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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."
...and all the comments that I've seen so far.
What did he actually write that made google unhappy?
Everything I've seen on his blog so far is pretty innocuous.
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My quality social news site.com.
Google may have had no chance but to fire this guy. The SEC is very strict about any kind of financial information employees share. Even a vague summary of an internal financial presentation posted to a blog could mean trouble. Any appearance of Google trying to talk up its stock through underhanded means would be investigated.
Google India launches Google India Code Jam 2005 with a payoff of Rs. 3lakh (roughly enquivalent to $20k (my estimate after adjusting for cost of living and annual salaries)). This contest is also being organized by TopCoder.
The Google India News page also links to this news article about Anurag Acharya, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technlogy and the engineer behind Google Scholar. Incidentally, Krishan Bharat the Principle Scientist at Google who created Google News is also an IIT graduate.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
On the one hand every company has those silly rules, that almost all of us are violating right now, to not use company assets for private use while at work or at any other time. Clear enough.
Now companies, and Delta and Northwest are famous for this, are telling their employees that using their own machines in their own homes to discuss, even in passing anything having to do with said company, even to other employees of the same company is not only a fire-able offense but is criminal.
It seems though that companies at most need to apply legal standards of libel and slander in whatever country they are operating. If it doesn't break those laws then it shouldn't be actionable. Of course many of us live in a RIGHT TO WORK state which says a person can be fired for any reason at any time so maybe the whole point is moot.
In either case I recommend that all employees refuse the company softball game, comunity service gathering, Christmas party, blood drive or solicitation from the United Way. You can never be to sure that through some accident not even of your own doing the sacred holy company's image won't be tarnished in some way. Better to leave all that stuff to someone else.
And if someone asks you for a job or personal reference refuse that too. In fact, run all those queries through your corporate HR and/or legal department just to be sure.
You company is not your friend.
I think I figured out exactly why he got fired.
On January 28th (the day he got fired) Mark Jen apparently ran an Adwords Campaign pointing to his blog.
Besides the obvious problem of him promoting a story about life at Google, regular people cannot run an ad with the word GOOGLE in it.
Keep in mind that he worked in the adsense divison. He may have overrode this requirement. Instant termination. What was he thinking?
No, some things are evil, regardless of perspective. Now, one's perspective might not let them see that an action is evil, but that doesn't mean that the action is not evil. Stalin thought what he was doing was good. From his perspective, it was good, but that doesn't mean that it was. There are some absolutes in this world.
A company that really is only interested in the bottom line and advancing their plans, regardless of what else is happening and who they might hurt, is evil.
with that said, firing this guy doesn't make google evil. From what I can gather, he was a dumbass who was possibly violating an NDA (and whether you like them or not, if you sign one, you need to respect the terms), was a source of conflict internally, and may have said things that the SEC wouldn't have liked.
my pet machine
You're very right. After reading through his blog, I think what got him fired was revealing too much of the inside handling of HR, compensation packages and the like.
This is info *any* company asks you not to divulge (check your contract), and it's particularly sensitive in a highly scrutinized company like Google, where evey employee is a de-facto internet rockstar.
So yes, he should have been more careful. Don't know about the complaints, but the content on the weblog is sensitive.
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
400 complaints to the HR department from fellow workers. He had to go. Google did a good thing here, not a bad thing. Those who think it was bad are clearly selfish, if they assume the fired guy's right to speech without reprisal was more important than those 400 peoples' right to not be pissed off.
The company had a policy that said 'you will not discuss these things publicly'. He did. There is nothing terribly unfair about that. No one ridiculed, taunted him, or intimidated him. He talked about private company business, of a publicly traded company, which has trade secrets, internal forecasts, etc, that they don't want reveled, and the SEC doesn't want them to randomly reveal.
If you had a hard live and all the bullies picked on you, I'm sorry. It appears it's skewed your vision on every other aspect of life. That's too bad, try to get over it, but it doesn't mean this was a bad contract.
This happened to me too, but only for a job interview at Google. That's as far as I made it: I never worked for them or signed any NDA.
:) The free food at Google is tempting, though....
My resume was submitted, and I made it as far as the first phone screen. It was one of the best interviews I have ever had in my life! Everything went 100% great, better than I had ever hoped for. I felt we had really clicked. Then, it turns out that I lost the interview, because the interviewer read my blog.
He didn't like me talking about my job search or my experiences with Google's hiring process. He especially didn't like the way I described the interview, perhaps because it would have given future interviewees tips on what to expect. He valued his ability to "surprise" people with trick logic questions, and my description of the involved thought processes might have tipped his hand. (I've since edited my blog to remove the spoilers, as per his implied request.)
Google and Microsoft share similar cultures, evidently. Both select for candidates who are good at discovering the "a-ha" moment that enables them to see through a tricky logic puzzle and solve it. I'm not good at logic puzzles or riddles in general, but in this case, I was able to relate the puzzle to a real-life problem I faced (when writing a simulator for a particular mechanism of a pinball machine).
Lesson learned. The culture at Google is one of paranoid security, as others have confirmed with me. When interviewing (or working) there, don't reveal anything about the process. Merely mentioning the fact that you are interviewing/working might raise eyebrows. When in doubt, don't.
The good news is that the interviewer liked me, and encouraged me to re-apply. Since I seemed to learn my lesson well, he told me he wouldn't put me on the blacklist, so I've another chance. I believe the cut-off period for previous failed applicants is a year and a day.
During the time, I found a job I'm happy with now, and I'll definitely stick with it. I won't be jumping ship, in case you're reading this posting there and wondering
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