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."

Comments

Next week on Bloggerly Hills 90.2.1.0

[JPelorat]

Oh, the drama!

Whatever?

[shreevatsa]

Whatever happened to "DO no evil"?

Re:Whatever?

[pmc]

Ah - "Do no evil". Sounds so simple, doesn't it? But Evil, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And in this case, the beholden.

When Google was small "do no evil" probably meant the same to the company as it did to you and me. But now it is grown the nature of evil (as perceived by the company) has changed. It was "do nothing that will alienate the user". Now it is "Do nothing that will upset the bottom line". Evil is making less money than you could. Evil is anything that could disrupt your plans (whatever they are, because the plans are secret. disclosure would, of course, be evil.)

Re:Whatever?

[mOoZik]

Firing a harmful employee is evil now? Are some people on Slashdot ALWAYS going to side with individuals?

Re:Whatever?

[HeghmoH]

Since we are all individuals, it is very understandable that we would generally side with individuals.

I, however, think that they are totally justified and that all the complainers in this thread should be fired.

Re:Whatever?

[CableModemSniper]

Well no. Because if I side with you, I'll be siding with an individual, but if I side with you I'll be siding against the guy that got fired, but if side against him I'll be siding with Google which would be siding with a non-individual, which then --DOES NOT COMPUTE --

Ah if only slashbots really were bots.

Re:Whatever?

[no reason to be here]

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.

Re:Whatever?

[ifwm]

"Evil is making less money than you could"

No, that's not evil, but is is a good way to get sued for breach of fiduciary duties. YOU couldn't run a company the way you want to, because you would get fired as soon as you tried.

Yet amazingly, you expect others to.

Re:Whatever?

[pmc]

I'm sure that the management of Google class being sued as evil, and I'm sure that they are bright enough to understand cause and effect.

Yet amazingly, you expect others to.

Actually I expect nothing in my post. I am saying that Google are now compelled to maximise profit and things that stop them doing this are necessarily evil from their perspective. They were, by their very own "do no evil" philosophy, compelled to get rid of this troublesome blogger.

Just because a company truthfully says that they will do no evil does not mean that a.n.other will not think, sincerely, that they have done evil. People can have honest differences of opinions over what they consider evil.

Re:Whatever?

[SirBruce]

>Since we are all individuals

I'm not!

Bruce

Re:Whatever?

[pmc]

Well, in the evil-lite(TM) that is implied by the motto, yes it is. Especially in the eyes of the ex-employee.

I don't really have a problem with them firing a dingbat. I do have a problem with the empty slogan that they use to promote themselves - "Do no evil". It's meaningless but it seems to have made a lots of people think they are "the cool".

But what else do you expect from an advertising company?

Re:Whatever?

[loqi]

There are some absolutes in this world.

I think evil is a pretty slippery thing to claim as one of the "absolutes" in the world. It's hard to argue against a relativistic interpretation of it, even if you personally have well-defined concepts of what is evil and what isn't.

Re:Whatever?

[Xyrus]

"There are some absolutes in this world."

And this is where the world's problems begin. There are no absloutes. Good and evil are human ideaology, nothing more.

A volcano erupts and kills 10,000 people. Is this evil? The tsunami that recently struck Indonesia and killed over 200,000, is that evil?

The terrorists killed 2800 people in 9/11, were they evil? We've bombed and killed thousands of Iraqi's, are we evil?

What is good? What is evil? How do you define them? Defining these terms are much more difficult than many think. You may define evil as murder. In another society, it may just be a way to settle a dispute. You may define as evil the act of cutting of someone's hand who is guilty of theft. In another society, that may be defined as just punishment. You may define genocidal killings as evil, while another society may call it survival of the fittest.

Ideaologies vary greatly across the races and countries of this planet, and possibly across the universe. Your views are opinions, biased on your upbringing and environment. Don't be surprised if your definitions of good and evil are not shared by others.

~X~

Re:Whatever?

[Dizzle]

I hate to be a grammar nazi, but did you by chance mean to say "teh cool"?

Re:Whatever?

[gfreeman]

No, some things are evil, regardless of perspective.

Nope, it's the same as history being written by the winners, and therefore they determine what is "good" and what is "evil". It certainly is about perspective. You cannot measure evilness, it is not emperical. Someone's views on religion are no less wrong than anyone else's, unless you rule that religion A is right and good and all others are wrong and evil. This would not make a believer in religion B a believer in evil - because the concept is inherently subjective.

There are some absolutes in this world.

Agreed - but evilness isn't one of them. What SI scale is it measured on?

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.

That would be all of them then. Any action taken by a company can be traced back to the desire for that company to succeed. Even giving to charity affects the bottom line with positive PR spins. A clever company will look at the big picture and crush only the minions that will not hurt their bottom lines by doing so.

Now, back OT, this guy was indeed a dumbass if he violated his NDA.

Blog link

[Jadsky]

How about a link to the actual blog? It's still up...

Re:Blog link

[DrWho520]

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.

Re:Blog link

[harryk]

Yes, its still up, but to say that its current, well, thats a reach. It hasn't been updated since January 27th.

Granted thats not an age or anything, and it appears as he was moving in his last post, I'd like to see an update from him on the real scoop. Based on his writings, he appeared to like the job quite well.

harryk

Re:Blog link

[WormholeFiend]

Jump to your own conclusions

I have the mat spread out on the floor and all ready to go

Re:Blog link

[foobsr]

Quote:"wow, the past day has been pretty interesting. lots of activity and some lessons learned as well.

i suppose the biggest lesson was how fast information travels nowadays."

Not much to add. I wonder if I really did read this article about the sophisticated recruitment procedures at Google(tm).

CC.

Re:Blog link

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy got 400 complaints from other Google staff in 2 weeks?

Not surprising he left/was fired. A company has to consider the best thing for the company as a whole. I guess he'd already had a warning regarding the blog (and he had put sensitive stuff up, as it mentions that he had!) but his position was untenable. Failed to last even the initial probationary period. I guess he won't be putting Google on his resumé.

Re:Blog link

[jones77]

I'm not reading that, it's all in lower case.

Re:Blog link

[irokitt]

Ah, I read the blog, and now I know why he was fired.

Someone noticed he didn't have a degree from Stanford or MIT.

*rimshot*

Re:Blog link

[The Dobber]

After reading his Blog, I'm wondering what Goolges position will be with regrads to his relocation expenses and signing bonus.

This guy's gonna get boned and he obviously has nobody to blame but himself.

Wonder if that new furniture will be up on EBay?

Re:Blog link

[MikeDX]

I love this

"hi, my name is mark jen. i used to work for microsoft, and now i work for google."

I guess that will soon be changed to

"hi, my name is mark jen. i used to work for microsoft, i've been dismissed by google, and now i'm fucked."

and

"everything here is my personal opinion and is not read or approved by google"

to

"everything here is my personal opinion and was read by google" (but obviously not approved).

Re:Blog link

[Per Wigren]

And here is the offending post at Google cache! :)

Re:Blog link

[MustardMan]

Aw damn, I landed on "loose a turn"

Re:Blog link

[Buran]

I don't see what's so offensive about it. It sounds like anyone's first-day-on-the-job blog post.

Re:Blog link

[ozbird]

"hi, my name is mark jen. i used to work for microsoft, and now i work for google."

Hmmm, a Microsoft (ex-)mole?

Re:Blog link

[rjshields]

Said user only started at Google on 17 Jan 05. Under a month and out the door.

As a great man once said: No shit, Sherlock!

Jump to your own conclusions.

And what conclusions are we supposed to draw after that insight?

Re:Blog link

[MustardMan]

You fail it.

Watch the movie. In the scene where Dom actually shows Peter his prototype for the "jump to conclusions" mat, there is a space labeled "Loose a turn", the joke being that Dom spelled it incorrectly. Thanks for completely exposing the joke by trying to act superior while failing to get it.

Re:Blog link

[NaruVonWilkins]

That's no different than the uncached post. Did it change?

Re:Mark my words...

[leonmergen]

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

dumb editor comments, again

[wobblie]

Given Google's push into the blogging space with their recent acquisition of Blogger it might be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Why? What does that have to do with anything?

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[Pieroxy]

Well, people mix everything nowadays. He is not forced to stay at Google, and Google is not forced to keep him. That's the way it is.

Now if any of both parties does something the other one dislike, they are at risk of seeing their contract broken. Again, that's the way it is.

Big deal.

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[Ohreally_factor]

The Bloggers might kick Google off of the internet! That would show 'em!

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[rodionpunk]

As Blogger is one of the main blogging services used online today, it would be hypocritical of Google to both say that they are a place where people are free to blog whatever they want, and also say this is only true so long as you don't work for them. It would seem to have a direct bearing on what they deem is acceptable speech for their highly used service. One could argue that this is only in the case of their employees, but after their precedent, can other employer complaint actions be far behind?

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[stinky wizzleteats]

Why? What does that have to do with anything?

They're setting a very public precedent about the dangers to blogging on the one hand and trying to break into the business on the other.

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[IvanHo]

It will be interesting to see how it shakes out for two reasons I can think of.

1. Blogging by it's natures blurs the lines between public and private. Where those boundaries will end up isn't yet clear. I'll offer this preliminary hypothesis: sexual confessionals, ok; slagging off your employeer, not ok. ;)

2. Googles sees some competitive advantage to being in "blog space." If bloggers decided Google is "big brother," they'll find some other means of expressing themselves.

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[KillerDeathRobot]

it would be hypocritical of Google to both say that they are a place where people are free to blog whatever they want, and also say this is only true so long as you don't work for them.

I imagine this is something like the reasoning used by the editor who made the comment, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense. Google's not saying anything like "blogger is the place where you can write whatever you want." Google is providing a service through blogger that allows one to do so, sure, and they're not censoring people or anything so far as I know. However, it's not like if an employee for, say, Microsoft were to blog things that MS didn't like on Blogger that Google is going to stand up and protect his "right to blog."

What I'm saying is that Blogger is there to be used, but that doesn't mean Google has an obligation to allow their employees to say whatever they want on there. One can certainly argue that they have that obligation for other reasons, but not because they own Blogger.

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[Wybaar]

Look at Blogger's terms of service. No one on Blogger, not even Google employees, are "free to blog whatever they want". Look at the sections on Member Conduct -- here's an appropriate quote from section 4 of the Blogspot.com TOS:

You agree to not use the Service to: (a) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
...
(d) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that you do not have a right to transmit under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements);
...
(h) intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national or international law, including, but not limited to, regulations promulgated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, any rules of any national or other securities exchange, including, without limitation, the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, and any regulations having the force of law;
...

If this blogger used Blogspot.com, and he posted information that his NDA indicated that he was not allowed to post, then he was in violation of his NDA and the TOS for Blogspot.com. In that case, Blogspot.com would be well within their rights to terminate his blog and Google would be within their rights to terminate his employment. This is just my opinion, and IANAL, but it seems reasonable. Blogger.com's TOS has a similar section that would apply if he was just using Blogger.com.

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[jargoone]

To me, this doesn't set a precedent on the dangers of blogging, it speaks more on the dangers of disclosing information that is very likely confidential. He could have blogged it, put it up on a website, or put an ad in the newspaper; I don't think google's response would have been any different.

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[penguinoid]

intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national or international law..

Sure, I promise I won't unintentionally violate any laws. WTF?

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[Moofie]

His blog is still up. He's not being censored. It looks like he was fired because he did some dumb things.

What's the problem?

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[RedWizzard]

Google and Microsoft are encouraging their workers to utilize these public blogs yet what can you say on your blog?

The guy signed an NDA with Google. He knows exactly what he could and couldn't say. Apparently he crossed the line.

Re:dumb editor comments, again

[Donny Smith]

Those fucking service agreements... You don't even have to read them - it basically means you can do anything unless the site that provides the service doesn't like that, at which point you'll be kicked out.

The same thing as any "standard" NDAs, EULAs, etc. that everyone agrees to every day. It's all bullshit.

If a blogger gets sacked...

[nagora]

...in the blogosphere, does anyone care? The answer to this ancient riddle is: Who cares?

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

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[FirienFirien]

...like the people who post comments on slashdot from work, with an intent to be Funny ;)

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[nagora]

like the people who post comments on slashdot from work, with an intent to be Funny ;)

Ah ha! I'm not AT work.

TW

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[pmc]

Wow - your HR department is pretty quick.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[fizban]

Why pay someone to sit all day and think of "witty" things to write to other wasters?

You mean like what a marketing department does?

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[nagora]

You mean like what a marketing department does?

Carly was in marketing before she took over HP. I mention this today at random, you understand.

TWW

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[stinky wizzleteats]

Not employing bloggers at all seems a fair enough policy to me.

Why, exactly? (given that we aren't talking about sharing confidential company information - you did use the unqualified term, "bloggers") If we (ostensibly) have enough respect for free speech to write it into the Constitution of the country, why does it make sense not to allow free speech in a commercial setting as a matter of course?

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[rpdillon]

Maybe he wasn't either.

Hey, bright one, you're out of firetorches.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[emilymildew]

Then why pay people who have friends? Or who go out for drinks after work and are funny with their coworkers?

That's such crap. Just because you don't particularly care for the method in which they communicate doesn't mean that all bloggers should be denied employment.

And what if they write on their own time? Then you've got nothing to prop yourself up, tiger. Try again.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[nagora]

Then why pay people who have friends?

Do bloggers have friends? No. So it's not the same thing at all.

TWW

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[nagora]

Well done. Best work yet.

TWW

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[mccrew]

if we (ostensibly) have enough respect for free speech to write it into the Constitution of the country, why does it make sense not to allow free speech in a commercial setting as a matter of course?

Free speech in the Constitution is primarily about protecting political speech. Commercial free speech has been ruled by the Supreme Court to be bound by more restriction.

We routinely and voluntarily surrender certain free speech rights all the time. For example, in order to recieve the benefit of running Microsoft SQL server, its users agree not to publish any benchmarks. If SQL Server users publish any benchmark information without written approval from Microsoft, then they can expect to be sued, and they can expect to lose. Oracle and other competitors have similar licensing agreements too.

Example 2: non-disclosure agreement. In a high-tech environment employees enjoy the benefit of a paycheck and hopefully interesting and fulfilling work in exchange for giving up the right to speak about company plans, products, release dates, and anything else that may be of value to a partner or customer or competitor.

Conclusion: We have free speech, which is good. We are free to relinguish certain free speech rights in exchange for certain benefits, which is good. (The converse is also true - we are also free to choose not to relinquish certain free speech rights by opting out of the percieved benefit, which is good.)

Do we need additional legistlation to allow free speech in a commercial setting as a matter of course? I respectfully submit the answer is no.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[KillerDeathRobot]

Whoa, good troll!

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[stinky wizzleteats]

Free speech in the Constitution is primarily about protecting political speech. Commercial free speech has been ruled by the Supreme Court to be bound by more restriction.

The type of speech (commercial) was not specified in the original statement. I used the term to describe the type of setting or business relationship, the pretense of which is claimed as governing authority over any speech, not just commercial. I excluded what you are calling commercial (qualified) speech in the first sentence of my response.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[nagora]

Whoa, good troll!

That wasn't trolling: that was insulting. There's a (slight) difference.

TWW

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[SilverspurG]

That wasn't trolling: that was insulting

Insults are a sign of an amateur troll. Ridicule is more accomplished and elicits a greater emotional response from the target. A greater emotional response results in greater perturbation of their daily function and makes for a more effective troll.

It's also known as harassment and, according to federal law, is illegal. It never gets enforced without the proper paper trail, however. That paper trail is impossible to keep unless the troll network is flat-out stupid.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[__aanebg9627]

Free speech is an inalienable human right, not a matter of law. The American Constitution builds that right, and others, into our political life -- because that is social sphere that the Constitution regulates. Americans have the freedom to associate with organizations in the religious and commercial sphere that don't respect that right -- but that doesn't eliminate our intrinsic right to free speech in those spheres!

Most American scorn societies and organizations that infringe on that right, considering them backward and authoritarian. Consider attitudes towards Scientology (whose use of copyright to stifle dissent is notorious) or efforts by the Catholic Church to silence dissenters (mostly officials of the Church); do we consider those rightful actions?

The commercial sphere is no different. Free speech should be the norm, but instead -- probably because businesses are authoritarian organizations rather than democratic ones -- it is not. The arguments for free speech in the commercial sphere are just as strong as in the political one, and generally the same arguments. But free speech threatens authority, and so it gets suppressed.

Of course, there are things that are the commercial equivalent of 'national security' -- non-public financial information, key stategy information. There are a few reasonable restrictions on free speech. NDAs about company secrets are necessary, should be honored, and should be enforcable. But where the line gets drawn says a lot about an organization.

The whole point of the right to free speech is that criticism is protected. No one needs the right to freely speak praise! I can't say whether or not this guy was rightfully fired (having not seen the stuff that he initially posted, which might fall under the 'national security' heading).

So, is it Minas Tirith, or Isengard?

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[emilymildew]

Um, I never said that they did, you moron.

You suggested nobody hire bloggers. I extended that to include people who have friends and people who are funny at drinks after work.

Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it?

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[stinky wizzleteats]

Free speech is an inalienable human right, not a matter of law.

Brilliantly put, and I am ashamed for not having said it in the first place.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[bladesjester]

Actually, there was a link to the unlatered archives of the blog in the article linked here. There wasn't really anything sensitive. A few things that HR might not like, but nothing to get your boxers in a knot over, really.

I think my favorite part of the whole thing was his briefly discussing their relocation package (which, personally, should not be something to get angry over. It's something I'd bloody well want to know about before I signed up with them).

"so i happened to look over my finances this past weekend and i realized something: i'm broke. which is odd, because i had a bunch of liquid capital in my checking account last time i checked, and now all of a sudden i have nothing.

i realized the root problem was that google's relocation process requires the employee to pay all the expenses up front and then get reimbursed for them later. that means you have to cover an apartment hunting trip, your final relocation, lease termination fees and temporary housing expenses all in advance. not to mention that they don't pay out your signing bonus and relocation money until your first paycheck (which i haven't received yet). finally, add in the fact that i had to put down two months rent as a deposit for my new lease, and i'm flat broke.

on the plus side, this first paycheck is going to be huge... (which unfortunately means i'll probably end up getting taxed huge on it. doh!)"

