there is some sort of explanation for it. Anybody?
I know that there have been other cases of people being `persecuted' = fired from their positions due to things they said on the blogs.
I have to question the legality of that kind of action as infringing upon the freedom of speech, of punishing someone for their opinions.
Perhaps it is naive to think that the non-discrimination due to race, creed, etc would also apply to thought.
Because in essence firing someone for what are their opinions and thoughts is a form of thought police.
While that doesn't relate in this instance, as this is far more foolish.
It's a laugh. MS buying Apples. So what? It's funny. I'm sure they have Linus boxes running somewhere also. What of it?
You'd think a company that wealthy would be able to afford a sense of humour.
I recall reading a story awhile ago about a Coke employee who was fired for drinking Pepsi while working. This is along similar lines for justification of firing someone; however, in this case it is a little more iffy if they could actually fire him for this depending on what sort of contracts he signed when agreeing to employment with Microsoft.
In the Coke/Pepsi deal the worker had to sign something saying he wouldn't publicly endorse another product (by drinking it) while working. I imagine MS might have a similar deal.
What?
... and what should worry you too is his job description, full-time temp employee. Sounds like Microsoft was getting all the benefits of a full-time employee without having to worry about any of the associated costs. And if companies like Microsoft, with its $60 billion cash reserve can pull this kind of crap, what does that say about today's job market, labour laws and how skewed they are in favour of big business?
/.ed). But should he have been a "full-time temp employee"? No fucking way.
Heck, being a "temp" probably made firing him that much easier.
Should he have been fired for breaking confidentiality? I don't know, because I can't even see his side of the story (as his site is
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The site's hammered. Cache of the first entry. This is the really interesting one, though.
Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
Well sure, if ya'll want me to lay it out. When I interviewed for an internship with MS's Mac Office group in 2001, there were big turquoise G4s sitting right on people's desks and a big lab full of just about every Mac PowerPC model ever released. Shocking! And you know what? The developers were even using a non-MS IDE. Astonishing!
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
I tried posting it:
2002-03-16 21:43:39 Al Qa'eda Targets Microsoft (articles,microsoft) (rejected)
but it was before I kept a copy of submissions in my journal, so I don't have the content anymore.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Doesn't anyone want to know how Microsoft discovered the picture and the story? Do they routinely check up on any website's from their employee's to make sure that no information has been leaked? I would guess they do (don't want that windows source code to be released) but I think that'd probably bother me if I were an employee. What if I wanted to post how much I hated my boss? Or how I'd like to bang that hot new girl in marketing? Those are things you might want to share with the internet that you don't want your co-workers finding out.
The DoD and intelligence community may very well ban picturephones for security reasons. They banned Furby's because of the recording chip.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
The act of purchasing several pallets of G5's may not be a trade secret for MS but I'm sure their NDA covers many facets of their business information including purchasing and shipping & receiving. Fool breaks agreement, fool gets fired.
to fire this guy. If Im a company that is doing
research into my comptitors products and some jackass contractor takes photos of my research and puts it on the web without permission of course Im going to fire his ass. If this were any other company this would not be news. This is not a free speech issue, this is not ominous for the future, its a dumbass breaching his confidentiality agreement...oh well.
I'm not at this point going to go into why Microsoft is buying Macs or whether or not the guy was right to post what he did. In other words, I'm not going to go into the specifics of the article.
I do, however, want to address something in the framing text that christor wrote: "Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government."
While I acknowledge that (in the USA) First Amendment rights are limited to government action, I don't agree that non-governmental organizations cannot repress free speech and their actions cannot raise free speech issues.
It is pretty clear that private sector organizations can provide negative repercussions that will discourage individuals from saying or writing things that will provoke them. This can range from dismissal to lawsuits to, in some cases, industry-wide blacklisting that may prevent someone from continuing to work in his or her chosen profession.
If we as a society consider that "free speech" (the ability of an individual to express ideas, no matter how controversial, unpopular or challenging) is a value worth preserving, then we should take seriously threats to that ability, no matter where they originate.
If I want to say something but don't, because of the chilling effect of foreseen consequences, then my "free speech" has been compromised, whether or not those consequences come from the state or private individuals/corporations.
We may find that other values that we hold come into conflict with the "free speech" value. The value that an individual should be able to control his or her own property may come into conflict (leading to the expression that "Freedom of the Press belongs to them as owns a press" which I remember from my days of active involvement in Usenet, where it was often quoted by sysadmins). Conflict with other values lets us put other restrictions and negative repercussions on those who freely express whatever they want to (slander and libel laws from the state; the ability to shun someone who says unpopular things at the individual level).
