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Google Fires Blogger?
Thomas Hawk writes "CNET is reporting that Mark Jen, a blogger whose candid comments about life on the job at Google sparked controversy last month, has left the company. CNET reports that it is not clear if he resigned or was fired but references a post at Google Blogoscoped where it was suggested that he may have been fired over his blog Ninetyninezeros. Given Google's push into the blogging space with their recent acquisition of Blogger it might be interesting to see how this shakes out."
Oh, the drama!
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
How about a link to the actual blog? It's still up...
Man criticises employer in public.
... why, exactly?
Employer fires man.
This is fascinating
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.
I've got some Karma to burn so I'm going to say this anyway.
For all the muppets who will respond about Google being a "bad" company, and how they were "good". FIRING PEOPLE HAPPENS, and sometimes ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. If one person is dragging down the morale of everyone else, should that be allowed to continue ? If one person is damaging the companies reputation, should that be allowed to continue ?
Firing people is something that happens. And it doesn't make companies "bad" or "good". In fact companies ARE NEVER bad or good its the PEOPLE in them that make bad or good decisions. Reference Microsoft, it was the will of a group of people to act as a monopoly and abuse that position.
For anyone who thinks about "Good" and "Bad" in a George Bush style way when looking at any part of the world, whether business or politics. GET OUTSIDE and see the shades, subscribe to the economist, read the Wall Street Journal, become a member of Green Peace and Amnesty International, but don't wear Rose Tinted specs and moan because ONE person got fired.
Google has ALWAYS been protective, and ALWAYS done some "odd" things. There is no tipping point of bad to good, the world is not as simple as "Whitehouse Politics 101".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
My quality social news site.com.
Google may have had no chance but to fire this guy. The SEC is very strict about any kind of financial information employees share. Even a vague summary of an internal financial presentation posted to a blog could mean trouble. Any appearance of Google trying to talk up its stock through underhanded means would be investigated.
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...
Perhaps they fired him because of poor writing skills. I didn't see a sinlge capital letter on the whole page.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Never use the services of the largest text searching company you work for, to bad mouth it.
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.
Wow - your HR department is pretty quick.
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?