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[alwsn]

But wait. If free speech is "an inalienable human right, not a matter of law" how are there "reasonable restrictions of free speech" ?

The problem with ranting about how free speech is some untouchable right is that it obviously isn't. Governments and people have routinely repressed people's 'right' to free speech to varying degrees and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[nagora]

I extended that to include people who have friends and people who are funny at drinks after work.

In English, we call that "an analogy". An analogy depends on there being shared characteristics between the two concepts. You were making a connection between bloggers being fired for engaging in something that you (I assume, as a member of the mutual-masturbation club that is the blogosphere) see as a social characteristic (writing down pointless accounts of their boring lives) and something which normal people see as a social characteristic (having friends). I refuted your analogy by way of an insulting dismissal of the connection. I could just as easily have said "Bloggers aren't funny" to achieve the same effect.

Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it?

Yes, it is, actually. Do you have a strong suit?

TWW

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[mungtor]

Free speech is an inalienable human right, not a matter of law.

Just because something is physically possible does not make it an inalienable right. Are death threats free speech? What you are really allowed to say is already a matter of law. "Hate" speech is already illegal in some instances, and I think it is illegal in Canada to deny the Holocaust happened. Regardless of the overwhelming physical evidence, isn't that just free speech? If I can incite a bunch of racists or homophobes to the point of murder, should I be held unaccountable if all I did was talk?

Americans have the freedom to associate with organizations in the religious and commercial sphere that don't respect that right

And they also have the right not to. However, once they voluntarily associate with those organizations they should be bound by the wishes/conventions of the society. It's a simple matter of not biting the hand that feeds you. If you want to bite, you should expect (and maybe deserve) to go hungry.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[king-manic]

Free speech is an inalienable human right, not a matter of law.

On philisophical point: a right is something someone with the power of arms deigns to give you.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[RmanB17499]

Exactly, however commercial and private free speech is strictly limited.

Rights and duties go hand in hand.

Such that I always have a right to speak up, for, or against the government and the government always owes me the duty to bear that speech. I can say almost anything about George Bush since he occupies the Office of the President of the USG. owes me that duty as a public figure and also since he is head of state and head of government.

On the other hand, I can't go around and disparage Bill Gates or Microsoft. Bill Gates and Microsoft do not owe me that duty hence I have no right.

There are numerous provisions that would effect me if I were to publish items against Bill Gates or Microsoft. Slander and libel come into play, but so does interefernece with business relations a criminal and civil offense.

Example: The FTC does not want you to disparage other company's products or services. This applies to advertising, customer service, development, and other areas.

Cite: Carter Products, Inc., 60 F.T.C. 782 modified [1963 trade cases 70,902], 323 F.2d 523 (5th Cir. 1963)

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/policystmt/ad-compare.htm

And of course the best case on this subject that I know of, so far:

Issues over online complaints spread out as sites increase
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a rticle?AID =/20050123/BIZ01/501230336/1002/BIZ

'Gripe sites' for consumers face lawsuits, legal threats
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ticle?AID =/20050123/BIZ01/501230335/1002/BIZ

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[Some_Llama]

"Are death threats free speech? What you are really allowed to say is already a matter of law. "Hate" speech is already illegal in some instances, and I think it is illegal in Canada to deny the Holocaust happened. Regardless of the overwhelming physical evidence, isn't that just free speech? If I can incite a bunch of racists or homophobes to the point of murder, should I be held unaccountable if all I did was talk? "

I think all speech should be free and allowed, people should be allowed to say whatever they want, people should be held accountable by their actions not what sounds are made from their mouths...

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[emilymildew]

Ahh, mutual masturbation club. No, I don't have a blog. I'm sure you would call it that, but I don't.

I mean a social characteristic in that I interact with people in a public way.

I don't think that your italicized version of normal has much to do with the norms, and I don't think that being outside of the norms is something you should deride someone for.

And really, you aren't being clear with your rebuttals. You could have said that bloggers aren't funny, except I never said that they were.

Perhaps then, to follow your rules of how to talk about this, I should say that no stand-up comics should ever be employed if people who write about their lives online shouldn't be employed. Your argument makes no sense, and I'm apparently unable to show you that.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[nagora]

I should say that no stand-up comics should ever be employed if people who write about their lives online shouldn't be employed

That was basically what you did say.

My original point was not this, but to suggest that employing people who are spending work time observing their co-workers and watching for things to plonk on their blog instead of concentrating on their work, and in addition are part of that entire movement of people who fill Google up with their rubbish, making actual use of the Web harder for everyone, may not be a good idea. I may have stuck a thick layer of scorn over it, but that was my semi-serious point.

Your argument makes no sense, and I'm apparently unable to show you that.

I think you just missed the argument under the hyperbole.

TWW

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[mungtor]

"I think all speech should be free and allowed, people should be allowed to say whatever they want, people should be held accountable by their actions not what sounds are made from their mouths..."

I had a longer example, but I'll just Godwin and leave...

By your logic, Hitler was blameless for any deaths in WWII unless he personally pulled the trigger. He gave orders that killed millions of people, but those were just words and the full blame fell on those who carried out those orders.

I don't feel that can be right even if it means that there have to be limits on what you can call "free" speech.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[emilymildew]

But you are assuming a lot. I have a website where I write about my life, and at work, I do work. I might mention something funny that happened that day, but I don't waste work hours daydreaming or writing entries in my head.

I don't think I am the exception.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[Some_Llama]

"By your logic, Hitler was blameless for any deaths in WWII unless he personally pulled the trigger."

I would say in a Military organization there is a difference in the way speech is interpreted as it is more than speaking, it is conveying orders from the state that are expected to be followed (as if they were printed out on an official letter head from the state) and it is the duty of soliders to follow those orders given by the state, in that respect Hitler would neeed to take responsibility for the orders he gave acting as a state representative.

Now on the other hand if I walked up to you and said "Shoot that guy in the face" and you went and shot a guy in the face, then I should be held blameless as you have a choice in regards to the actions you decide to perform on your own in a "free" society.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[Headcase88]

"Insults are a sign of an amateur troll. Ridicule is more accomplished and elicits a greater emotional response from the target."

Still got a pretty good emotional response though.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[mungtor]

"I would say in a Military organization there is a difference in the way speech is interpreted as it is more than speaking,"

OK, but before that Hitler was just some guy, you know? (apologies to Douglas Adams).

Seriously, I understand your example for military action but I think there are still enough exceptions to the "military" definition.

Leaders of dubious clans, so called "militia" groups, etc. Jim Jones is still responsible for the Jonestown Kool-Aid in my opinion. David Koresh (sp?) and the Waco, Texas incident is another example. People preyed on others and caused those others to commit violent or grevious acts. The people who led the group, regardless of their personal crimes (defined by: did they pull the trigger) are still responsible. They used their influence to direct the actions of others.

IMLAO (LA = Lame Ass), it's like pointing a car with no brakes down a hill. I don't think it's correct to claim any injury in that case as "accidental" and hold nobody responsible. I know that a car has no free will, etc.... but I've always been amazed at what people can be talked into too.

Anyway, thanks for the counterpoint and the politeness in which you presented your views.

Re:If a blogger gets sacked...

[KillerDeathRobot]

There's a difference, but the two are not mutally exclusive.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Man criticises employer in public.
Employer fires man.

This is fascinating ... why, exactly?

Re:Hmmm

[Sophrosyne]

because everyone wants to work for Google-- it's like someone won the geek lottery then ripped up the ticket.

Re:Hmmm

[WormholeFiend]

Man criticises employer in public.
Employer fires man.

This is fascinating ... why, exactly?

Because the masses expect freedom of speech and opinion, but the people in power don't like to grant it.

To a lot of people, this is like an alarm going off. But to a lot of cynics, this is just run-of-the-mill stuff that's expected to happen regularly.

Re:Hmmm

[gowen]

the masses expect freedom of speech and opinion,

The masses do not expect the right to release sensitive information onto the internet. And the First Amendment says nothing about your employer's right to fire your ass if you badmouth them. Check your employment contract, if you don't believe me. You absolutely have the right to diss Google. And they absolutely have the right to fire you.

but the people in power don't like to grant it.

Google are not the people in power. They're a search engine company, silly.

Re:Hmmm

[Paul8069]

This is not about the employer not granting an employee's right to free speech, it is about the employer using their right to free speech.
In this instance, they're free to say, "You're fired."
(Assuming that this guy was fired, but this example applies in more situations than this).

Re:Hmmm

[WormholeFiend]

I thought I didn't need to specify this, but here ya go:

People aren't always well-informed. Which is why I answered the AC great-grand-parent the way I did.

Also, Google has the power of employment over their employees.

Re:Hmmm

[HeghmoH]

Freedom of speech is what exists between a government and its people. It does not say anything about what two private entities do with one another because of speech, so long as this behavior stays within the law. In most states in the US, a person can be fired for no particular reason, and so this behavior would not be covered under freedom of speech.

Re:Hmmm

[QMO]

The Government is required not to inhibit free speech. Private citizens, and the companies that they own, don't have the same rules, for good reason.

Re:Hmmm

[Jugalator]

I didn't see him criticizing Google much?

At least not on his blog. More to the contrary; he praised them pretty highly in a lot of posts and basically went "oops" when he had crossed the line with the NDA thing or whatever it was.

Re:Hmmm

[Skye16]

You're right, they do. But you have to admit, there is something disturbing about the fact that they can fire you for, say, mowing your lawn in an inappropriate fashion (ie: the perimeter method vs. the row method). Or for any reason at all. The Way It Is (TM), but disturbing all the same. On the flip side of that token, however; where could one accurately define a line as to what firing is appropriate and what isn't?

(This is going under the assumption that there aren't already laws restricting this, which, for some reason, I believe there may be, but I'm not really sure of).

Re:Hmmm

[gowen]

But you have to admit, there is something disturbing about the fact that they can fire you for, say, mowing your lawn in an inappropriate fashion

Well, I can't speak about the US, but in the UK, anyone fired for something completely unrelated to job performance and/or the company, can bring a case for wrongful dismissal, which usually results in cash damages and/or reinstatement.

PS : I know Tech people tend to have a reaction against union membership, but one has to wonder whether he'd still have a job if Google workers were unionised.

Re:Hmmm

[SilverspurG]

in the UK, anyone fired for something completely unrelated to job performance and/or the company, can bring a case for wrongful dismissal

The UK companies need to learn from their US counterparts. Under reason for termination, the company checks the "other" box. They then sit back and wait for the destitute employee to pay an attorney to jump through the legal hoops and hurdles of attempting to get any information out of them... or for hell to freeze over, whichever comes first.

Re:Hmmm

[PerspexAvenger]

For what it's worth, I reckon Google might've had the upper hand in this under UK law too - this guy signed an NDA (often entertainingly restrictive) and then posted information about company practices online.
If the NDA covered the information released, no matter how minimally impacting it was, they have every right to can him for breach of contract.

(IANAL, but I make it up and noone seems to notice...)

Re:Hmmm

[gowen]

Oh, yeah. You're right on this count. I was referring to the grand-parent who gave the example of lawn-mowing, as something that one could be fired for. I've no sympathy for Jen at all.

Re:Hmmm

[octal666]

Because Google is supposed to be "the good guys" and good guys don't fire people. What I don't understand is why fire, probably making choose his employee would have been fair. Perhaps they made him choose.

Don't know, when (if) Google grows to be the next Apoooocalypse Beast, I for one will be very disapointed.

Re:Hmmm

[NanoGator]

"This is fascinating ... why, exactly?"

Because Google's entering the blog space. With their "Do no Evil" policy, you'd think that'd mean they accept the good with the bad.

Re:Hmmm

[John_Booty]

Man criticises employer in public. Employer fires man. This is fascinating ... why, exactly?

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it "fascinating", but it's an interesting case. Google is enjoying unprecedented good will from end-users and investors. They also have a famously relaxed workplace, with all sorts of perks and even a policy which allows employees to spend one day a week pursuing their own interests on the job.

So it's interesting to see how they handle public criticism from an employee. The fact that it's Google is key. If this was Ford Motor Company or H&R Block it wouldn't be very interesting.

Re:Hmmm

[abh]

The guy reported financial information that hadn't been publicly disclosed. When you're a publicly traded corporation, that qualifies as "Evil".

Re:Hmmm

[ifwm]

"Because the masses expect freedom of speech and opinion, but the people in power don't like to grant it"

You mean "the people who own the company and therefore have a very real stake in how the company is percieved don't like to grant it" don't you?

Re:Hmmm

[ifwm]

In my state (each state here in the US is different) we have a "right to work" law, which paradoxically allows employers to fire for ANY reason or none at all, with the usual exceptions for discrimination, whistle-blowing, etc.

I've never liked it, but the unions here have no power to change it, and frankly I like unions even less.

Re:Hmmm

[SilverspurG]

the people who own the company and therefore have a very real stake in how the company is percieved

If they're so concerned about how their company is perceived then they could choose to placate their employee. Did they offer him $10k just to STFU for a little while? $10k isn't much more than lunch moeny to these very important people you're talking about. That'd be a more positive solution than firing someone.

Just a thought...

Re:Hmmm

[ifwm]

I hope you're not a parent, because your post borders on the moronic. If oyu raise your kids this way, you've got a world of hurt coming.

If you reward dissention, you get more dissention. By your solution, people who piss and moan about work get... paid off?

What's to stop EVERYONE from complaining to get a little windfall?

Sorry, but your response was just dumb.

Re:Hmmm

[SilverspurG]

oyu raise your kids this way, you've got a world of hurt coming.

If I beat my kids daily, they have a legitimate reason to dissent.

If you reward dissention

No one's rewarding dissention. This blogger had legitimate concerns.

By your solution, people who piss and moan about work get... paid off?

Anyone who disagrees with your point of view is complaining? As long as you're perfect there's no reason for me to discuss this with you.

Sorry, but your response was just dumb

You're always right.

Re:Hmmm

[dave420]

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.

Re:Hmmm

[__aanebg9627]

In my state (each state here in the US is different) we have a "right to work" law, which paradoxically allows employers to fire for ANY reason or none at all, with the usual exceptions for discrimination, whistle-blowing, etc.

Sure, "right-to-work" is doublespeak. Distressingly common these days, but it works so sleazeballs use it.

Re:Hmmm

[spywarearcata.com]

Because Google has claimed that its principles transcended ordinary capitalist ones -- "do no evil."

I guess now Sergey and Larry will assert that that "evil" is an operator now contingent upon share prices. Not the primal good vs. evil God vs. Satan Axis of Evil vs. Hub of Good apocalyptic that everyone *thought* they meant.

Re:Hmmm

[king-manic]

Because the masses expect freedom of speech and opinion, but the people in power don't like to grant it.

To a lot of people, this is like an alarm going off. But to a lot of cynics, this is just run-of-the-mill stuff that's expected to happen regularly.


More like "Because the masses expect freedom of speech and expect not to suffer any consquences for this speech". Google didn't censor him. They fired him. An anology: It's be yoru right to protest for animal right for PETA, but it's my right to file charges if you threw paint on my leather jacket.

Re:Hmmm

[king-manic]

where could one accurately define a line as to what firing is appropriate and what isn't?

When one adversly effects ones employers. IE. not working, slandering company in significant way, betrayign company secrets. Ect... And the Managers are the ones to make the call on this.

Re:Hmmm

[Buran]

I didn't even see that. Maybe he edited it. If he did, then where's the problem? He took it down when asked to.

Re:Hmmm

[elemental23]

Legally, that's true, the first amendment, etc, does not apply to anyone but the government (ie, the "congress" part in "Congress shall make no law...")

However, the principle is the same. He was punished for his speech. In our society, "freedom of speech" has a broader meaning, not strictly limited to government. We expect to be able to speak our minds and voice our opinions without having to constantly look over our shoulder to see who might be listening. The practice of employers firing their employees for speaking publically about work will have a chilling effect just the same as if the government were doing it.

Was Google's action legal? Absolutely. Was it right? Was it consistent with their motto of "Do no evil"? That's debatable. In my opinion, it was not.

Re:Hmmm

[Moofie]

I think it makes perfect sense. I have the right to work without being coerced into joining the union. What is unclear?

I expect that my employer should have the right to fire me if he doesn't like the color of my shirt. I expect my own performance to be of high enough quality to make this an unattractive proposition for the employer.

Re:Hmmm

[Moofie]

OK, he posts confidential information that violates his NDA, and they should let him off the hook because he took it down? You can't unspill the milk.

I'd have fired him for bad judgement. Why didn't he know that this was a dumb idea?

Re:Hmmm

[Buran]

If it's not there to read, it's not disclosed -- I couldn't find anything that I could imagine would be a secret in there.

And there's always this thing called common sense people DO screw up, nobody's perfect ... if you fire anyone who screws up, every time, you won't have any workers left, nor will they (or you) learn anything from it.

I've screwed up badly a few times, but never got fired. My boss has sense. We talked about things, found ways to avoid future problems. "Off with his head!" is hardly actually constructive.

Re:Hmmm

[Moofie]

If it WAS there to read, it HAS BEEN disclosed, therefore, he violated his non-DISCLOSURE agreement.

You have enough credibility with your boss to be forgiven when you make mistakes. So do I. This guy obviously did not. What's the problem, other than this guy was an idiot and got fired?

Re:Hmmm

[simon_c_heath]

You have to bear in mind that this was in his first few weeks in the job.

If an employee screws up, but had been good up to then, then it can be worth trying to sort things out. If, however, an employee screws up pretty much as soon as they walk through the door, the employer might be forgiven for thinking that the guy is trouble and it is not worth keeping him (that is, after all, what the probation period is for).

