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Google Fires Blogger?
Thomas Hawk writes "CNET is reporting that Mark Jen, a blogger whose candid comments about life on the job at Google sparked controversy last month, has left the company. CNET reports that it is not clear if he resigned or was fired but references a post at Google Blogoscoped where it was suggested that he may have been fired over his blog Ninetyninezeros. Given Google's push into the blogging space with their recent acquisition of Blogger it might be interesting to see how this shakes out."
I agree. I read all the links and transcripts. I couldn't point to any thing the should have resulted in a firing.
Thank god it isn't even certain that Google fired him for this reason... fud fud fud
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
Why? What does that have to do with anything?
Not employing bloggers at all seems a fair enough policy to me. Why pay someone to sit all day and think of "witty" things to write to other wasters?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Man criticises employer in public.
... why, exactly?
Employer fires man.
This is fascinating
Don't piss off your employer or when it's time for people to go you're the first one. I worked with a woman who was quite vocal at work about how she hated her job and she was looking for another and blah blah blah.
I was only there 6 months when the layoffs came up and she got the slip and I didn't. She flew off the handle that I should have went before she did. She didn't appreciate it when I mentioned she probably shouldn't have been so vocal about how she didn't like her job.
hi everyone, sorry my site has been down for the past day or so. i goofed and put some stuff up on my blog that's not supposed to be there. nothing serious and they didn't ask me to take anything down (even the stuff where i'm critical about the company). i'm learning that google is understandably careful about disclosing sensitive information, even vague financial-related things. the quickest way for me to fix the situation at the time was to take it all down. now i'm back up. just so you know, google was pretty cool about all this. thanks for and sorry for the frenzy of speculation.
It's obvious that Google had been aware of this guy's blog and while they didn't ask him to take anything down and they didn't ask him to stop he should have seen the writing on the wall and kept it down. He had a choice and he decided to bring it back up, but I am not about to speculate what would have happened if he hadn't.
Keep your opinions about work to yourself. If you don't like your job don't work there anymore. If you can't find a new job keep your mouth shut (to the Internet as well especially when you work for a firm full of Internet connected people that run THE search engine) until you do.
Just do your job and go home. Personally, I don't want to hear about anyone's work life outside of work and I certainly wouldn't want to describe mine to anyone else in my free time. Free time is exactly that. Time away from work!
...of the professional world (damn these short comment titles!) is that you become a representative (somewhat) even on your own time. That means you respect the company's privacy and keep internal matters internal.
It's kind of like a family member airing all you dirty laundry. Do they have a right to be upset about your idiosynchrosies? Maybe, probably. Should they be telling the whole world about it? No... I think loyalty should be a driving factor here.
That said, I would have hoped that Google would be more lenient than this (assuming he was fired). But now they have public investors to think of, and they have to act more like a corporation than perhaps they have in the past. Sometimes that means tough love for employees who forget their first task is to make money for the company.
I tend to agree, though apparently this guy a) had more than 400 complaints from within the company to Google's HR department asking that he be removed, and b) was obviously a complete idiot in the things he posted about in his blog.
Just because we all have the ability to post anything we want anywhere we want doesn't mean we should. You're free to say whatever you want in the United States but a company is not obligated to keep you under hire if you become a disruptive influence or publicly reveal trade secrets. It has nothing to do with whether he signed an NDA or not; it comes down to common sense.
I don't know exactly why he was fired but it should not be a surprise to anybody, including him. And I don't think this is a free speech issue; this is more of a lesson in learning when and where it is and isn't appropriate to say certain things, which is something that has been lost on the internet generation. Nobody can put you in jail for complaining about your company, but your company is not obliged to keep paying you for the privilege.
An interesting fact:
Said user only started at Google on 17 Jan 05. Under a month and out the door. Just thought I would point it out. Jump to your own conclusions.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
I've got some Karma to burn so I'm going to say this anyway.
For all the muppets who will respond about Google being a "bad" company, and how they were "good". FIRING PEOPLE HAPPENS, and sometimes ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. If one person is dragging down the morale of everyone else, should that be allowed to continue ? If one person is damaging the companies reputation, should that be allowed to continue ?
Firing people is something that happens. And it doesn't make companies "bad" or "good". In fact companies ARE NEVER bad or good its the PEOPLE in them that make bad or good decisions. Reference Microsoft, it was the will of a group of people to act as a monopoly and abuse that position.