We may decide that these other values/ considerations outweigh the value of free speech in a particular case and allow the government or private individual/corporation to act to restrict the person's ability to speak freely. But if we don't allow the issue to be raised at all as a free speech issue, then we've lost already.
Respectfully, David Tallan
The rationale is, if he takes a picture of the loading dock and puts it on the web without permission, What else has he taken pictures of and posted on the web?!?
This guy presented a dire security risk. If it were me, I would not even have let him collect his personal belongings, nor taken his camera with him (if he had it on him). He would have immediately been either arrested or at the very least escorted by security to the property line.
I think employers can bar you from retrieving personal belongings until a later time after legal agreements are in place regarding your visit... not sure about it thought - ALCTC?
Nope, they don't confiscate stuff at the airport (generally)
/., I'll bother to point out that someone here definitely got stuff confiscate at the airport by a guard who didn't understand this or, at least, didn't bother to illuminate your options. But that doesn't mean you couldn't have legally refused. I'm also not claiming that having a camera in a defense establishment wouldn't get confiscated.
The power to confiscate your stuff is much harder to establish than the power to deny you access. At airport security, you have the option of keeping your nailclippers and leaving the TSA line. Usually you'll "voluntarily surrender" your nailclippers instead of missing your flight.
Just after 9/11, a friend of mine left the line and convinced his airline ticket counter to hold onto his knife until he returned home a week later. But he had enough time to do this and go back through the security line.
They could confiscate things that are illegal to posess, like drugs explosives or concealed firearms. They can confiscate stuff, I think, AFTER you pass through security, if they determined you were trying to get it past.
Since this is
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Microsoft allegedly fired him because he created a security risk. But if that were the real reason, then they should have happily accepted his offer to remove the posting. By firing him, they've ensured that the posting stays public and that it gets more publicity. That doesn't seem to correct the security problem.
I'm not sure what MS's real reason was. The security concern seems exaggerated, and the publicity problem is minor. My guess is MS has some other beef with this guy and they saw this as an opportunity to get rid of him. Then again, if he was a temp, it shouldn't have been that hard to unload him.
So it does make me wonder what the real reason is.
Where have you worked? JC Penney and Walmart? Most engineering firms are very guarded and don't want pictures of their facilities distributed over the Internet.
I know you meant individual stores, but its been my experience that retail corporate offices have security policies that would put some engineering outfits to shame. Corporate espionage runs completely rampant in that sector and things like Memorial Day sale prices are kept like were the plans to nuclear weapons. Its absolutely stunning.
The
Its funny, read back in his journal a few days before the photo and the results thereafter, he mentions the dangers of blogging, and what your boss might not like.
Take your own advice chief, sorry.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
This is taking photos of commidity hardware widely used throughout industry. These weren't installed computers and he didn't even known which department they were destined for. These are G5s sitting in boxes. If you're interested in seeing such top secret stuff, head over to your local Apple Store and check out the shelves. It's publically known that Microsoft develops software for the Macintosh platform, logic dictacts that Microsoft sometimes orders Macintoshes to do that development on. The photo revealed zero useful information, it was just an interesting slice of life.
Then you're an asshole whose employees won't respect you. Creating a draconian work environment just pisses off employees. Pissed off employees are more likely to engage in serious violations of the NDA (say, leaving with a copy of your prodcuct's source code). Employees who know that the rules are tempered with reason are more likely to be loyal to the company and do the right thing when it matters.
What bothers me most about this story is some of the reactions here, which reflect the worst sort of corporate thinking: "Someone makes a mistake - can him." Even if one concedes that Microsoft is within its legal rights, it was a senseless act on their part to fire him. Being right is no excuse for being stupid.
If the concern was really about looking bad for using Macs, they would have insisted he remove the post. I take it at face value that they saw this as a security breach. However, their approach to solving the problem shows how inflexible and rigid they have become, a bad sign for an organization competing in a highly dynamic industry.
On the self-interest level, they just generated for themselves more bad publicity, something Microsoft can ill afford. Microsoft management should be trained to take public opinion into consideration in every act they do, and to think carefully about the PR implications of their public actions.
On a more fundamental level, a corporation has no real existence. It is a group of people working towards some goal. Proper motivation of employees is a key to success.
If fear is the greatest motivating tool that corporate management chooses to make use of, that corporation is doomed to oblivion. Firing someone should be a last resort action taken only after other options have been exhausted. If management is seen as cruel and capricious, then the best employees who have a choice of where to work, will go find a more congenial working environment.
The proper way to have handled this was to ask the employee to immediately remove the offending post from his blog, and point out to him the corporate policies he violated and let him go with a warning. That way they would have avoided bad PR, limited the security breach and would have been viewed as an understanding employer. Microsoft lost on every level by taking this foolish action, whatever the initial motivation might have been.