Re:Hmmm

[Buran]

How do you know someone doesn't have credibility if you don't give them a chance? Granted, we don't know the entire situation, though I know I have accidentally done things I shouldn't have done. Things I said I wouldn't do, then accidentally id anyway. Haven't we all? I doubt there's anyone in existence who hasn't slipped up in some way. And this guy, once he realized the mistake, FIXED the mistake. It's certainly possible to realize you've goofed and undo what you did.

I'm just saying I think the reaction he got was a bit much for what, as far as I can tell, was an honest mistake. As someone who forgives others for their mistakes as much as possible, I like to see forgiveness in others. There is very little in the world that is not worthy of it. And this isn't one of those things. At least try to work things out with people, eh? (Now, again, maybe it wasn't possible, but then again, given the short length of time involved, I'm kinda doubting that.)

Re:Hmmm

[Moofie]

I'm very forgiving. I give huge benefits of the doubt. I would be a great fool if I proceeded from the assumption that anybody else on Earth behaves like I do in that regard.

Google was within their rights. They made a judgement call that this yahoo was more of a liability than an asset. Whether you agree with that assessment is irrelevant: The point is, it's their assessment to make.

Re:Hmmm

[Buran]

And I'm free to disagree however much I want. Furthermore, as far as I can tell from what you've said, you're more willing than I am to work in a place where if you screw up even once, you're fired, bosses don't try to help you out a bit, don't go over with you what you did wrong so you won't (deliberately or accidentally) have/cause problems in the future.

My boss can be a pain to deal with sometimes, but that's just his personality. He actually TALKS to you. And I find there's a hell of a lot more decency in that approach than "Oops, you screwed up! You've never done this before, but we're just going to fire you!" I think this guy may actually be better off since now he has the opportunity to find a better job where he could end up working with bosses who aren't complete hardasses.

That, I think, helps make a boss a better boss and makes me want to keep on doing what I do now. Your mileage, obviously, may (and does?) vary.

Re:Hmmm

[Moofie]

I don't know what would lead you to that conclusion. I work in a place where I get respect when I own my mistakes. It's an excellent climate for exploration and problem-solving. If I try something that doesn't work, I don't feel any need to cover it up. I can just say "Hey! This broke!" and proceed to fix it. I tell my boss straight up: This is what I need to do the job. He gets it for me. I do the job. I fix what breaks, and he appreciates my work.

So, again: I have a good working environment. I do not have a right to have a good working environment. I do not expect that I will always have a good working environment. I tailor my behavior to the dicta of my environment. This guy at Google failed to do the last, and paid for it. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him?

Re:Hmmm

[syukton]

More like he won the geek lottery and went to claim the prize and the prize officials tore up the ticket.

Re:Hmmm

[pgilman]

"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."

majority = morality? i don't think so. by way of example, here's your logic cast in another light: "Those who think it was bad are clearly selfish, if they assume the WTC workers' right to life was more important than those n-millions Muslims' right to not be pissed off."

right is right and wrong is wrong, regardless of the numbers sitting on either side of the issue. i hope you can see that. history is filled with examples of the majority being wrong, and of individuals being martyred for standing on principle, only to be later exonerated.

p.s. please note that i am not expressing any judgement concerning the present case; i am only addressing the parent's flawed premise that "might makes right."

Re:Hmmm

[HeghmoH]

However, the principle is the same. He was punished for his speech. In our society, "freedom of speech" has a broader meaning, not strictly limited to government. We expect to be able to speak our minds and voice our opinions without having to constantly look over our shoulder to see who might be listening. The practice of employers firing their employees for speaking publically about work will have a chilling effect just the same as if the government were doing it.

I must respectfully disagree.

According to your definition, nobody has ever had anything approximating free speech ever. Unless I misunderstand, you claim that freedom of speech can only exist if there is freedom from consequences.

However, if there are no consequences, then exercising your freedom of speech is just venting. Why do people speak out in the first place, if not for (positive) consequences? When people hold demonstrations and rallies, they're hoping for the consequence of political change, or more followers. When this fellow was posting to his blog, we can assume he was hoping for consequences too, whether it be bragging points with his friends, more readers, or something I haven't thought of.

If I start proclaiming loudly at every opportunity, "I am a Nazi!" I will probably be disowned by my family and friends post-haste. Does this mean I have no freedom of speech?

Freedom of speech means that the government will not harass, persecute, or otherwise punish you solely for what you say. Extending this to companies becomes ridiculous; should they have kept their employee if he continually shouted, "I am a Nazi!"? Should I keep buying from a company that says offensive things in their press releases? Private consequences for public speech is standard, unsurprising, has been around since the dawn of time, and has nothing to do with freedom of speech. I'm not sure how it "will have a chilling effect" when it's nothing new.

Re:Hmmm

[Scroatzilla]

Don't shit where you eat.

Re:Hmmm

[rbarreira]

Yeah, but just because he managed to repeatedly say bad (or at least, indiscrete) things about them in public.

Re:Hmmm

[dave420]

Oh my god. I can't believe people like you exist!

You must be the most ignorant, ill-informed person I've yet to meet online. If you think that it was the collective wish of every Muslim that the WTC was attacked, then you have your head so far up your ass you're beyond help.

My point was that Google has a homogenised workforce, where each person is equal. One person is disrupting the rest, and therefor has to go. Unless that one person is somehow worth "more" than everyone else, he has to go. Of course the majority isn't always right. After all, the US has Bush as a president.

The fact you think it's cool to bag on Muslims in such a baseless fashion shows what an ignorant, intollerant buffoon you are. I feel sorry for you.

Hint. Search google for Muslim responses to the 9/11 attacks. You'll quickly see what a seething racist you are.

Re:Hmmm

[pgilman]

it was a really bad example. it was really late and i was really tired when i posted that. i regret it and i publically retract it.

that doesn't change the truth of the point that i was trying to make, though (that majority != morality).

furthermore, your name-calling ad hominem attacks on me are puerile, prove nothing, and serve only to damage your own credibility.

Re:Hmmm

[dave420]

Those "attacks" were clearly justified if you're going to run your mouth with something you later retract. You're the only one who hurt their credibility. I stand by EVERYTHING I said about you. I don't have to prove anything - you let your ignorance spew across the net all on your own - I didn't even have to raise a finger. Retracting your statement is a silly, pointless gesture, akin to telling the policeman "sorry" after he catches you beating a granny to death with her own cat.

I was never saying that majority=morality in every case, but if the company is homogenous as everyone here seems to think so, then it clearly is. And considering this ass was the cause of hundreds of complaints to the HR department, either he or the hundreds of complainers had to go.

He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[garcia]

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!

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[Scorpius-nl]

Ok, think i'll take this this flamebait.

You know what happens if people shut up and just do their work and never tell to the outside what is going on? Especially in large companies it eventually creates an atmosphere of repression, and the feeling in the back of your head that you need to be carefull with what you say.

It also creates a sense of false truths, as the cnet article says, a microsoft employee taking pictures of apple computers being unloaded is fired, creating the impression that at microsoft only windows is used.

Eventually the company will have lost touch with reality, because the employees don't speak their mouth, creating for example a company like microsoft. I know speaking to the outside world is something different, but it's the beginning.

And like a fellow slashdotter once said, google is just a company, primarily aimed at making profit, that it's primary objective. All the "cool" google things are invented because they make a very nice profit.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[garcia]

You know what happens if people shut up and just do their work and never tell to the outside what is going on? Especially in large companies it eventually creates an atmosphere of repression, and the feeling in the back of your head that you need to be carefull with what you say.

Hey, they are free to express their opinions just as Google is free to fire them for expressing them. As long as you are ok with the employee being terminated and you aren't in the camp that says "he was just blogging outside of work!" then we're fine. If you really think that what Google did was wrong then that's a whole other ball game.

Who the fuck cares if companies lose touch with reality? Is that really our problem? No. That's the company and their employees problem. Don't like it? Leave. You can complain all you like after you're gone.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[SilverspurG]

Hey, they are free to express their opinions just as Google is free to fire them for expressing them

I'd say the real issue is who gets to settle the score when it comes time to find the next job.

If Google gives him a bad reference letter then he's screwed.
If Google gives him a good reference letter then the next employer is going to wonder what the hitch is.
If Google gives him no reference letter then he's screwed.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[mbaciarello]

Hey, they are free to express their opinions just as Google is free to fire them for expressing them.

Not so easy pal, they both signed a contract and I'd like to see what's written in it.

Just because they hired him, doesn't mean they can fire him at their whim. As you may know, firing someone because of their origin or because they're HIV-positive (in workplaces where bloodshedding is not common, at least) is illegal. You can't just go around you're company and fire all employees who root for Philadelphia Eagles just because you're for Patriots and won the Superbowl Sunday.

I suppose the guy has revealed important company information, and that's why Google fired him. If Google had fired him just because they didn't like what he wrote about, say, the on-site car washer, there would have been grounds for a major lawsuit.

Writing stuff that generically "pisses off" your company may not be sufficient grounds to get fired, even from a legal point of view.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[SuiteSisterMary]

No, not really.

Don't forget, that in America, you're no longer allowed to give 'references.' You're allowed to confirm date of hire, date of separation, and job title.

He just needs to say 'I was hired, and two weeks later, they cancelled that project, and it's last in, first out.'

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[SilverspurG]

Don't forget, that in America, you're no longer allowed to give 'references.'

HR is not an above board world.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[Ced_Ex]

Of course you need to be careful about what you say about the company you are working for. Anything you do should be in the best interests of the place that employs you, otherwise, you'll be out of a job.

Think about this, let's say you owned a burger joint, call it McDonald's. But you don't eat there, you instead go to another place called Burger King. Everyone knows you own McDonald's, but sees you eating at Burger King. Do you want to take a guess at what will happen to McDonald's?

There are things you can and can't say. Perhaps Mark over stepped his boundaries. Even vague financial statements can give the competition an edge. Or perhaps, he may have mentioned other "secrets". We'll never know since we haven't seen the original untampered version of his blog.

Besides, why would anyone want to work with a guy who bad mouths their work environment. It's not like Google owed a guy who didn't like where he worked.

Whether he was fired, or he quit voluntarily hasn't been confirmed. In anycase, separating themselves after this is probably in the best interests of both parties.

Lesson here: Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[SuiteSisterMary]

There is that, there is that indeed.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[ifwm]

This is always the final argument in these cases. So what do you do about it? We already have laws, that you agree don't work. So what to do?

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[SilverspurG]

people with real big ideas feel an obligation which you obviously don't

Reality is a skew turn and a 180 degree twist away.

The laws work but not to do what you think they should be doing.

So what do you do about it?

Abolish the laws which lend credibility and legitimacy to the abuses.

Abolishing laws isn't real popular in the US, though. Everyone's a control freak. I'll get tarred and feathered for this.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[KillerDeathRobot]

Do we know he signed a contract? And do we have any indication that if he did, it didn't have an "at will" clause that said he could be fired or quit for any or no reason at all? Obviously certain reasons are illegal (as you mentioned), but that's why the "no reason at all" is in there.

Also, we don't know for sure that he was fired.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[ifwm]

Ok, explain how that changes anything.

No law means a company is free to lie as much as they care to, with no repercussions. Not sure how this helps.

"I'll get tarred and feathered for this"

Probably, but because it's a poor solution, not because people are control freaks.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[SilverspurG]

No law means a company is free to lie as much as they care to

Are you saying that Google is lying about something?

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[mbaciarello]

Do we know he signed a contract?

Yes we do, as he mentions benefits, relocation bonuses and other amenities which must have come as part of contracted work. I think it's extremely more far-fetched to think that Google hires people on a verbal contract basis, than to think he signed a piece of paper, BTW.

And do we have any indication that if he did, it didn't have an "at will" clause that said he could be fired or quit for any or no reason at all?

Nope, of course. However, such a clause would be challengeable (IANAL, though.) For example, in the cases you agreed are blatantly illegal reasons for firing someone.

Also, we don't know for sure that he was fired.

That's indeed a good point but I don't see why you're participating in this discussion if you're not even willing to accept the most basic premise - that the story is actually real in its most basic form!

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[Threni]

> Especially in large companies it eventually creates an atmosphere of
> repression, and the feeling in the back of your head that you need to be carefull
> with what you say.

But you DO need to be careful what you say. It doesn't matter if you're online, on the phone, in the pub, out shopping etc - you can say stuff to your friends in private which it would be a very bad idea to repeat in public. It's nothing to do with repression - just common sense.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

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.

Yeah, way to go. Telling someone who has just been laid off that it was basically all their own fault; even if it was, that doesn't reflect well on you at all.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[vco123]

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.

That wasn't my fiance's Nortel experience. Users who were unhappy were kept on in the hopes that they would quit outright, rather than get laid off and receive a payout.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[shark72]

" Don't piss off your employer or when it's time for people to go you're the first one."

Well put. More than that, don't piss off your employer during your probationary period, as he did. That first 30 (or sometimes 60, or 90, depending) days is when the people to whom you report see if you're really worth keeping. One way to increase your odds of being kept is to control your desire to write stuff like this:

"which led me to thinking about the "benefits" package at google. as i thought about it, i realized that most of the "benefits" actually seem to be thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work."

If a new probationary employee doesn't have the social graces to understand why that's not the best thing to write, how good of a long-term employee is he going to be? The guy was an associate product manager, and not some engineer kept in a hole and expected to have poor social skills. Product managers must deal with people both inside and outside the company. They must be able to use common sense in their communication and possess a modicum of decorum.

He demonstrated that he's not fit for that job.

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[KillerDeathRobot]

That's indeed a good point but I don't see why you're participating in this discussion if you're not even willing to accept the most basic premise - that the story is actually real in its most basic form!

The story says he left Google, probably fired. It's possible he left of his own accord (though admittedly unlikely).

Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.

[Green Light]

Actually, inside of 90 days, they can fire you for whatever reason they like. Believe me, I know, my daughter does it quite often (fires people, that is, not get fired).

Re:Probable Cause

[justforaday]

Broke his MBA? Huh?

One of the inconveniences....

[halivar]

...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.

Re:One of the inconveniences....

[Otter]

Given the utter denseness of this guy and his total inability to take a hint, I can see where Google might consider him an unacceptable liability going forward, on top of what he's already done.

Re:One of the inconveniences....

[Dun Malg]

One of the inconveniences......of the professional world (damn these short comment titles!)

Perhaps you shouldn't be trying to cram your first sentence into the title space. Titles should stand alone and, preferrably, not be necessary to understand the rest of the post.

Re:One of the inconveniences....

[cr_nucleus]

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.

I don't agree with your "you can't do that" policy. I mean, i didn't RTFA but from what i understand, the only problem i would see with all this would be if the guy actually complained about being fired.

It's all about accepting the consequences of your actions actually. Just don't do something if you're not ready to deal with the possible outcomes.

And if loyalty should be a driving factor, then what if it's not ? What loyalty do you have towards someone you don't even respect ?
What i understand here is that people should share your set of values. Well if i can totally respect them (the values), please try not to impose them, will you ?

Re:One of the inconveniences....

[halivar]

And if loyalty should be a driving factor, then what if it's not ? What loyalty do you have towards someone you don't even respect ?

In such an event, don't complain to the world and keep working there; quit. It's not just a good idea; it's your obligation. That's why I have no sympathy for the EA whistleblowers. If they hate their employers, they need to quit.

Re:One of the inconveniences....

[Buran]

Sometimes, people do what they do out of a sense of loyalty to other people. The whistleblowers you cited quite possibly did what they did to keep others from suffering the same abuse they did.

If they had simply quit, would anything have changed for the better? Probably not.

These motivations are frequently what drive airline maintenance whistleblowers to come forward when they feel airlines have skimped on maintenance and are risking the lives of passengers and crew on their jets. (Look up Alaska Airlines and the MD T-tailed jet whose jackscrew failed, causing a crash that killed everyone on board, because AA was too cheap to perform routine maintenance consisting of inspections, regreasings, and replacements. The guy who came forward did it because he didn't want people to die. He did it because he felt an obligation to other people, not his employer. He complained to the world because he HAD to to try to save lives.

In the end, he was fired, nothing was changed, and the crash he'd tried to prevent occurred. He then was able to say 'I told you so' and THEN, only then, were procedures changed to prevent future accidents. But it's too late now for the people who died.

just another reason...

[musikit]

to keep anything you think or do outside of work secret to your employeer.

you have me from 9am-5pm you may fill me with opinions or ask my opinion however once my clock reads 5 i STFU and get the hell out.

Re:just another reason...

[sisukapalli1]

to keep anything you think or do outside of work secret to your employeer.

But... he has been writing about the company. It is a very thin line between writing about life inside a company and inadvertently disclosing stuff that the company thinks should remain inside the company.

Examples from the blog include the number of Stanford/MIT project managers, and so on. None of anyone else's business but Google's, and it should stay that way.

S

Re:just another reason...

[merdark]

Unless your contract, that you signed, claims ownership of ALL your work while employed, 9-5 or not. Yes, sometimes it happens. Be watchfull!

Re:just another reason...

[ishmaelflood]

That's very common among professionals. Most places I have worked have asked me to sign a statement that says the company has first rights to ANY invention I make while working for them, even if it is in my spare time.

I usually cross it out.

I imagine the same would be true of any creative field.

Hahahaha

[Concern]

Not for long...

Boo friggin hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Would people be upset if he broke other rules and got fired?

"Well, he didn't like wearing pants. Doesn't Google know that some people just like to let it all hang out? What's wrong with some balls?"

Maybe he deserved it...

[tyresyas]

It's my experience that many of the people that bitch the most about their job are the ones that deserve to get fired the most, anyway. C'mon, there's is always that one whiney co-worker that you always ask, "Why is s/he even WORKING here?"

Re:Maybe he deserved it...

[n1ywb]

And other times they're hard workers that are justifiably frustrated by how fucked up their company is.

Re:Maybe he deserved it...

[ifwm]

Rarely. Those people are generally motivated and skilled enough to move to a better company.

Re:Maybe he deserved it...