For anyone who thinks about "Good" and "Bad" in a George Bush style way when looking at any part of the world, whether business or politics. GET OUTSIDE and see the shades, subscribe to the economist, read the Wall Street Journal, become a member of Green Peace and Amnesty International, but don't wear Rose Tinted specs and moan because ONE person got fired.
Google has ALWAYS been protective, and ALWAYS done some "odd" things. There is no tipping point of bad to good, the world is not as simple as "Whitehouse Politics 101".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Given Google's push into the blogging space with their recent acquisition of Blogger it might be interesting to see how this shakes out.
They bought Pyra in 2003. It's now 2005. This guy worked there for one month. I think your sense of perspective is a little out of whack.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Nonsense. That should have happened when they DCMA'd someone for offering RSS feeds of google news. Google is like Apple, whatever they do slashdot will love them.
I am trolling
unless you own the company, keep your comments to yourself. Don't name your company directly or share secrets about the company. especially on an open forum where people can see. stupid, just stupid to do, i don't feel sorry about him at all. use your head people.
journalists commanded much power (and editors, even more so) because printed articles are a one-way message. writers always got the last word. then came the online forums and even there, arguments turn into flamewars where every post is a repeat, but people keep on posting because they want to be the last one to put their point of view in.
blog is a hybrid. you post and others can comment, but those comments are not as visible. if you have a blog with decent audience, you do get to put out the "last words" for the most part, while allowing some feedback.
i can understand why management wouldn't like this. it's uncensored and they feel powerless because they don't have the control and they don't get to reply in the same way.
however, i don't understand the mentality of a new hire doing the best he can to appear "pompous, inconsiderate, disloyal" employee (to the management) by complaining openly to the world (but not directly to those at the company) via his blog. it's almost as if he wanted to challenge his perceived "right" to post about google on his blog...
You assume that Google did not have a clearly state blog policy.
I start by assuming that since he got fired so quickly, without much messing around, that Google had a clear policy, he violated it, and he was terminated.
wouldn't that be 99 nines?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Thank god it isn't even certain that Google fired him for this reason... fud fud fud
I have to agree that you're correct. If google fired him for reason other than bloging then we cant say anything about it.
However, you don't fire anyone after a month or two just because you don't like them. You fire someone that brings a gun to work immediately or someone that divulges corporate secrets get the boot today. I have to think that the blogging is the culprit - I just want to read what was so bad; which I couldn't read anything bad other than he was keeping his chin up adapting to stress from a new job.
Where did you get the number of complaints being 400? I can't find the quantity mentioned anywhere online?
Firing idiots is no more evil than you taking aspirin for a headache.
Firing a harmful employee is evil now? Are some people on Slashdot ALWAYS going to side with individuals?
A blog like any other.
If I had gotten a job at google, I would have been a lot more careful.
This guy first ditches microsoft, because they don't want to code with extreme programming methods (laughs), and then gets himself fired from Google. I'm sorry, but what a dumbass. He doesn't know how lucky he is..
Will code a sig generator for food
What is it about being labeled a "blogger" that suddenly turns every "persecuted" mewling diarist into a martyr? This makes about as much sense as branding someone as a great novelist because his or her handwriting is neat and well-organized in a big fancy notebook. Yeah, I "blog." But I don't have any delusions about the waste of electrons I spew with each post. People once thought what they said on CB radio was pretty damned important, too. Come to think of it, blogging has a lot in common with CB radio. I bet it'll be just as fashionable in a few years. Like vacation slideshows.
And other times they're hard workers that are justifiably frustrated by how fucked up their company is.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
You obviously were never much of a "math geek" then, since you can apparently neither subtract, or divide by 10, without cocking up.
:)
Googol = 1 followed by 100 zeros.
1 followed by 99 zeros would be 1 googol DIVIDED by 10 (basic maths, really)
NOT 1 googol MINUS 1 (which would be 100 NINES in a row...)
ninety nine zeros on its own, is not even a number (unless a really badly written 0), but a bitfield, and a null one at that
So, if you're unhappy at a job, vocal about it, then are not longer at that job why would anyone assume you didn't quit BECAUSE you were unhappy?
If this guy's boss even noticed the negative stuff on the blog and talked with him about it, it may have only served to bring into focus how unhappy he was working there, helping him decide to quit.
No way! The guy posted *FINANCIAL* information about a *PUBLICLY TRADED* company using inside information. There are very strict SEC rules about that stuff. Google had no choice but to fire the guy. This episode will not affect Slashdot's respect for Google at all.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Google has a lot of power, in that they've got the search history of the planet at their querytips. Want to know which stock symbol is hot? Which celebrity is popular? Which kink that guy at searches for every night from 7-8:30PM? Which nanotech is getting all the attention from the Chinese universities?
