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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."
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.
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
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.