[pathloss]

quoting from http://bloglines.com/topblogs
is it just me, or it seems like someone from google has anonymously responded to all speculation. very interesting.

note that the following, like so much that has come before it in this thread, is pure speculation. Let's think about this for a moment: The day Mark started at Google he created a weblog with the express purpose of talking about his experiences as a new Google employee. He left a good job at Microsoft to relocate and take a job at Google knowing full well in advance what the stock price, options package and salary would be, then goes on to criticize all of the above upon his arrival. The first question that springs to my mind is "why did he leave Microsoft?" The second is, "what happened that we-the-blogosphere don't know about?" Mark's blog went down for several days, and when it came back it was with minor redactions and a comment from Mark that Google's management was being "pretty cool about this." Several days later Mark left the company. Who here thinks the folks at Google spent a few days deciding whether to fire Mark, and who thinks perhaps they investigated what information Mark might have been sharing with his personal friends, many of whom work for Microsoft? Mark already showed poor judgement with his blogging (there's a difference between having a blog that doesn't exclude your work life and having a blog specifically mandated to detail your workplace). The outsider has to wonder: if Mark is so free on his blog, what would he say to his Microsoft friends when they ask about what cool stuff Google's working on? Well, you and I have to wonder, but if Mark was responding to those emails from his work address you can bet Google doesn't have to wonder. Two understated truisms in cases like these are that people who have loose lips on their blogs often have looser lips when talking to their trusted friends, and that when someone is fired and can point to their weblog as the reason will often do so to throw the blame somewhere other than themselves. A person might find it harder to find his next job after being fired for blogging, but how much harder woould it be to get hired if you were fired for revealing information to friends who happened to work for a rival company?

Re:Probable Cause

[stupidfoo]

MBA? Or NDA?

Which one?

Can you break a MBA?

Re:Mark my words...

[badasscat]

... this will be the last day Google is considered a Good company on Slashdot.

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.

One major thing missing from this story...

[Concern]

...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.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[jinushaun]

He took down the blogs in question--rightly so.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[gunnk]

His dismissal may have had nothing to do with his blogging. Maybe he didn't do good work. Maybe his conduct was inappropriate. Maybe he never came in on time. Maybe he didn't complete assigned tasks. We don't know.

Just because he worked at Google and blogged about work doesn't mean that's why he was fired.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[Scorillo47]

The new blogs is missing the critical pieces. Fortunately, the contents of the previous blog are cached here.

Here are some relevant paragraphs:

January 24, 2005

uh oh, what happened to my bank account?

By markjen

so i happened to look over my finances this past weekend and i realized something: i'm broke. which is odd, because i had a bunch of liquid capital in my checking account last time i checked, and now all of a sudden i have nothing.

i realized the root problem was that google's relocation process requires the employee to pay all the expenses up front and then get reimbursed for them later. that means you have to cover an apartment hunting trip, your final relocation, lease termination fees and temporary housing expenses all in advance. not to mention that they don't pay out your signing bonus and relocation money until your first paycheck (which i haven't received yet). finally, add in the fact that i had to put down two months rent as a deposit for my new lease, and i'm flat broke.

on the plus side, this first paycheck is going to be huge... (which unfortunately means i'll probably end up getting taxed huge on it. doh!)

which led me to thinking about the "benefits" package at google. as i thought about it, i realized that most of the "benefits" actually seem to be thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work. take for example: free lunch and dinner. now this one is an awesome value proposition for google; i'm not exactly sure why other companies don't also recognize the value and join in. consider this: it probably costs google a maximum of $3 per employee for lunch and $5 per employee for dinner. so that's only $8 per day, but if you think about the fact that the employee now probably only takes a half hour lunch break and also stays late working, the company actually realizes far more than an $8 gain in employee output. not to mention that most people think this is a great "benefit" and google gets a ton of positive press on it. in short, this "benefit" is designed benefit the company, not the employee.

then look at all these other fringe "benefits": on-site doctor, on-site dentist, on-site car washes... the list goes on and on with one similarity: every "benefit" is on-site so you never leave work. i'm not going to say this isn't convenient for us employees, but between all these devices designed to make us stay at work, they might as well just have dorms on campus that all employees are required to live in.

next, let's look at the health care benefit provided. arguably, this is the biggest benefit companies pay out for their employees. google definitely has a program that is on par with other companies in the industry; but since when does a company like google settle for being on par? microsoft's health care benefits shame google's relatively meager offering. for those of you who don't know, microsoft pays 100% of employees' premiums for a world-class PPO. everything you can possibly imagine is covered. the program has no co-pays on anything (including prescription drugs); you can self-refer to any doctor in the blue cross blue shield network, which pretty much means any licensed professional; and you can even get up to 24 hour-long massage sessions per year.

lastly, google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation? the packages would've been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let's be honest here... a stock option with a strike price of $188 just doesn't have the same value as the ones of yesteryear. even microsoft adjusted their base salaries to 66th percentile years ago when it was clear that their stock options weren't as much a part of the total compensation package as it used to be. for a post-IPO company like google, it only seems fair that they adjust things acc

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[BaldGhoti]

Does anyone have a Google cache? ;)

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[PepeGSay]

I heard this same crap on the news. If Google fired him over this I would be really surprised.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[drsquare]

i realized the root problem was that google's relocation process requires the employee to pay all the expenses up front and then get reimbursed for them later. that means you have to cover an apartment hunting trip, your final relocation, lease termination fees and temporary housing expenses all in advance. not to mention that they don't pay out your signing bonus and relocation money until your first paycheck

Oh boo hoo hoo, so you had the pay to move out of your own pocket? How outrageous. Seriously though, since when do employers pay you to move? For people in the real world rather than an dotcom-bubble, you have to pay it all up front and you DON'T get reimbursed afterwards. What a spoilt fucking baby.

which led me to thinking about the "benefits" package at google. as i thought about it, i realized that most of the "benefits" actually seem to be thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work. take for example: free lunch and dinner. now this one is an awesome value proposition for google; i'm not exactly sure why other companies don't also recognize the value and join in. consider this: it probably costs google a maximum of $3 per employee for lunch and $5 per employee for dinner. so that's only $8 per day, but if you think about the fact that the employee now probably only takes a half hour lunch break and also stays late working, the company actually realizes far more than an $8 gain in employee output.

It gets even worse. You get FREE dinners and you're moaning? Where I work, I have to pay for everything, even a cup of tea, and the food's absolutely atrocious. Of course giving free meals keeps them at work. But what's the alternative? If they charged for them, people would still stay at work but they'd be paying instead. When you only have a half-hour lunch break it's not like you have time to go anywhere else either. And when you're working nights or weekends you bring in your own sandwiches anyway, so your point is completely invalid.

then look at all these other fringe "benefits": on-site doctor, on-site dentist, on-site car washes... the list goes on and on with one similarity: every "benefit" is on-site so you never leave work.

You put benefits in inverted commas? You're getting things for free (dentists, health care, on-side doctors, car-washing) that most people have to pay huge chunks of their wages towards, and you're STILL moaning?????? If you don't like it, then don't use it, pay for your own healthy care and dentists etc out of your own pocket.

lastly, google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation?

90th percentile? I'm not familiar with that terminology. It can't be anything to do with the quality of employees, as google's employees seem to be completely useless. I mean let's look at the facts: all those expensive highly-educated PHDs, massive benefits, big fancy 'campus' (god I hate that word) and what have they actually released (i.e. actually out of beta)? A search engine, and a couple of average web services. Woo-fucking-hoo. A few amateur nerds could probably do that in their basement in a few days.

Christ almighty, how can one company attract such spoilt and vain employees? Next you'll be complaining that your gold chair isn't polished regularly enough.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[geoffrobinson]

That could land him and Google in major SEC-related trouble. Unintentional insider-trading? That can be bad, bad new.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[babyrat]

Oh boo hoo hoo, so you had the pay to move out of your own pocket? How outrageous. Seriously though, since when do employers pay you to move? For people in the real world rather than an dotcom-bubble, you have to pay it all up front and you DON'T get reimbursed afterwards. What a spoilt fucking baby.

You're kidding right? You'd take a job far away without getting relocation compensation? It'd have to be a killer job for me to move to a new location without comp...

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[Thuktun]

and what have they actually released (i.e. actually out of beta)? A search engine, and a couple of average web services.

A search engine with over a quarter of a billion searches per day. That's an average of nearly 3000 per second. Every one of those gets a fast response. They index over *8 billion* documents. (I have no idea if that includes their Usenet archives obtained from DejaNews and other sources.)

Google has developed an amazingly large, fast, and healthy distributed infrastructure that runs those services.

A few amateur nerds could probably do that in their basement in a few days.

This is the "I've never tried it, but it seems simple" fallacy, the one that causes CVs/resumes to get bloated with all sorts of inappropriate claims.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[Wakko Warner]

If Google fired him over this I would be really surprised.

No one should be surprised by this. This is all shit you're never supposed talk about, in published form no less, no matter who you work for.

- A.P.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[PepeGSay]

except that all the stuff (that I saw) he talked about was alread public knowledge.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[PepeGSay]

He didn't seem to publish anything I could not gain from being in an interview at Google. At which time I would not be under and NDA or the like. He talked about company wide available benefits and he only spoke of salaries in the most vauge way. I just don't see it as priveleged info.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[PepeGSay]

He may have been fired over this:

"On Jan. 26, an edited version of the blog reappeared on the site, with a new entry explaining the on-again, off-again commentary. Gone was the first day's post explaining his reasons for creating the blog, as well as a description of an employee orientation event that vaguely touched on discussions of Google's booming business. "

But I don't believe he would have been fired over the vauge description of the benefits, since it isn't really priveleged information, and the benefits angle is what the parent referenced.

Re:One major thing missing from this story...

[drsquare]

So then, a search engine with a lot of hardware and bandwidth. EVen then, they've had the search engine for years before they were hiring all these 'geniuses', and what have they come up with since? Absolutely fuck all.

Quote

[Apreche]

From the actual blog:

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.

Apparently this wasn't an issue of someone talking about their life at google, or their day-to-day tirals and tribulations on the job. This was someone releasing sensitive NDA information onto the net. While I don't like NDAs as much as the next guy its a pretty obvious breach of contract and an OK reason for firing. 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.

Re:Quote

[kubrick]

Maybe they fired him because he couldn't find the Shift key?

Re:Quote

[fbform]

What? Is Google trying to circumvent DRM on audio CDs now?

Re:Quote

[drsquare]

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.

Re:Quote

[doja]

I sense a certain troll-like tone to this, but I'll bite. Do you remember Deja (just "deja" at the end) before Google took over? The page was totally covered with advertisements. They ran their own business into the ground. Google bought their archives, and consequently saved them from being thrown away or someone else charging for their access. Then, they extended the archives to go back even further than before.

I'm not saying that the Google guys are saints, but they are relatively so compared to other big companies out there.

Re:Quote

[CamMac]

Did you read the parent? Have you been following the story?

Guy posts NDA info on his blog. Guy gets fired. He he wanted to be able to post sensitive information, he shouldn't have signed the NDA. Course, that probably means he wouldn't have been fire, but without the job he accepted, Google wouldn't have been able to "censor" him. Welcome to life. If you don't want to be responsible, don't take the responsibility.

--Cam

PS. Oh, and the word is "Blinders". As in those things that a working horse wears in order to not be distracted by everything going on around him. Not "Blinkers", those things that transmit your future intentions as to which direction your going to go.

Re:Quote

[drsquare]

Also, how did Google ruin dejanews? DejaNews was shutting down, so google bought them and then put it back online without all the banner ads. Google not only saved them from ruin but actually improved the service.

Improved? Have you seen the latest version of google groups? They've completely ruined it. The only way to get to a remotely usable version is to go to groups.google.co.uk, and even then you can't reply to posts, and some pages come up completely blank. It's a complete load of shit. Also you can't alter your settings after you've made your account.

To say they hire so many 'geniuses', this really is fucking pathetic.

"Good" "Bad" "Moron"

[MosesJones]

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".

Re:"Good" "Bad" "Moron"

[mks113]

Sometimes the worst thing a company can do is keep someone employed who is casuing problems for the company.

The ability to get rid of troublemakers and deadbeats is an indication that management is in control and willing to make things happen.

Re:"Good" "Bad" "Moron"

[Jahz]

Amen.

Lesson learned: Dont take risks/piss off your bosses in the first month. This guy did a stupid thing. It was his first month at a new job and he went too far. Jen had not yet gained enough respect from his collegues to do this. I think things would have been different if he was a seasoned Googler. Management probably saw him as a loose cannon, and a possible threat to the companies future.

Re:"Good" "Bad" "Moron"

[PepeGSay]

Yeah, look, this guy started a blog specifically to talk about his life at Google. What a loser. I would've said "get a Google tattoo and shut down the blog or get out".

Re:"Good" "Bad" "Moron"

[Uncle Butt]

Amen to that. My company, a municipality, doesn't get rid of troublemakers and deadbeats (nor thieves). It has caused working here to be a nightmare, at times. Management is always in control, but, does not always activate said control.

Re:"Good" "Bad" "Moron"

[mpsmps]

I've got some Karma to burn so I'm going to say this anyway.
If you're concerned about saying this if you felt it would be too damaging to your Slashdot Karma, it pretty much explains why you think the guy shouldn't say anything remotely controversial.

Also, Slashdot Karma's not so important. Get a life.

Re:"Good" "Bad" "Moron"

[king-manic]

I've got some Karma to burn so I'm going to say this anyway.
If you're concerned about saying this if you felt it would be too damaging to your Slashdot Karma, it pretty much explains why you think the guy shouldn't say anything remotely controversial.

Also, Slashdot Karma's not so important. Get a life.

ooh the irony. on slashdotter nitpicking a post and then telling them to get a life.

Problem with time perspective...

[PornMaster]

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.

Re:Problem with time perspective...

[3Bees]

I think that this guy had a loss of perspective too. He described the fact that he left MS because there focus had shifted in recent years. How long had he worked there? 18 months...

I smell something fishy about this guy. Why would his first post be about how it might be collected ina book some day?

More about the subject

[mikkom]

Quote from A Chat with Mark Jen:

First off, nothing Mark said surprised me. Yes, he was fired from Google. It was directly related to his blog. He was employed there for just a couple of weeks.

So the rumor is true.

Re:More about the subject

[iJames]

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."

Re:More about the subject

[emilymildew]

Or Mark Jens got a fat wad of cash and is trying not to screw up the deal he made with Google when he left by being definite about things.

Re:Mark my words...

[m50d]

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.

Re:I TOLD you google suck

[Anonymous Coward]

On the off chance they decided to employ you, don't you think this post was a mistake? They can use Google, you know.

Re:Probable Cause

[KontinMonet]

Maybe it was his DNA (which is the National Dyslexic Assoc., BTW).

This is why anything related to work

[hsmith]

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.

Re:This is why anything related to work

[webhead04]

I agree with you. I would never, ever, ever put anything about the company I work for on my blog and I completely understand why my company would be upset about me even hinting about finacial topics, new products or the inner workings of the company. What are these people thinking? Do they really think that it's okay to discuss work issues on a personal blog? I think bloggers will learn, and some are learning the hard way, to keep work stuff out of personal forums. And if they wish to talk about work stuff they need to do it in an anonymous way. I would never send an unsecure email that I wouldn't feel comfortable writing on the back of a postcard just like I would never mention my worklpace in my blog unless I felt comfortable seeing my entire personal blog hanging in the break room.

Re:This is why anything related to work

[SilverspurG]

Do they really think that it's okay to discuss work issues on a personal blog?

It's all life. People talk about life. That's life. Why can't companies cope with reality?

I think bloggers will learn, and some are learning the hard way, to keep work stuff out of personal forums

In Stalinist Russia?

I would never mention my worklpace in my blog unless I felt comfortable seeing my entire personal blog hanging in the break room

If companies aren't doing anything wrong then they have nothing to be worried about.

Re:This is why anything related to work

[webhead04]

>> Do they really think that it's okay to discuss work issues on a personal blog?

It's all life. People talk about life. That's life. Why can't companies cope with reality?

It's not exactly the same as talking about work with a couple of pals. It's out there on the net for everyone to see for a long time. And if you share something that you are not supposed to, then you deserve to be smacked. I know that my company routinely monitors what's being said about itself and our competitors, and they are doing the same.

>> I think bloggers will learn, and some are learning the hard way, to keep work stuff out of personal forums

In Stalinist Russia?

Nope, in corporate america. It's about image. When I'm at work I represent my company. When I'm off the clock and talking about work I still consider myself a representative of my company. Can you see how it's not the brightest idea to have one post on my blog about what's going on at work and the next post about my wild night last friday?

>> I would never mention my worklpace in my blog unless I felt comfortable seeing my entire personal blog hanging in the break room

If companies aren't doing anything wrong then they have nothing to be worried about.

I'm not talking about airing a company's dirty laundry. I'm talking about drawing a line between sharing work stuff and personal stuff at the same place as well as inadvertantly talking about work things that are internal, not for public consumption.

Re:This is why anything related to work

[SilverspurG]

And if you share something that you are not supposed to, then you deserve to be smacked

If you don't want employees to share details of their relocation package then don't give them a relocation package. Quibbling over whether or not a financial package should be public information is childish. Firing someone for it is flat out Wrong.

It's about image

I agree. How about the company takes a proactive approach to its image and works with employees. I don't want to hear about tax credits or accounting ledgers or anything else. Google could've avoided this very easily had they paid his relocation expenses up front. That is a proactive approach to solving the problem.

I'm talking about drawing a line between sharing work stuff and personal stuff

By all rights that line stops at technical details about my daily duties. That line does not include the area which covers the number or urinals in the men's bathroom. That line should also not include relocation packages.

How many times have you been relocated by a company? You do understand that these critical details about his relocation package are, in reality, trivial blabberings? There is nothing to get fired over in them.

Re:This is why anything related to work

[anagama]

• stupid, just stupid to do, i don't feel sorry about him at all. use your head people.