Google got everyone all happy with their "don't be evil" pre-IPO hype. Now they've got all the info, all the metadata, all the money, and no accountability. Ignorance is strength!
--
make install -not war
And why's that? Alot of people love to write, and alot of people like to read. Blogs bring these people together. What's the big deal?
bada bing
My employment contract states quite clearly that I do not discuss company policy outside of the company. If I do then I'll be picking up my P45!
Just about every other company has similar clauses in employment contracts, I would presume Google does too.
If the guy has been sacked then its his fault. This ain't a good-or-evil company issue, its simply a case of someone breaching his terms of employment, simple as that. I can't see what Google has done wrong here.
*say* "you're fired", but when they actually fire someone, that aint speech.
I'm free to say "you're fucked", but if I act on it, that's naughty.
Does it ever occur to you that maybe he was blogging on his own time?
The times of the posts are all after work except for two and they could conceivably be in his lunch hour. (One was noon, one was two, and they were both short.)
anyone who leaves a party with FREE drinks and booze because it's a "little bit like a frat party" deserves to have thier ass fired
Right. We'd much rather that they stick around so that we can send gossip down the corporate grapevine about how he drove home after having 3 drinks in 2 hours.
Damn party p00pers
Damn yuppies.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
this guy a) had more than 400 complaints from within the company to Google's HR department asking that he be removed, and b) was obviously a complete idiot in the things he posted about in his blog.
What? Did you even read his blog? Or are you just spreading FUD, hoping no one will actually look at the facts? Stop being a blindless google supporter. A snippet from Mark Jen's blob, and the 'idiotic' and supposed inflammatory things he said:
So lots of people have been asking me what my job actually is. contrary to some people's beliefs, my job is not to blog about google; that's what i do in my free time. i'm actually an associate product manager on adsense. that means i'm sandwiched in between being the customer advocate and harnessing all the cool stuff happening through engineers' 20% time. in my opinion, this is the best job in the industry, especially given that i'm a google customer too. so basically, i spend the bulk of my time thinking of new features or products that customers would want (read: stuff that i want) and then i organize people to build it. it's great!
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
also don't forget that now Google is a public company they could be liable to their shareholders if it appeared the guy's comments could affect the stock price and they did not fire him (hows that for a run on sentence?).
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Wrong. A guy who works at one of Google's competitors says that Mark Jens thinks the rumor is true. That's a far cry from "the rumor is true."
The only thing interesting about this to me about it is that when the Google recruiters call me, they babble on about how different Google is. As I suspected, big public companies are all pretty much the same. An employee says something publicly they don't like about them, they get fired. So much for being different. The only difference I see is that that Google suits found out about the blog and fired him quicker than much other big companies.
And depending on what he actually posted, Google would have had the right to have certain things removed and it wouldn't be considered censorship. Ex. The SEC doesn't like folks giving out insider information, companies are allowed to keep trade secret information private, etc.
Rule number one: Your compensation, benefits, terms of employment, etc. are confidential information
That's just the sort of stuff that the State Supreme Courts and the Federal Supreme Court should strike down. My employer has no moral right (laws are a different story) to keep me from perusing the open market by discussing the terms of my current employment.
If we extrapolate, soon Target will have a shopper non-disclosure agreement on the front door so that you can't go price-shopping at Wal-Mart.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
So why sign the contract? ... No one twisted his arm.
This is the clique/frat mentality that says (pph),"We can ridicule and intimidate anyone as long and as brutally as we want--no one forced them to be here."
I can't believe there are human beings still plying this argument. What's even more surprising is that the courts happily follow along with it wherever employment is concerned.
If you agree to abid by a contract, don't, and get fired. Don't be shocked or upset
The contract sucked. All contracts suck.
My first experience with a contract was at age 6. My mother had my allowance fixed at $0.35 for 5 years until I finally got a paper route, at which point my allowance went to zero because now I was making my own money.
I reiterate. Contracts suck.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
For everyone getting ready to start hating the last giant non-evil corp left, you're going to have to wait a few more weeks.
Non-evil? A company who censors its employees and fires people, destroying their livelihoods, for daring to criticise them? A company that buys out decent services and ruins them (i.e. deja news)? I don't see why people still think google is not 'evil', they're as bad as any other large corporation. Take off the blinkers.