Definitely stupid - and I don't think Google can be faulted that much for firing him after reading the archived blog. But I do feel sorry for him. His life changed in the 30 or 40 minutes it took him to write the entry and for what, a pointless little note about employee stock options and travel reimbursement. I guess I don't understand blogging. For the life of me, I can't see much of interest in a story about the employee lunchroom or how he fit Ikea furniture in his Celica. None of this information is important or meaningful. To think of what he threw away just to be able tell these stories ... it makes me feel really sad for him.

Re:This is why anything related to work

[Reservoir Penguin]

He got fired from an evil company for telling the truth. Its not the end of the world for him. Maybe its a chance for him to start something of hos own instead of being a Google drone.

Re:I TOLD you google suck

[essreenim]

They know nothing.

Re:Mark my words...

[Anonymous Coward]

DCMA? They didn't use the DCMA. They said "You're violating the terms of service for Google News. Stop."

vague financial-related things

[brlewis]

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.

it's the last word syndrome...

[jxyama]

i thought about this a lot, since i started using online forums, including slashdot, and reading various blogs... traditionally, much "power" is given to those that can lash out the "last word" in any debate/argument/conversation. i'd like to call it the "last word syndrome."

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...

Re:it's the last word syndrome...

[novakyu]

i thought about this a lot, since i started using online forums, including slashdot, and reading various blogs... traditionally, much "power" is given to those that can lash out the "last word" in any debate/argument/conversation. i'd like to call it the "last word syndrome."

I disagree.

...

..

.

(now, let's see who gets the last word. ;)

Re:it's the last word syndrome...

[Ohreally_factor]

it's almost as if he wanted to challenge his perceived "right" to post about google on his blog...

I think you're reading too much into it. The guy acted like an idiot and got fired. When I was much younger, I acted like an idiot at a few jobs and got fired. It hurt at the time, but I got another job soon after, usually, and eventually I learned to not act like such an idiot when at work. Now I just save it for slashdot.

Re:it's the last word syndrome...

[emilymildew]

Wait, so what happens when someone connects your ID with your real name and your office finds out about you posting on /.?

Are you acting like an idiot then?

Re:it's the last word syndrome...

[Ohreally_factor]

when someone connects your ID with your real name

I don't use my real name at work. =)

How ironic...

[kzinti]

A googol is ten to the one hundredth power, written as a one followed by one hundred zeros.

Ninety nine zeros, the name of the blog, is a googol minus one.

And now we have Google, minus one. One named "Mark".

Maybe it's just because I'm a former math geek, but I just love the way this worked out...

Re:How ironic...

[vurg]

Brilliant. Mod up insightful.

Re:How ironic...

[ghoti]

Hmm, a googol minus one should be ninety nine nines, not zeros, right?

Re:How ironic...

[Otter]

Excuse me, Professor Fermat. Google minus one is, uh....

[Before I embarass myself -- one hundred minus one is two nines, therefore google minus one is...]

...one hundred nines. Anyway, it certainly isn't ninety nine zeros, or anything else with zeros.

Re:How ironic...

[rdc_uk]

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 :)

Re:How ironic...

[pythorlh]

Uh... You need to brush up those math geek skills. A googol minus one is ninety-nine nines, not ninety-nine zeros.

Re:How ironic...

[pythorlh]

Uh... We both need to brush up those math geek skills. A googol minus one is one hundred nines, not ninety-nine zeros.

Re:How ironic...

[johndeeregator]

Um, wouldn't a googol minus one be 100 nines?

Re:How ironic...

[Dun Malg]

A googol is ten to the one hundredth power, written as a one followed by one hundred zeros. Ninety nine zeros, the name of the blog, is a googol minus one. And now we have Google, minus one. One named "Mark". Maybe it's just because I'm a former math geek, but I just love the way this worked out...

Actually it's googol divided by ten. Rmember, you divide to subtract those superscripty to-the-power-of numbery things.

Re:How ironic...

[DrewCapu]

Ninety nine zeros, the name of the blog, is a googol minus one.

You could have a million zeros for all I care, they still will add up to what he gets on his next paycheck.

Re:How ironic...

[joranbelar]

Well, maybe he meant "A Googol, but getting rid a zero."

Which is, come to think of it, pretty much what they did. ;)

Re:How ironic...

[E Galois]

A googol minus 1 gives you 100 9s.

Of course, you may have been thinking in logarithmic terms (as is the natural tendency when confronted with quantities this large) - as in:

common_log(googol) - 1 = 99

I liked the analogy, but current math geeks love precision with numeric concepts even more.

Re:Probable Cause

[PornMaster]

If you can break the NHL, I'm sure you can break the NBA... which by virtue of being only one letter off is practically the same thing as an MBA and two letters off an NDA, so can't you see how it's all connected?

If not, can you grab me a venti caramel macchiato from Starbucks when you go for a walk to clear your head?

In related Google News...

[GillBates0]

...and since we must talk about Google everyday:

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.

Fired for bad grammer

[Neil Watson]

Perhaps they fired him because of poor writing skills. I didn't see a sinlge capital letter on the whole page.

Re:Fired for bad grammer

[charlesbakerharris]

Perhaps they fired him because of poor writing skills. I didn't see a sinlge capital letter on the whole page.

Yeah, I hate it when people don't capitalize... or can't spell. Grammer? Sinlge?

Re:Fired for bad grammer

[zephc]

BE easy on him, he's Canadian, where they spell 'theater' as 'theatre' and 'single' as 'sinlge'. I guess its like how 'Favre' is somehow pronounced 'Farve'.

Re:Fired for bad grammer

[Triffid_Hunter]

perhaps he was in the xhtml conformance section?

Re:Fired for bad grammer

[zephc]

Yeah, and I'm an American wqho has the letter 'zee' at the beginning of my name. Wtf is a 'zed' anyway? It sure throws off the rhyme in the alphabet song! I also wish the pronunciation of 'w' would be 'wuh' or 'wah' instead of the overly-verbose 'double-you'.

Never...

[Sophrosyne]

Never use the services of the largest text searching company you work for, to bad mouth it.

Re:Never...

[catdevnull]

If I had mod points today, I'd mod you as "insightful" because this is, indeed, wisdom. It's funny because of the irony.

no.

[dAzED1]

"a blogger whose candid comments about life on the job at Google sparked controversy last month...Given Google's push into the blogging space with their recent acquisition of Blogger it might be interesting to see how this shakes out."

The two have nothing to do with each other. If a janitor was trash-talking google, would that make it interesting if they purchased a janitorial service? If he had made the same comments in a newspaper, or on fliers stuck to the walls of bathrooms, Google would probably have had the same reaction to him. That they are purchasing Blogger is completely irrelevent.

Re:no.

[dAzED1]

perhaps, but plumbers should really keep 5hit to themselves. Dry Cleaning professionals should know better than to disclose their company's dirty laundry, too...

Re:This is not a troll

[shreevatsa]

What's even more funny is that your post seemed to work. After being kindly informed by you that this is not a troll, they changed the score from -1 troll to +5 funny. Thanks.

Re:Blog Damage Control

[danheskett]

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.

a googol minus one

[way2trivial]

wouldn't that be 99 nines?

Re:a googol minus one

[kzinti]

Oh, DUH! (Takes massive caffiene dose, jumpstarts brain.) Let's put the emphasis on FORMER math geek. Or let's say my input parser mistranslated. I deserved to be soundly flogged for this one.

So... ninety nine zeros... Google over ten?

Just doesn't have the same irony, now does it?

Oh. Never mind...

Re:a googol minus one

[Ohreally_factor]

You should treasure that moment when you were almost clever. =)

Oh, and do your own self-flogging. And not at work, mind you.

Re:a googol minus one

[Cecil]

No. It would be 100 nines.

A goolgol is 1 followed by 100 zeroes, in other words 101 digits. Subtract one, and you still have 100 digits, all nines.

Re:a googol minus one

[kzinti]

Oh, and do your own self-flogging. And not at work, mind you.

You mean like this guy?

(How embarassing that he has the same name as me. No relation, I assure you. The men from my gene pool are smart enough to spank their monkeys without getting caught!)

Re:a googol minus one

[Ohreally_factor]

During one trial, Thompson seemed so distracted that some jurors thought he was playing a hand-held video game or tying fly-fishing lures behind the bench.

Yeah, that's it. He was fly fishing for trouser trout. =)

Re:Mark my words...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Mark my words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you get the number of complaints being 400? I can't find the quantity mentioned anywhere online?

He Had it Coming

[tealover]

I don't find anything he said to be too objectionable but looking at it from Google's perspective, his comments could have the effect of making them less competitive in attracting top-tier talent.

Let's face it, Google is positioning itself as the anti-Microsoft company. Most young, talented people are attracted by Google's image but for a lot of people, it really does come down to the all-mighty-dollar.

This guy didn't appear to be too socially adept (social outings seemed to bother him) so perhaps he wasn't aware of the impact of his comments. A shame, really.

Re:Probable Cause

[stupidfoo]

I think I get it.

One question though: Are there any MBAs in the NBA with NDAs?

Re:Mark my words...

[erlenic]

How do you use the Defense Contract Management Agency to shut down an RSS feed? Or did you mean the DMCA?

Lol!! Bloogled!!

[Tony B Liar]

hehe ;)

Just cause

[markalot]

Google is a publicly traded company. They can be sued or run afoul of regulations if information not intended for public consumption leaks. They hire some guy who withing days (or was it hours) of being employed starts talking about private matters on a public blog. He showed extremely poor judgement. What else would he let slip? Safe thing to do is show him the door.

Be More Careful

[nnnneedles]

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..

Re:Be More Careful

[stfvon007]

Can I have his job?

Re:Be More Careful

[StalinsNotDead]

You need an apostrophe in the word "arent" in your sig.

Re:Be More Careful

[mpupu]

He first got a job at Microsoft, then Google. Seems to me the guy will be able to land another good one soon. Maybe he didn't like the work enviroment. Maybe Google isn't all you've been made to believe. Maybe not all Google employees are uber-geeks. Maybe he's just a dumbass. Guess we'll never find out.

Re:Be More Careful

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Which one? The Google job or the Microsoft job? Pretty much, in my experience, the answers to the two questions are the same: if you can get hired by Google, you can get hired by MS, and vice versa. Microsoft pays more money, has much, much better benefits (yes, even after the cuts), and is in a place where it's cheaper to live. Google is cool, has growth potential, and is in with the Silicon Valley tech mafia. Microsoft is evil. Google is chaotic.

Take your pick...

Re:Be More Careful

[mpupu]

hate...line...breaks

Re:Be More Careful

[StalinsNotDead]

Ain't also has an apostrophe.

Re:Be More Careful

[VP]

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 wonder if this guy was sent by Microsoft with the specific purpose of undermining Google...

Re:Be More Careful

[TrevorB]

He doesn't know how lucky he is..

Why, does Google have some exit interview techniques that we don't know about?

What more could they do to this person than fire them?

Re:Be More Careful

[seafortn]

I think you mean how lucky he was...

Re:Be More Careful

[rbarreira]

Still, luck is always important. Would you be happy to loose a job at microsoft THEN one at google? I certainly would feel like a dumbass if that happened to me!

Re:Mark my words...

[xbrownx]

How could a company NOT fire someone who had been there for weeks (singular?) who is bad-mouthing the company online, especially once the story made CNN?

It would have harmed Google far more to keep him employed.

This kind of stuff has been going on for a while

[ltcraben]

The eariliest event I'm aware of is: http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily/03_07_2004.htm l

Blog-martyrdom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

check your calculation

[mirko]

ninety nine zeroes would be 0.....0,
which would be RIGHT(Googol, 99)
so the leading "10" would be missing.

more info on what really happened

[jacquesm]

here

Re:Don't pass go...

[alistair]

One comment from his blog (which may not come true)

"on the plus side, this first paycheck is going to be huge... (which unfortunately means i'll probably end up getting taxed huge on it. doh!)"

Microsoft 1, Google 0

[ajp]

Looking over this guy's blog it appears he's more interested in the social aspects of having a job than he is in the actual work. I think it may be a benefit for Microsoft to have lost him.

Re:Microsoft 1, Google 0

[MissTuxie]

Or, it could be a benefit for the "M$ is evil" crowd if Microsoft had kept him :P

Persepective, Please.

[Quash]

This guy started working at Google January 17, 2005. He was fired within two weeks. Hardly newsworthy. Perhaps he should have acclimatized to the company culture before launching his blog. And in his first entry he talks about possibly turning it in to a book one day. If you were his boss and peers, even if his blog was benign, wouldn't that make you nervous?

Re:Google being less evil...

[SlamMan]

Please. They just don't update the google image cache nearly as often as they do for text searches. Just because something doesn't work like you think it shouldn't does not a conspiracy make.

Fired for being unhappy? why not quit?

[JLavezzo]

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.

Re:Probable Cause

[PornMaster]

Sorry, I signed a paper that said I wouldn't disclose that.

Re:Mark my words...

[fizban]

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.

Just common sense

[DingerX]

It's a nasty world out there. Google's big business; Blogging's big news: sure most of them are full of dumb crap, trite poetry and junk. But for people searching for up-to-date information, blogs can be quite handy.

For modern companies, the need to manage information flow is only increasing. It's not just lazy slashdotters who would be curious about what goes on inside Google on an operational level. Competitors, investors, thieves, customers, freaks and regulatory agencies are also curious, and none of them share all the interests of the company. It may seem harmless for some idiot to go out and spout seemingly harmless information about the personnel composition of the adsense project. And all those data points may not seem like much, when considered individually. As a whole, however, they constitute a very real vulnerability. Free flow of ideas is a good thing; just as long as capitalism ain't involved.

um...

[sootman]

"Given Google's push into the blogging space with their recent acquisition of Blogger it might be interesting to see how this shakes out."

You misspelled "marklar."

Big^brother

[Doc Ruby]

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!

Re:In an ideal world

[wza]

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?

Re:Mark my words...

[superpulpsicle]

It's obviously bad. No employee enjoying the proper treatment from their employer would waste time writing blogs.

If it's good comments, Google PR would have widely marketed the hell out of it. Google is not stupid. Though I am glad to be using the better search engine http://vivisimo.com/ anyways.

What did he actually WRITE ???

[JackJudge]

Can anyone tell me what it is that's supposed to've brought down the wrath of the gods ?

I've read his blog, compared it what's in Google's own cache and also Yahoo's cache, I can't find *anything* that would lead to him getting fired.

He doesn't like the boring HR presentations, so what who the hell does ? He tells us they have his spiffy new laptop ready and his c00bical all kitted out for him when he arrives, which he applauds, big deal.

He seems a hell of a lot more positive about the company than negative, and yeah okay he was prolly dazzled a little by all the freebies, perks and other little baubles they threw at him when he arrived. But again, so what ??

Seriously, can someone tell me what this posted that was *such* a big deal ?

Re:What did he actually WRITE ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, first of all, it has been suggested that he may have violated his NDA in earlier postings that he later modified. Secondly, Google is trying to attract top talent, for which MS is one of their biggest competitors. Posting that he thinks the benefits at MS are a lot better is pretty inappropriate.

I don't think it's that what he said was truly horrible or negative, but that it attracted so much interest. When his blog suddenly started being linked to by big sites and read by thousands of people, the little negative things he posted suddenly became a huge deal. Google let him know they weren't happy and gave him a chance to pull it down and he didn't, so I can't blame them for firing him.

Re:Google being less evil...

[mindpixel]

January 1st,2005...that's pretty late to claim that excuse.

Re:Mark my words...

[den_erpel]

Following the links, I came accross this other blog which shares (according to the article) that he was fired about the blog.
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004157.htm l/

First off, nothing Mark said surprised me. Yes, he was fired from Google. It was directly related to his blog. He was employed there for just a couple of weeks.

It would by highly unlikely that he was not, considering the timing.

Re:Probable Cause

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Can you break a MBA?"

Easily. Ask them to perform an average, day-to-day, normal part of work, business function, and you'll see how quickly they break down.

No big deal really

[grundie]

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.

Re:No big deal really

[SilverspurG]

My employment contract states quite clearly

Stand up for yourself. How long before your employment contract states quite clearly that you will provide free and open access for your supervisor at all times?

Just about every other company has similar clauses in employment contracts

When are the courts going to start getting a clue?

If the guy has been sacked then its his fault

This may be true. What does that say about Google? It sounds like they're trying to hide dirty laundry if they need to sack a guy.

I can't see what Google has done wrong here

If they've done nothing wrong then they have nothing to hide. Why be so sensitive about this guy's blog?

Re:No big deal really

[StalinsNotDead]

If I do then I'll be picking up my P45!

Hopefully you don't mean the new .45 by Kahr Arms. (scroll down to see the pistol) Comments like that can definitely lead to termination of employment.

Re:No big deal really

[Eccles]

My employment contract states quite clearly that I do not discuss company policy outside of the company.

Umm, so didn't you just do so?

Re:I TOLD you google suck

[essreenim]

So you quit school straight after you learned how to spell. bravoooooooo :P

Fired...

[dantheman82]

for saying things to this effect (apparently):

"Look at all these other fringe "benefits": on-site doctor, on-site dentist, on-site car washes... the list goes on and on with one similarity: every "benefit" is on-site so you never leave work. (...)

Google definitely has a program that is on par with other companies in the industry; but since when does a company like Google settle for being on par? Microsoft's health care benefits shame Google's relatively meager offering. (...)

Lastly, Google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation? The packages would've been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let's be honest here... a stock option with a strike price of $188 just doesn't have the same value as the ones of yesteryear."

Well, as I see it, he was definitely pretty knowledgeable as far as benefits go (comparing to Microsoft, his previous employer), but I'm not exactly sure how helpful it is to compare Google vs. Microsoft vs. Goldman Sachs in terms of pay and some of the benefits because there are standard of living differences depending on location, how interesting the work is, etc. etc. $40,000 is an awesome starting salary in some places in the Midwest for IT, but in NY/NJ area, if it's below $50,000 you move on...

It is just interesting how Google top dogs seem to be locking down on employee blogs that are at critical in any way. I don't think his blog was all that extremely negative.

One other note: seriously, don't you think that "onsite" everything screams "stay here longer and work" which is true for Google, and Morgan Stanley (where I've interviewed), and Microsoft, etc. etc. and you'd have to be rather clueless not to expect that? I even heard a Morgan Stanley employee mention publicly that they have a nap room (as well as a gym, free drinks, etc.). And in answer to number of hours a week usually, they said, "We're not a punch-in, punch-out type of place...".

Re:Fired...

[hsmith]

It all adds up to: If you are working somewhere, keep your comments to yourself publicly until you no longer are employed there. If you are a business owner, do you want someone mouthing off to how bad things are at your company? How does that help your company image. If things are 'so bad' then he can pack up and leave, then mouth off. If you want to keep your job then you have to please your bosses, that is the bottom line. If you think something is 'so wrong', don't bitch on your blog, do something meaningful about it.

Re:Fired...

[ifwm]

"It is just interesting how Google top dogs seem to be locking down on employee blogs that are at critical in any way"

No, they're not and you completely missed the point. It appears that he was fired for violating an NDA, so the tone of his comments is irrelevant.

Re:Fired...

[SilverspurG]

It appears that he was fired for violating an NDA

That seems to be the prevailing rumor but I've yet to see any posted information to back it up.

I'd say the NDA excuse is an easy-out PR run.

Re:Fired...

[MushMouth]

All of this, even the fact that google doesn't pay very high salaries, is pretty common knowledge in the bay area internet companies, you can't sneeze in a restaurant without hitting a table google employees.

Free drinks and he left ? - whaaat ?

[bushboy]

I'd have fired the whiny little prick too - 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 !

Way to go Google !

Damn party p00pers !

Re:Free drinks and he left ? - whaaat ?

[SilverspurG]

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.

Re:Free drinks and he left ? - whaaat ?

[bushboy]

3 drinks in two hours, are you crazy !

More like 30 drinks in two hours and then driving home at 1mph !

This is really blurry

[gelfling]

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.

Re:This is really blurry

[Obiwan Kenobi]

This is slightly off-topic, but I can't help but find it amusing as I've done it myself too often.

I hate how you take such care in crafting a good argument/comment, try to end it with a poignant note (at least I know I do, just like yourself), and in your haste to greatness leave something like:

And that what is wrong with America.

or

There is times in this life when you must choose one.

Etc.

Re:This is really blurry

[gelfling]

thanks I will be more concientious of editing in the future.

Re:Mark my words...

[citog]

Ummm ... I reckon lot of folk here will get their knickers in a knot still.

DAMNIT PEOPLE

[dAzED1]

"freedom of speech" means the guy won't go to JAIL for it. It doesn't mean his employer can't do anything to him. He could claim flinging poo on cars in the Google parking lot was an act of "speech" according to today's warped interpretation of the first ammendment, but that wouldn't mean that Google couldn't *fire* him for it. His saying something in a blog just won't get him put in *jail*, per the first ammendment.

Re:DAMNIT PEOPLE

[PsiPsiStar]

If you flung poo on cars they'd arrest you for flinging poo on cars. But not for whatever 'message' you were trying to communicate. (what would that be? that you were an alpha chimp?)

Re:DAMNIT PEOPLE

[dAzED1]

1 - you'd be an artist, "speaking" about the disparity of wealth in the US.

2 - they wouldn't arrest you, unless it appeared you would continue doing it (and at which point, they'd arrest you for disobeying a lawful order). Destruction of private property is a civil matter, not a criminal one.

Re:This is not a troll

[JPelorat]

*** Can't find 90.2.1.0: Non-existent domain

Well duh, it was cancelled ages ago!

Re:Mark my words...

[SilverspurG]

There are very strict SEC rules about that stuff.

I doubt the 189 Enron execs who walked away scott free think they're very strict.

And the Xerox execs, and the Tyco execs, and the WorldCom execs. Sure, there are a few sacrificial lambs with Martha Stewart, Sam Waksell, and a handful of others. I hope no one is fooled by these. Wall Street brokers, investors, executives, and even janitors were raking in billions using this strictly regulated insider trading.

Guess who gets to pay for it? :)

They are free to

[Anonymous Coward]

*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.

Re:They are free to

[Stanistani]

>I'm free to say "you're fucked", but if I act on it, that's naughty.

...or corporate...

Re:They are free to

[Moofie]

So Google shouldn't be free to employ only people they wish to employ?

This guy doesn't have a right to work at Google. He has a right to not be thrown in jail for speaking.

Re:They are free to

[Moofie]

Of course it reflects poorly on their management and business practices. Yet another in the long list of reasons I wouldn't buy their stock.

This "lowest man on the totem pole" was the guy shooting his mouth off. If he thought he was important enough to Google to be able to shoot his mouth off with impunity, well, I guess he was wrong.

Anybody with two neurons to bang together knows you don't call your boss an ass in public and expect to keep your job.

EXACTLY WHY he got fired

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:EXACTLY WHY he got fired

[Cialti]

This would be indeed cause if it's true....

Re:EXACTLY WHY he got fired

[AGTiny]

Very interesting... mod parent up!

Re:EXACTLY WHY he got fired

[Anonymous Coward]

I call fake - Why would he advertise himself on adsense?

One month

[Mr_Silver]

He'd only been there a month. The general rule for all new starters is "impress your new company". I hardly see how writing a blog about what you do there is going to immediately impress them.

If he'd been there for several years, then I would appeal for a bit of leniency - but he was still within his trial period.

Re:Google being less evil...

[hsmith]

It is well known that googles image seach is very out of date and needs to be updated. this is nothing new, no conspiracy.

Re:From Mark's blog

[kjamez]

"!(read || approved) by google BEFORE it is posted."

Re:Probable Cause

[novakyu]

Sorry, I signed a paper that said I wouldn't disclose that.

You are in violation of company protocols---in the Section 3, Article 21 of the paper that you signed, it says that you can't disclose that you can't disclose all sensitive information. Your resignation will be expected on my desk in the morning.

Re:Mark my words...

[LocoMan]

Actually, that's common practice in most places I (or some of my family) has worked in. You enter to work for a month or two on a trial basis, if you're good, you're given a more permanent contract, if not, you're "let go".

Google employees take note!

[Boone^]

Many companies know what you do on your computer when you're at work, but if you work at a company that catalogs the ENTIRE INTERNET then it should be a safe bet that you can't hide anywhere!

Re:Mark my words...

[emilymildew]

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.)

Re:Google being less evil...

[Dun Malg]

January 1st,2005...that's pretty late to claim that excuse.

If you take "torture" out of the search, you get 5700 hits. It's not a trick. I'm not sure you can rationally claim censorship. Their image indexing just plain sucks.

This is a news story?

[hairykrishna]

As far as I can make out the story is:

Asshat who happens to have a blog gets job at google. For two weeks. Then they fire him.

I mean, really, if everyone who got fired for being bad at their job and talking crap online made the front page of /. there wouldn't even be enough space for the important stories about "battery life extenders". (BatMax: the worst slashdot 'news' ever?)

don't be so quick to judge

[jeif1k]

"Sensitive information" in a startup can be something as simple as "there is a chance that some new product will be launched this year", even if that's already considered common knowledge. And it's not sensitive because the company particularly cares, it's sensitive because regulators and others care.

In different words, what he did is something you might do as well accidentally without even thinking about it; the notion of "sensitive information" can be vague and unobvious in many environments.

Soooo...

[DesScorp]

...is that "Don't be Evil" thing still in their company creed?

Because of this?

[Thuktun]

http://99zeros.blogspot.com/2005/01/oops.html

Wednesday, January 26, 2005
oops!
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.

posted by markjen at 11:56 AM

Rule #1 of fight club

[beforewisdom]

You do not publicly criticize your current employer by name and expect your current employer to remain your current employer.

Geeze, I thought Google was into hiring smart people.

Second rule, if you are a firm concerned about your public image you do not openly fire people for criticizing you. There are more tactful and less damaging ways to deal with them.

Geeze, I thought Google was into hiring smart people.

Re:Mark my words...

[dougmc]

... this will be the last day Google is considered a Good company on Slashdot.

No way. http://maps.google.com/ is so cool that it'll make the /. crowd forget all about, um, what was his name again?

So why is that better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I sack a CEO for fraud if I own shares? Nope. Can I sack my prime minister for lying? Nope.

So why can an employeer sack you because of what you say?

Re:So why is that better?

[dAzED1]

absofreakinlutely.

Re:I TOLD you google suck

[essreenim]

You remind me of those Linux-loving retards that kept saying "Linux is better, Linus is God, Microsoft is evil"

+ I have in my life uttered some semblance of "...Linux is better..." but that is it.[end]

but once Microsoft went to campus you could see them handing them their resume.

+I have never directly applied to Microsoft for a job and if I did there is no logical connection between my choice of Operating system and which evil company I want to use for money.[end]

Don't be such a cheap whore and have some dignity.

+ I have dignity. I do not know you can therefore cannot assess whether you have dignity. That is the differnce between presumption and wisdom ;)[end]

[disclaimer: linux-lovers are NOT retards, but those that claim to be and fill their mouths saying that MS is evil but end up working there, truly are retards or at least hipocrites]

+ I agree 100% with that[end]

'beholden'

[kahei]

The word matching 'beholder' that you're looking for in 'beheld' -- 'beholden' means 'indebted to'.

Pedantic? Yes. But 'beheld' is a cool word.

Re:'beholden'

[pmc]

"Indebted to" was what I meant. With an IPO comes new resposibilities and is was the fact the Google now owes a duty to the IPO shareholders (and others) that I was refering to.

So I used the word that I was in fact looking for.

Re:'beholden'

[kahei]

Oh. Your play on words zipped right over my head and smacked into the wall.

i nearly got someone fired at Google

[Krafty Koder]

i came across these photos from inside a Google data centre on flickr.com turns out that they were inadvertently posted up there and were quickly removed because i'd blogged about it. The pictures weren't that remarkable either - just a photo of racks and racks of servers...

Re:Mark my words...

[m50d]

I read that they sent a DMCA takedown notice for content that was infringing copyright.

Google fires blogger: On credibility issue

[angsuman]

Normally in any company when you first join you have to develop credibility and trust. It is foolish to do something rash during that period if you want to keep your job. After you have proven yourself most companies are more lax with what you can do or cannot do, again within limits. Your capability to work on the fringes increases.
In his case unfortunately he chose to somewhat critisize his employer in a public forum!

Not to mention he was surely under some form of NDA.

And about the complaints within the company about him?
Not many many people likes to shake dirty linen in public, specially about a company which has made millions for them.

I think what google has done is well within its purview and frankly the rest of the world shouldn't be bothered with it.

What was he thinking?!

Looks like its time someone wrote few tips for bloggers. I can start with:
1. If you are working or planning to work for someone be careful what you blog
2. Blogging is like writing to the whole world, a feature which we often tend to forget. It isn't kansas anymore you know.
3. It is common for employers to google someone before hiring and keep a tab afterwords. I remember getting an email from JPM for mentioning just about my work there!

Re:Mark my words...

[The_K4]

What if he showed up to work drunk? What if the slapped a female co-worker's ass? What if the kept posting to slashdot all day instead of working? There are MANY reasons to fire someone, i will admit that this looks fishy, however if he really was fired for blogging one would think he would post a rant about it on his blog!

Re:Mark my words...

[Swamii]

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!

Re:Probable Cause

[SilverspurG]

Your resignation will be expected on my desk in the morning

I know this game. You get my resignation with my request for my remaining two weeks of vacation. You deny my vacation and have me escorted off of the property. You then deny my unemployment.

Don't be surprised if you find a nice steaming present on your keyboard, as well. :)

Re:No...

[Otter]

100% Overrated

Heh, you and I both got modded down for being able to subtract correctly...

Slashdot Fires Blogger?

[cyranoVR]

Where's Michael?

Re:Mark my words...

[m50d]

Yes, I did, and I realised my typo as soon as I posted it. Sorry.

Re:Mark my words...

[SirChive]

If he rants in protest and the issue gets more play in the press he is hardly likely to be hired by any other big tech company.

liability

[willCode4Beer.com]

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?).

original unedited posts?

[sacrilicious]

TFA sez:

On Jan. 26, an edited version of the blog reappeared on the site, with a new entry explaining the on-again, off-again commentary. Gone was the first day's post explaining his reasons for creating the blog, as well as a description of an employee orientation event that vaguely touched on discussions of Google's booming business.

Anyone got a link to the original, unedited blog post(s)? (And how ironic would it be if it were in the google cache?)

Re:Mark my words...

[emilymildew]

Source, please, on the hundreds of complaints?

Re:Mark my words...

[Tethys_was_taken]

... 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 ...

How else would you define a free-speech issue? Free speech only becomes a problem when the right is exercised in the wrong places. A government with draconian policies doesn't mind if you use your right to free speech to support it, but it surely does when you use those same rights to oppose it. If someone gets to choose what's free speech, and what isn't, it's NOT FREE SPEECH ANYMORE.

I'm as much a google supporter as the next slashdotter, but if what I read is true, and they have fired him ("let him go") for writing about negatives in working at Google, provided that stuff doesn't come under the NDA, then this is ethically wrong. Like this blog entry says:

Whatever happened, it's a sad day when you can't speak openly about both the good and bad at your chosen place of work without getting silenced.

Re:Mark my words...

[aWalrus]

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.

Re:Mark my words...

[SilverspurG]

(check your contract)

My last contract had some verbage which was (pph.),"Employee agrees not to tell anyone when the managerial staff decides to beat him daily with 16-gauge unshielded copper speaker wire."

It's at that point that I started to question the legitimacy of such contracts--and the ethics of the entire legal system.

One mistake can be enough...

[jorgie]

He quoted the stike price that stock options were being given at. That is NOT public information and would likely get you canned from many places.

jorgie

Re:Mark my words...

[bajjer31]

Actually it's not fud, taken from http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-02-08-n55 .html

"Update 2: Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo had a talk with Mark Jen and says: "Yes, he was fired from Google. It was directly related to his blog.""

Here's the link from Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo: http://battellemedia.com/archives/001248.php

Oh, and the blog is in Google?

[KZigurs]

Can we find it in Google? Can we believe what we have found there?

Nop, no cookie for you.

[KZigurs]

Not in the scientific notion.

Re:Mark my words...

[Swamii]

Who removed the controversial comments? Google? Isn't that censorship?

Anonymous reader had it right

[warnerve]

My favorite part was this from the comments section on the blog:

Anonymous said...
You're gonna be fired, aren't you ?

Re:Mark my words...

[Winkhorst]

The legal system, to paraphrase old Honest Abe, is of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

Re:Mark my words...

[FecesFlingingRhesus]

The -2 offtopic surly proves my conclusion they are out to get you all and they will silence all dissidence. The power is so great that they can even affect the incorruptible and highly accurate Slashdot moderation system to otherwise moderate my highly informative post down to try to silence me. I will not go silently into the night, Google do you hear me, I will not go silently into the night.

So if they are filtering, why do you see anything?

[SuperKendall]

Kind of shoots a hole in your theory when seeing ten pictures gets the point across just as well as 100.

Not that I'm saying you're a paranoid delusional... well, I guess we might as well just say that.

Haven't you ever talked to one?

[SuperKendall]

Broke his MBA? Huh?

Have you ever talked to an MBA for long? I think they come broken from the factory.

Re:Don't be evil, unless you're Sergei?

[Valar]

Well of course the founder wasn't sacked. That does make any sense. You know why? Because he is a major controlling interest in google. In other words, google exists to make money for him (in a pretty legally binding way, actually). That is one of the advantages you get in an equity transaction.

Re:Mark my words...

[KillerDeathRobot]

Whatever happened, it's a sad day when you can't speak openly about both the good and bad at your chosen place of work without getting silenced.

He didn't get silenced, he got fired (possibly). Now he's free to say whatever he wants and unless it is NDA stuff, Google can't do a thing.

I know him personally

[Krezel]

I know Mark very well. We went to high school and college together.

He's an extremely bright, motivated guy who gave up a very well paying job at Microsoft go to work for Google.

He's told me that Google has no formal written policy on blogging. He didn't say anything bad about the company. They simply took issue with the fact he was saying anything at all.

Go read his blog before you criticize him.

Re:A company closed to critics is a dammed company

[jorgie]

Critics they can handle... someone giving out option prices they can't and shouldn't.

Pretty standard corporate behavior

[jay2003]

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.

Bloggers being fired for being... bloggers? No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.

There was another case a few months back of someone being fired from Friendster for... ahem. "Being a blogger." I am familiar with the details of the case, and let me assure you, blogging was the last thing on the employer's mind when they fired this person. I suspect that Google fired this guy for much the same reasons and this guy, like that other person, blamed the blogging.

It's just silly to believe that. Fired for blogging. Fired for using the internet. Fired for blinking wrong. Whatever. When people are fired, there's actually usually a good reason.

So let me see if I got this right

[melted]

He was fired over a comment that Google has shitty health benefits compared to MSFT (btw, massage is NOT covered anymore). Is this right?

I've sent my resume to them a while ago, and they emailed me back. It really seems that Google is a huge mess right now. First of all, they didn't spell my last name right once in four emails. Second of all, I was told that I'll be called by some person, but the phone number they've provided was someone else's phone number. When I politely e-mailed them about the fact they pretended they didn't know what was going on. I have provided _my_ phone number in this same email. No one called. I guess the fellow in HR who contacted me doesn't like to admit his mistakes.

At any rate, I have a pretty interesting job right now anyway, so there's just not enough incentive for me to go to Google. I just wanted to see what it's like, and my first impression is pretty negative. Reading comments from some other applicants, I see that I'm not the only one who wasn't overwhelmed.

Re:So let me see if I got this right

[/dev/trash]

You are a PhD.

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

RTFA. He removed them.

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.

Dumb ass = fired

[Safety Cap]

Rule number one: Your compensation, benefits, terms of employment, etc. are confidential information. The only people who need to know besides yourself are your SO and your employer.

When you open your fat mouth and blab internationally on the internets, you risk winding up other employees (you know the ones I'm talking about; they don't think it is 'fair' that you're a better negotiator than them, so they should get the same deal you got, but for no effort), and management, who doesn't want to deal with the crybaby emps when they knock on the door with a variation of "how come Bob got $$$ more than me?! I work twice as hard than him!!" Or no PHB wants to make less than a mere workerbee, the nerve.

Bottom line, keep your powder dry and your pecker hard, and for god's sake shut the hell up.

Re:Dumb ass = fired

[SilverspurG]

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.

Re:Dumb ass = fired

[PepeGSay]

Everything that he said (that is in his blog currently) has been mentioned in news articles. Otherwise as a nonprivileged visitor you could gain much of the information he provided. You could also gain much of that information in an interview, prior to being under any NDA.

Re:Dumb ass = fired

[/dev/trash]

Then how come Whole Foods makes all this open?

Re:Dumb ass = fired

[polyiguana]

Then how come Whole Foods makes all this open?

Or the government.

The Offending Blog Post, taken from Google Cache

[EraseEraseMe]

first day on the job, first post on the blog
in the ever increasing chaos known as the blogosphere, i've decided to add yet another random stream. if nothing else, this blog will serve as a personal journal of my life at google. maybe one day, a collection of these postings and comments will compile into a book...

in the meantime, i'll introduce myself and my new blog. my name is mark jen and i began my life as a googler (or noogler for those of you in the know) today: janurary 17th, 2005. in previous chapters of my life, i'd interned at ibm and worked full time for 18 months at microsoft. so i guess you could say i'm getting first hand experience at three companies who embody the tech company lifecycle - ibm at the tailend of their era; microsoft at the inflection point leading to maturity; and google at the beginning of what would become a new empire.

so what happened today? nothing too exciting. i think new employee orientation is about the same at any company: you show up early, get a security badge, sit through hours of boring presentations and fill out the required paperwork.

cool things about the process at google:

* almost everything is electronic. only four forms need to be printed (two were required by the government; one was the electronic signature authorization form; and of course, the NDA we've all come to know and love)
* my login, badge and workstation were completely ready to go on the first day. you'd think this wouldn't be so hard, but it actually proves to be quite difficult at most companies. to top it all off, my laptop was given to me all setup and in its carrying case with a full complement of goodies :)

now the bad:

* same old 3 hour HR presentation about nothing important in particular

the rest of my day was spent surfing the corporate intranet. this was quite an experience. you'd think that an intranet would typically be oragnized and very cohesive - after all, it's the internal network for a single company. however, google has managed to recreate the chaos of the internet on its internal network. fortunately, they've applied their search engine to help sort through everything. which begs the question - did the intranet become messy becuase google had a great search engine to find things anyways? or would intranets naturally become a mess if not for the fear of creating a huge tangled mess with no search tool to help users?

closing thought: the ibm t41p is truly a laptop done right. i'm not entirely sure why any company would issue anything less to their employees (*ahem* microsoft :p)

Yeah, good reason to fire him there... Look at all that proprietary information!

Re:Mark my words...

[SomePoorSchmuck]

And yet every election cycle we have candidates promise millions more $$ in police recruitment and training so we can "take by the streets", by which I guess they mean put millions more of the uneducated lower economic class in jail.

There will not be justice in the Enron/Worldcom frauds. How many of the 1980s S&L crooks are still doing time? Personally, I'd rather someone break into my car and steal the stereo while I'm at a bar in the inner city than have my job, health benefits, and retirement funding evaporate overnight.

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

If someone gets to choose what's free speech, and what isn't, it's NOT FREE SPEECH ANYMORE

Really? Try going to your local movie theatre and screaming 'Fire' when you are in it. The cops who take you away will explain it to you very clearly. Not all speech is protected. You aren't allowed to give out insider information on a company for instance.

Badmouthing and discretion and geek chicks

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

I read a few of these guys posts and determined 4 things.

1) He has no sense of discretion and a disturbing air of entitlement
2) Having Microsoft on his resume, he really had NO clue how lucky he was to even get a job there (and how careful he should have been in Month 1, not to mention Months 2-12)... easy come, easy go
3) I have just become as useless as most bloggers by burning work time to read his blog
4) That rat bastard wasted his opportunity to pick up hot Seattle geek-compatible chicks with the "Actually, I work at Google" pick-up line. Man, I'd almost kill for that.

Let's get back to work, people. Nothing to see here, move along...

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

So why sign the contract? If you read his blog, he had a job at MS before. He left it to go work for Google. No one twisted his arm. There was no gun to his head. He didn't have to either work for Google, or let his 6 children starve. He already had a good job. It was his decision to go, and his decision to sign whatever contract he signed.

If you agree to abid by a contract, don't, and get fired. Don't be shocked or upset.

From Mark's blog

[TheBoostedBrain]

Taken from http://99zeros.blogspot.com/2005/01/first-day-on-j ob-first-post-on-blog.html
"google has managed to recreate the chaos of the internet on its internal network."

So there's pr0n!!!!!

Re:Mark my words...

[Bamafan77]

"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. "

That seems a tad sensationalistic. If this is indeed the offending blog post, I seriously doubt this violates any SEC insider trading laws, but IANAL. He just had a few criticisms of google's compensation package (or rather contrast/compared with MS's) and talked about their benefits, many of which are just thinly veiled excuses to keep employees at work. The guy was probably fired because Google didn't come out smelling like roses, not because he broke any laws.

Re:Google being less evil...

[vikramrn]

According to the GoogleBlog the Google Image index was updated on Feb 7th to 1.18763 Billion images...

It even mentions about Image results being shown in a regular google search, as was mentioned in a previous slashdot article.

Re:Mark my words...

[SilverspurG]

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.

Probably the right thing....

[OneFix at Work]

The more you read into this, the more it looks like Google did the right thing in this case.

The guy posted corporate strategy and financial information to his blog. This is something that could cause the company real money if it falls into the wrong hands.

The guy started working there less than a month ago and already he's posting corporate financial data to his blog. The fact that he posted it in a way that was clearly traceable back to him and was willing to post what seems like any new data related to Google probably made the company nervous.

If you look at his job (Google AdSense)...the fact that he devulged this information so freely was also a red flag...he was put in a position where he was destined to know every new product Google was developing and here he was posting it in a public forum.

Maybe he was trying to feed information to M$ through this blog...it's obvious they must have seen it by now...or maybe he was just so stupid as to not realise how much he was hurting the company by posting this information.

maybe he was channelling ee cummings...

[Medievalist]

...or perhaps he is a cockroach and can't use the shift key?

Re:Mark my words...

[thisisper]

"Don't be evil?" This was supposed to be Google's prime directive. However, Google seems light on specifics on what "evil" behavior actually is - perhaps "evil" means anything that harms Google. Microsoft, Sun, and other companies seem way more progressive in their policies about employee blogging.

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

Sorry, no. I've never been in a frat and wouldn't want to be. Thanks.

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.

My plan

[matt me]

I'm a self-employed freelance web-designer and programmer, and about to jump on the blog-firing band-wagon.

My plan is as follows;
1) Critcise myself on blog
2) Fire myself
3) Get masses of media attention. People will come to my website.
4) People will like my website and offer me work.

Woo.

Google no different

[spywarearcata.com]

xxxxx is all for free speech. Except for its own employees, of course.

xxxxx is all for free enterprise. Except for its own employees, of course.

Google -- or any company -- can be subsituted in for the xxxxx. Money corrupts. It is as simple as that.


Ask Steve Jobs about this. He was one of the first people to feed this claptrap culture speak to Apple employees and its customers back in the 70's. As a fairly early employee (70's) I can say that most employess believed it, and many customers believe it even now.

Even "think different" Jobs doesn't believe it anymore after Scully fired him in the palace coup at Apple. The humiliation. The destruction of Asgard.

No matter how successful Steve will be in the life remaining to him, he will never, ever forget what Scully did to him.

Google is no different. Larry Page and Sergey Brin may have started Google in high-spirited Palo Alto/Stanford euphoria, but are listening right now to the cracks and groans of amoral capitalism grinding their principles down.

If they don't understand this and deal with it, then the the idiot part of idiot savant will describe them. There is now a dollar sign in front of 10^10 and don't you forget it.

Note that I am not being cynical here, the "amoral" forces are the same as the "invisible hand"s or, in other words, reality imposing truth upon the irrelevant and dodgy theories of entrepreneurs everywhere. It just that to be honest and effective, Sergey and Larry need to admit to this and deal with it rather than pretend everything is like Old School days.

Actually ninety nine zeros is what you get...

[don.pratt]

when you take one zero away from a googol.

Microsoft Bloggers vs. Google Bloggers

[Thomas Hawk]

In an interesting twist on the vilification of Microsoft as the big bad evil corporate empire with the contrasting "Don't Do Evil" Google, and in light of the incredibly stupid Wired story about Microsoft trying to discourage iPod use with their employees last week, it is worth noting today that on Matt Goyer's (a Microsoft employee) blog this morning that he is blogging about the fact that he uses Firefox as his default browser. http://blog.mattgoyer.com/2005/02/08.html#a4032 Even more significant, Matt is asking others (yes Microsoft employees) on how to get around some of the Microsoft Firefox limitations. "For the Softies out there, I use Firefox as my default browser, how do I get it to cache my work credentials so I don't need to login every time I visit an intranet site? Also, when I get home I can no longer post to HTML forms. Is there a way to fix that without going in and changing my proxies every time I switch on and off the MS network?" While Google is publicly taking a lashing by some in the blogosphere over the firing of Mark Jen, Microsoft has been very open in giving Bloggers like Goyer and Microsoft's most famous blogger Robert Scoble a very wide berth. Say what you will about Microsoft, but one thing that Microsoft has really done right is to embrace their blogging employees. This is an enormous amount of freedom. At the same time, Microsoft bloggers are generally very responsible with what they post. Certainly Matt is not criticizing IE merely by choosing to use Firefox as his default browser instead. However, the fact that he can feel comfortable publishing this on his blog speaks volumes about the culture at Microsoft. It's a nice thing to see.

Re:Microsoft Bloggers vs. Google Bloggers

[jbx]

Baloney.

I worked for Microsoft 3 months ago. I work for Google now. The policies about blogging aren't that different, and if you don't believe me, remember that Microsoft also fired a blogger, for taking pictures of an incoming shipment of computers and noting their location.

Remember, it's the confidential information that gets you into trouble. There's nothing Microsoft-confidential about Firefox.

Re:Mark my words...

[SilverspurG]

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.

I have yet to see that backed up. There are vague allusions to relocation practices at best. If that's the case then 80% of new hires in the US should be terminated tomorrow since that's what new hires do--they talk about the new hire process.

That's too bad, try to get over it, but it doesn't mean this was a bad contract

Any contract which isn't equally portioned between rights of side A and rights of side B is a bad contract. Every employment contract I've seen amounts to four pages of rights retained by the company and one last line that says (pph),"You, as the employee, have the right to go get fscked."

Maybe you didn't read yours...

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

I won't sign one if it doesn't seem fair to me. I read mine. It's a fine one. I abide by it, and get treated well in return. I'm fine by it.

But then I'm not as bitter of a person as you appear to be.

A rule of thumb...

[808paulson]

Do not bite the hands that feeds you.

If you really want to gripe about your company do not make it public until you quit or get fired.

I am sure there are proper channels within the company.

Griping about the company on a companies service is not generally a good idea.

The offending message

[Barkmullz]

The offending message was:

"they started off the day with a financials presentation, which was actually quite interesting. of course, i understand that they obviously will put a positive spin on everything, but the weight of the raw numbers is undeniable. both google's profits and revenue are growing at an unprecedented rate even while they are increasing their expenditures on capital and human resources. not to mention that google has been primarily focused on the u.s. market and is now turning their full attention to the global marketplace.
so after the interesting financials, the products team gave presentations reviewing product performance in 2004 and giving sneak peeks of the products we'll unveil in 2005. if you guys thought g**il and google groups were cool, you ain't seen nothing yet!"

Which was replaced with:

"they started off the day with a financials presentation, then the products team gave presentations reviewing product performance in 2004."

Linkage

Re:The offending message

[jbx]

Thanks Barkmullz, for posting that. (I work for Google so I won't touch it.) It's one thing to say something bad about the company you're working for. It's quite another to blog about an insiders-only financials presentation one week prior to an earnings announcement - on a blog site that your company runs! I'm just glad this didn't get Google into yet another SEC tussle!

Re:The offending message

[letchhausen]

That's the thing that the conspiracy theorists don't want to admit, that there are limits to free speech and this includes common sense and things that we enter into contractually like NDA's. Personally I think this guy is a total idiot for posting any of this nonsense about a company that he just started working for, but definitely some of the details seemed like "too much". The wide-eyed way he plays it off on his blog like "wow, I can't believe people pay this much attention to the internet" shows either a scary lack of common sense or worse, very little knowledge of the internet. EVERYONE reads everything.

Someone I know works at a big corporation and sent me something they were going to post on an online journal mentioning work that was fairly innocuous but I told them to edit it out. Other than the endless blather that the internet has given us all a ridiculous forum for, I asked if it was really necessary to mention that? Could it be seen by the company as disclosing information in violation of your NDA? What do you get from posting that? In the end they were just posting to blab and it was meaningless to them but consideration made them realize that it was disclosing information about the company.

While people will want to make Google the bad guy, I feel that when you accept a contract for employment that you are responsible to not violate any NDA which may be in place and more than that, use some common sense about what you convey to the world. And when you post on the internet you post for every single person in the world with a computer. When you post for your friends do they really need to know insider details about your job? Or are you posting them because you think that a larger audience will find it interesting that you work at Google?

Hell if I was lucky enough to get a job at Google I'd be too busy to be blogging. And if I did I sure wouldn't mention Google. Not because I feel that they want to quell my free speech but because I joined a high-profile company that I would feel responsible to not only respect ALL information that I was working with but also because as an employee I would want to protect the company itself. The last thing any company I work for needs is me shooting off my mouth about what they do there.

People's right to diarrhea of the mouth ends when they join a larger group. If they don't like the Leviathan they can start their own company and shoot off their mouth to their heart's content.

Re:Mark my words...

[SilverspurG]

I won't sign one if it doesn't seem fair to me

If you're financially secure enough to turn down work then you have no ground to stand on when arguing the details of the case of someone who makes $45k/year in SF.

But then I'm not as bitter of a person as you appear to be

Reading my employee agreement and keeping track of the number of rights delegated to both me and my employer makes me bitter how?

Re:Blog Damage Control

[DrXym]

From reading the blog, it sounds like the ass thought that blogging was some magical medium completely immune from the usual rules concerning disclosing confidential or sensitive company information.

He knows better now.

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

If you're financially secure enough to turn down work then you have no ground to stand on when arguing the details of the case of someone who makes $45k/year in SF.

So, because you chose to live in one of the most expensive parts of the country (or world?), and the job market there for the type of work you desire to do is not as good as you would like it to be, I can't look around for a job with a fair contract? I don't think so. I've got plenty of ground here, thanks.

Reading my employee agreement and keeping track of the number of rights delegated to both me and my employer makes me bitter how?

It wasn't that. It's the assumption that being fired for giving out company details that you knew were not to be given out in any way equates to some frat guys harassing, bullying, and intimidating you. And your story about how cruel your mom was with your allowance. None of those things were relevant to him talking about private company matters on the internet.

Google News link to stories about Google firing th

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

http://news.google.com/news?q=google+fires+blogg er &hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=nn&oi=newsr

Re:The Offending Blog Post, taken from Google Cach

[siliconjunkie]

Is this somehow different from the actual post on his blog?

Mark Jen

[Thomas Hawk]

Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! met with Mark Jen last night and is confirming that he was fired. http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004157.htm l

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

You can. At the same time you cannot relate with someone who does not have the financial security to tell a company,"Change your contract or find someone else."

The guy this is about already HAD A JOB AT MICROSOFT and did not have to accept a contract he was offered from Google. Having the financial security of a job at MS, he could easily have told them ,"Change your contract or find someone else."

Recent aquisition?

[V_Pundit]

Call me crazy, but it's been quite a while since Google acquired Blogger

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

You very highly doubt it eh?

Just one tiny piece of his large number of comments on MS vs Google on his blog at http://99zeros.blogspot.com/ :

" i must be crazy/stupid/irrational/etc. becuase since i knew what i was getting myself into when i joined google, i shouldn't be complaining. while i do admit that i am a little of all of the above, i would encourage people to realize that life is all about compromises and trade-offs. in this particular scenario, before i made my decision to leave microsoft and come to google, i very carefully weighed many things, including (but not limited to):

overall compensation, including the benefits packages

mission and values of the companies

career growth potential and opportunities

scope of work i would be doing

working environment and atmosphere

location
in the end, i decided that google was a better choice; however, by no means was google the clear winner in all categories. different people have different ways to weight different factors and in the end, the equation i set up had google coming out on top. i trust you are all very intelligent people and you know exactly what i'm talking about here.

Apparently you never bothered to read his current blog, let alone the stuff that was deleted.

So we have established that you can't read, and you are in terror from some frat guys that tormented you in your past. Seek therapy.

What a hacker!

[roman_mir]

He hacked the company's motto: "Don't Be Evil".
Respect.

he is a dumbass :)

This happened to me too, but only for interview

[Krellan]

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.

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 :) The free food at Google is tempting, though....

Re:Mark my words...

[andrew_0812]

Oh come on. Use common sense. Whatever he put there was only protected under free speach if he didn't infringe the companies rights to keep certain information confidental. But nothing protects any of us from the reprocussions of exercising our right to free speach. Grow up. If you talk bad about your company, you get a pink slip. Who would want someone like that on the payroll, and why would you want to stay anyway.

could be worse

[dynamo]

i'd hire someone who got fired from google over someone who got promoted at sco any day.

dooced!

[geekbruin]

http://www.dooce.com/about.html

Re:Mark my words...

[glassjaw rocks]

"Employee agrees not to tell anyone when the managerial staff decides to beat him daily with 16-gauge unshielded copper speaker wire."

16-gauge. 1 millimeter in diameter. I'm scared to death of being beaten with one of those.

Re:Mark my words...

[LurkerXXX]

Wrong once again. That's the edited version of his blog. The fireable stuff was already removed. RTFA.

Here's the sensitive info

[aWalrus]

Well, this has gone down the hill pretty quickly, hasn't it? Risking involvement in this, I think the parent made a poor choice out of the blog's content. Here's what I think could be sensitive:

google's relocation process requires the employee to pay all the expenses up front and then get reimbursed for them later.

Ok, this is mild, but imagine what HR thinks when it sees this published on the internet? (I know: screw them, but still, it's not a good idea to piss off the people who sign your paychecks).

they don't pay out your signing bonus and relocation money until your first paycheck

What if this is not standard procedure? Someone mentioned in a related thread that maybe they gave him a signing bonus, but not to a lot of other people? How will it make them feel? This is why companies ask you not to disclose your salary (which no one actually abides by, but internet publishing is different from corridor talk)

microsoft's health care benefits shame google's relatively meager offering. for those of you who don't know, microsoft pays 100% of employees' premiums for a world-class PP

Ok, this one's a biggie. This is not so easy to get info, and it starts getting specific.

google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation? the packages would've been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let's be honest here... a stock option with a strike price of $188 just doesn't have the same value as the ones of yesteryear. even microsoft adjusted their base salaries to 66th percentile years ago when it was clear that their stock options weren't as much a part of the total compensation package as it used to be. for a post-IPO company like google, it only seems fair that they adjust things accordingly.

This kind of analysis, made by an employee, publically voiced, is exactly the kind of thing the obsessive compulsive google fans are looking for. And it could, conceivably, fall in the SEC-restricted category (affecting the public's perception of the company, possibly prematurely revealing internal changes in policy, etc.).

It's not that any particular bit of info on the blog was confidential. It's that a lot of what he was taking about falls in a very gray area that might not only piss off the managers, but could get Google in trouble with the SEC. Can you blame them for being careful? (although I do think a warning would have been in order, before taking action).

Re:Here's the sensitive info

[mrisaacs]

You obviously know nothing about disclosure and the SEC. It's not a question of whether the SEC knows this informaion, of course they do. It's the release of information not usually available to investors, inside information that can affect stock values that can get a company in hot water with the SEC. HR practices can fall into this category.

If this guy thought the package was no good, he should have skipped on hiring on. You can see the employment contract before you sign on, you just have to ask for it. For those of us who write software for a living, IP ownership/invention clauses are of great interest and generally need to be known, before we sign on or leave our current positions.

Publishing information, about your current employer, that can tarnish their image is not particularly smart either, especially if you're still in the probationary period most jobs carry.

Also, as stated by the parent, companies usually require employees to refrain from discussing salary/bonus related information. Many people ignore this requirement, and employers sort of wink at it.

Publishing the details on the internet is certainly well beyond the bounds that most empoyers will wink at. The rant could have prompted other employees to complain. If enough complaints were made about the disclosure, it wouldn't be desirable, regardless of how otherwise talented the guy was, for an employer to keep him around.

Re:Here's the sensitive info

[LurkerXXX]

Well, this has gone down the hill pretty quickly, hasn't it? Risking involvement in this, I think the parent made a poor choice out of the blog's content. Here's what I think could be sensitive:

My choice of content wasn't to show what was sensitive, it was for the contained key phrase "before i made my decision to leave microsoft and come to google" The other guy in this thread claimed to have read the article but said he'd "doubt very highly that Google will offer to hire anyone who's currently employed with Microsoft"

My point was that that was exactly what had happened and he didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about.

As far as the sensitive material. What you posted isn't it. He says on there that " 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"

They didn't ask him to take it down, but he edited it. There are other boards around that have copies the old unedited posts before he removed the sensitive stuff.

From the cnet in the slashdot blurb... "On Jan. 26, an edited version of the blog reappeared on the site, with a new entry explaining the on-again, off-again commentary. Gone was the first day's post explaining his reasons for creating the blog, as well as a description of an employee orientation event that vaguely touched on discussions of Google's booming business."

Re:Here's the sensitive info

[MushMouth]

None of that stuff would pique the SEC's interest, as it is all public knowledge, google's expenses are all reported to the SEC so the average salary is known. The option strike price is determined by the stock price on the day of the options grant, 188 was the price of GOOG when Jens was hired. Not only that there are those who are given offers and turn them down, I never have received an NDA about any salary offer. However Jens did talk about corporate direction from an all hands like meeting, which when he published sent the stock up several points. While that info would have gotten out (there were a lot of ears at that meeting, and not every one would have stayed quiet, hell I have heard insider info from google employees), I did expect him to get the can over it.

Great ability to work, poor use of moral limits

[Seoulstriker]

So not only did he reveal sensitive financial information on his blog earlier, he used his position in the AdSense division to circumvent the requirements for a properly formatted AdSense ad.

He then bitches and moans that he got fired because of something he wrote on his blog.

He is a disingenuous employee who used an inside connection to make money outside of the company. His paycheck wasn't big enough at google, so he just had to make ad revenue. Now he's not making any money at Google.

What a moron.

Re:Great ability to work, poor use of moral limits

[Ohreally_factor]

He obviously has to have some intelligence to get hired at Google in the first place, but he also seems incredibly foolish and naive. I think Doc Ruby said recently, "Every geek knows that Intelligence and Wisdom are separate rolls."

So, he might have committed an ethical lapse. He's not good with boundaries, he has passive-aggressive tendencies* hidden under a thin social veneer. He doesn't seem to accept personal responsibility. Sounds like management material to me!

*I know that some people really cringe when they hear pop psychology phrases like "passive-aggressive". That's why I like to use such phrases. I guess that makes me passive aggressive.

If Free Speech Applied to Business

[SumDog]

Free speech doesn't apply to business, private school (even some public school situations), etc. If some company is funding you, they have a say in what you put out there.

What you say on your own time can get you fired. You can sue if it's obviously unjust or doesn't violate any NDA you signed, however if someone above you doesn't like you, and furthermore if you have stuff in a blog, in writing, that's all they need to show to let you go.

Companies are suppose to ask for your resignation, unless you've fucked up really big, however even that has started to become a thing of the past.

In some cases it's very understandable. The companies internal policies may give it an edge in a competitive market. Letting the public know even small details about a product or the way they are going to advertised could violate an NDA. If it's not in an official press release or on a big advertising poster, you probably shouldn't talk about it, even if it's considered general knowledge in your field.

An example is when I worked for a web design company. Any resources we used, on-line tutorial

Re:This is not a troll

[Intosi]

Actually, it's an IANA reserved block, according to whois:

$ whois 90.2.1.0

OrgName: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
OrgID: IANA
Address: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
City: Marina del Rey
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90292-6695
Country: US

NetRange: 89.0.0.0 - 95.255.255.255
CIDR: 89.0.0.0/8, 90.0.0.0/7, 92.0.0.0/6
NetName: RESERVED-11
NetHandle: NET-89-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType: IANA Reserved
Comment:
RegDate:
Updated: 2004-04-02

OrgAbuseHandle: IANA-IP-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number
OrgAbusePhone: +1-310-301-5820
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@iana.org

OrgTechHandle: IANA-IP-ARIN
OrgTechName: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number
OrgTechPhone: +1-310-301-5820
OrgTechEmail: abuse@iana.org

OK, first I thought shit, that sucks

[tod_miller]

Then I read his blog. Firstly, is it a style that he cannot capitalise his I's or first letters of a sentence?

I'd call him a fucker just for that. Secondly:

to be honest, when i first got here, i was kind of disappointed that i was put on adsense. i wanted to work on consumer products, where i could focus on coming up with new offerings that would revolutionize the way people use computers and the internet.

Whine whine fucking whine! Seriously, this guy is a loser, probably google execs realised they couldn't face such a loser working for the, it gets worse:

before i left microsoft,

aaaah piss off back to M$, and stop infecting google!!!! go back to msn search why don't you! (you notice how msn search has a topical backdrop to thier search, nothing like googles leet cartoon logos, which dilbert starred in for a WHOLE WEEK!)

Net result: probably blogging is going to be found out to be the dumbest shit of self interest and vanity as I have long thought. Blogs, like, the odd few, are ok, everyone can keep a blog, but it is the wierd incessant self promotion... it is sick.

Outcome: this guy was fired for being a twat, if you are the judge hearing his case when he no doubt tries to cash in, please just shout "hes got a gun!" and let him be mowed down.

As least the world will have a few more lowercase letters to go around.

Google's hiring process.

[juuri]

As another posted commented is one big circle jerk. They interview candidates over and over again looking for some inane qualities because they feel this is how they get the best. Instead their process, by unintended selection, only pulls in people extremely generic "me-too'ers". Combine that with their rather lousy pay for the area and you can easily forsee the future for google as a generator for new tech and ideas.

Clever puzzles and suprise interview techniques are a sign of a weak interviewer, not a strong one. They tell very little about your ability to really think on your feet or solve complex issues.

Re:Mark my words...

[MushMouth]

He only talked in general terms about compensation. He thought that there was no such thing as a "free lunch", that the medical plan was lame compared to Microsoft, and that they should pay more. Didn't we all bitch when the details of EA's indentured servitude came to light? Sounds like google is doing the same thing.

good work!

[rhizome]

excellent point.

flight attendant got fired for blogging

[sewagemaster]

The folks at Delta fired their flight attendant after she placed a picture of herself in uniform on her blog...

(drool? hehe)

0wn3d

[ShinGouki]

$smackdown = laid;

Re:strategic

[Flaming Foobar]

He posted strategic information about Google's direction and general insider information about profits and revenue. That's stuff that can get you in trouble with the SEC.

LOTS of trouble. VERY expensive trouble.

Plus the detailed information about all the benefits packages and signing bonuses is very valuable information to other companies competing over the same people.

Re:Mark my words...

[Flaming Foobar]

Which confidential information did he divulge?

Here is what was removed from the blog:

"they started off the day with a financials presentation, which was actually quite interesting. of course, i understand that they obviously will put a positive spin on everything, but the weight of the raw numbers is undeniable. both google's profits and revenue are growing at an unprecedented rate even while they are increasing their expenditures on capital and human resources. not to mention that google has been primarily focused on the u.s. market and is now turning their full attention to the global marketplace.

so after the interesting financials, the products team gave presentations reviewing product performance in 2004 and giving sneak peeks of the products we'll unveil in 2005. if you guys thought g**il and google groups were cool, you ain't seen nothing yet!"

Now, Google is a public company. This is the kind of information you do not publish. You just don't. I can't even start to imagine what kind of an idiot it takes not to realize this. It has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with this potentially getting very expensive to Google. People have landed in jail for leaking exactly this kind of inside information, for chrissakes!

Re:Mark my words...

[Flaming Foobar]

If this is indeed the offending blog post, I seriously doubt this violates any SEC insider trading laws, but IANAL

It isn't. This one was before he removed it when it was way too late.

yet another "don't like it? leave" post, eh?

[loqi]

Don't like it? Leave. You can complain all you like after you're gone.

Oh! I didn't realize you worked for EA.

Makes sense

[assassinator42]

If he abused his authority, he should be fired.

Retards

[AvengerXP]

If you think that you can get away with talking about people (or even worse, businesses), good or bad, you're plainly idiotic. Open up a blog and talk about everything your spouse does, and then make her read it. Chances are at some point she'll get pissed, it's a major argument to anyone who maintains a website of a personal nature. Keep it separate or anonymous, or both. My two cents.

New Blog Guidelines

[jbx]

Google just posted some new guidelines internally. I've received permission to post them:

OK: My team played volleyball at lunch today, we beat some people from another group.
BAD: My team is way ahead of the weather-machine and germ-warfare divisions.

OK: Pets are welcome on the Google Campus.
BAD: People at Google like to sit in their chairs and pet their cats while plotting.

OK: Google has several offices in Europe.
BAD: We look forward to renaming Europe 'Euro-Google-Land'

OK: We are constantly looking for the best engineers to work on exciting projects.
BAD: We're building a robot army at our secret desert office and need more engineers.

OK: There are some great recreation facilities on campus.
BAD: Employees who underperform are sent to the dungeon.
WORSE: Underperforming employees are sometimes sent
back to Microsoft.

OK: Google is always looking to make its services available outside of North America.
BAD: Within 4 turns, we will control all of Asia.

OK: Over 3,000 highly qualified employees work at Google.
BAD: Google hires only the best evil geniuses.

OK: The company motto is 'Don't be Evil'
BAD: The secret company motto is 'One Webservice to Rule Them All'

OK: Googlers are exercising their mechanical-engineering skills.
BAD: Googlers are creating an evil robot.
WORSE: An evil robot is creating Googlers.

OK: We don't comment on how many computers Google operates.
BAD: Google only has a single super-computer, we call it SkyNet; it calls the shots here.

Re:Probable Cause

[Some_Llama]

Wouldn't that be the ADN?

Two Ironclad Workplace Rules

[The Dobber]

-Don't shit where you eat

-Don't dip your pen in company ink

Last few times I've witnessed this..

[Whatchamacallit]

Last few times I've witnessed someone getting fired that quickly, they did something very very very wrong or extremely stupid.

A few examples:

1. Getting caught rifling through a coworkers desk without their permission.

2. Showing up late 5 times in 5 days and were given 2 verbal warnings and 1 written (while being on probation to boot).

3. Failing a drug test.

4. Lying on your resume, claiming a degree you did not have or employement record you did not have.

5. Sexually harassing the unit secretary.

6. Getting arrested and not showing up for work for several days because no one would bail your worthless ass out of jail nor call on your behalf.

#7 should be blogging about your new companies internal policies and procedures, especially mentioning a 'signing bonus' and 'relocation compensation' benefits. Now every nimrod applying to Google will expect these 'optional' and 'discretionary' benefits.

#8 doing something else completely against company policy which you would have known if you weren't napping in the 'boring 3 hour orientation'.

What I want to know is why only 18 months at Microsoft? Hmmm... Get fired from there too? What about that IBM internship? How come he didn't get a job at big blue?

I would guess at #4, they probably turned up something in a background check. These things take time to research. Google wants the best of the best employee's they probably spare no expense in researching the backgrounds of all new hires. Research of this sort takes time, the fact that it may have happened in only a few weeks, is a credit to the company.

On Evil (apologies for being off-topic)

[Headcase88]

Feel free to pepper the following with "IMO" where appropriate... here we go.

I would describe evil as "causing harm for personal gain without consent". Yes, that's a slippery definition.

Basically, if some terrorist commits murder/suicide in hopes of a good afterlife, then I would classify the terrorist as evil. If the terrorist did it strictly because of beliefs, I wouldn't call it evil, but personally, I would call it ignorant, and definetly against the views of Libertarianism as they explained here (not that all Libertarians would necessarily agree with this piece).

By the way here's evil on Wikipedia.

Re:Oh man

[Zen Punk]

Come on. I mean, sure it's a troll, but that picture is fucking hilarious!

Well...

[Headcase88]

They could pretend that they are promoting him and leave him isolated in space for eternity.

They could do a Google Search for [insert name of bad actor/singer here] and force him to watch every page it links to.

Or, worse yet, with their cutting-edge technology they could somehow dynamically block any computer that he is using from accessing Google, forcing him to use MSN Search for the rest of his life!

Cue evil laugh track.

Poor me

[StikyPad]

From the blog:

well, that just about covers my first week at google. now i'll have to spend the weekend looking for a new bed and other matching bedroom furniture. oh boy, lucky me :/

I KNOW, I totally hate buying things. I so envy those people who can't afford to buy anything, let alone furniture from Ikea. And OMG, trying to pick out a color for my new Porsche!?!? I couldn't decide!! I just had to buy one of each.
--
I know everybody complains about unimportant things, like the steak that wasn't medium rare while other people would kill for some food, but really.. Complaints that are thinly veiled attempts to brag make you seem like a wuss. Either be proud of your place, or be ashamed and keep quiet, but don't be passively apologetic by making your situation out to be crap. Although personally, if I got canned in 3 weeks, I'd be keeping awfully quiet.

Sorry Fanboys

[inKubus]

Sorry Fanboys, Google is a public corporation now. Gone are the days of just doing things because "they're cool" or "useful". Now it's about the bottom line. The almighty dollar. *sigh* And don't think they'll be any different than the others. SCO used to be a cool company too. Move on. This is only the beginning of the repression of internal opinion, the hostile takeovers, the illegitimate patents. All part of business. The shareholders have to make money.

Re:So if they are filtering, why do you see anythi

[mindpixel]

It was seven pictures and none of them were of the event.

Re:Mark my words...

[The_K4]

Yeah, but he's already proven that he doesn't think that far ahead. :)

Not the case anymore

[SuperKendall]

That event is of course explained by the frequecy of caching as as long been discussed before.

The complaint I was targeting was the more modern one that the Google search returns fewer results. I don't know the answer, but I do know that valid pictures show up now. Thus no filtering as per my argument before.

Ah ha! Mark Jen blogs again!

[TOWebstress]

He's posting again at his blog, openly as a former employee of Google. Looks like he'll be answering some of the question that have arisen.

99 zeros blog

New Post

[flood6]

New post today on Mark's blog indicates: "on january 28th, 2005, i was terminated from google. either directly or indirectly, my blog was the reason."

Why there is no apostrophe.....

[stfvon007]

Actually its because of the character limit in the sig. The apostophe has to go to make room for more important characters. Now why dont you go make fun of my bad speling grammer insteed. :P

CNN/Money story

[tekten]

CNN/Money has a story out expanding on the topic of how companies are starting to pay closer attention to employee blogs. "For companies, the growing popularity of blogs is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, corporate managers recognize the power of word-of-mouth as a sales tool. On the other hand, they're acutely aware of the dangers inherent in the rapid and widespread dissemination of company information."