Slashdot Mirror
The Repercussions of Blogging
hende_jman writes "How much should you be allowed to say in a public blog? There's an article on CNN that looks at different situations in which people have been fired for blogging about their company. The main issue brought seems not to be one of a lack of trust (blogs, after all, are most often public), but rather a lack of policy outlining repercussions for negative blogging about one's company."
Slashdot had editors not named Zonk?
Anyway, don't blog anything you wouldn't say on TV.
Um ... yes, under many conditions you do. The Federal Government isn't much concerned about that, but the States certainly are. A wrongful firing suit can cost a company a lot of money. So don't assume, as an employer, that you have the right to terminate any employee, at any time, for any reason. For that matter, so far as blogs are concerned there are laws to protect whistleblowers. Still ... if you dislike your employer enough to want to badmouth them in public you should probably just look for another job and be done with it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
most companies have policies about who in the company is allowed to talk to the press and/or public (almost always restricted to C* level execs or the PR department)
blogs are just another way of violating this policy.
I think part of the issue here is people have this perception of the so-called "internet" as a sort of anything-goes space of freedom where ordinary rules of human conduct are relaxed. People on-line say the most outrageous things and have access to images and descriptions of extreme situations and behavior that you would never see in real life.
In reality, the internet is just a bunch of computers linked together. But what happens is people only concentrate on the wild stuff and the exhortations of so-called "freeedom" advocates who push the internet as some sort of intellectual wild west or something, and they do things like spread work gossip or post naughty pictures of themselves in their work uniform. Then they get fired.
I think we all share some of the blame for this and need to be more thoughtful about what we say and do online. Remember, the next time you link to goatse, it could cost someone their job.
Yes, employment is "at will". Does that mean that employers should have the write to fire an employee for publishing a novel written on personal time? Or should society place limits on employers rights to fire employees over off work hours speech unrelated to their job? Personally, I think giving employers the right to squelch employees by threat of arbitrary termination hands them a bit too much power. What you say (unrelated to work) on your own time is your own business and not that of the employer. JMO. --M
I go through alot of resumes.
:
With the advent of blogging, I can't believe:
1. The number of people who give a link to their website on their resume
2. Have a blog
3. Refer to themselves negatively in their blog
"I couldn't find the motivation to get out of bed".
"I'm a loser, I can't find a job".
"I just don't feel like working".
Hey, let's call these people...
This is precisely why I started http://www.novoice.org/.
To provide an outlet for those who are afraid to speak out about their jobs.
Damn...the first time in a month I don't have mod points to give. Your post should be modded to "+20, Required Reading Followed By A Quiz".
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
- unethically exploiting employees
- conducting business in an illegal manner
- killing people in the course of business
- about to kill people in the course of business
- conducting business in a non-competitive, monopolistic fashion
you are morally bound to speak out about it, on your blog, to the press and to whomever will listen. (If your employer is a Chinese mining company, you should just quit your job and become a full-time blogger.)Please don't tell me that a corporation "feeds" me. I make them a fair trade-I do my work for them on their terms for a certain number of hours a day, and they pay me a set amount of money for those hours. Once I go home, they are not obligated to continue paying me for the hours I spend there, so why should they have any say in what I say or do with them?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
They certainly don't have any say in what you do at home.
But them continuing to employ you is a courtesy, kind of like you refraining from slurring them online is a courtesy.
I have heard that some leftwing american online activists have been persecuted by rightwing Limbaugh-programmed protofascists who have, among other actions, stalked them online, found out details of their personal life, and contacted their employers, trying to get them fired. One such protofascist found a purported photo of me online and posted it as part of a response to one of my posts here on Slashdot. I have no doubt that if the rightwingbots here on Slashdot could find out where I work, they would persecute me there, too.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
When blogging, you play the roles of subject, writer, editor and publisher. The whistle blowing laws are probably the best recourse for a fired blogger; however, without an established publishing institution behind blogs, I doubt whistle blowing cases will succeed.
IANAL, but it seems to me that the whistle blowing laws pretty much assume a hapless employee blowing the whistle to an authority. Publishing your blog puts you in the compromised situation of being both the hapless whistle blower and the authority.
The problem with the current state of employment is that employees really don't build up any solid assets. If we were building assets while we work, we wouldn't be beholden to any particular employer.
"You're kidding, right?"
"No, why?"
"Well, all the code I've written for other employers is owned by them. It would be improper for me to disclose it. I have written GPL code for some of those employers, but they did not distribute binaries to me so I can't disclose that either.
I understand that you probably want to see if I can "cut the mustard", right?"
"Duh!"
"Then give me a coding task that should take, oh, a week or two. I'll likely get some working code back to you in 48 hours. We can even do some refinement cycles in that week, to see how flexible I am, and how open to expandability my designs are."
"You're hired!"
"No review of my code first?"
"No, not necessary! Anyone that bold must know their stuff!!"
"O.K. Put an offer in writing. I've got a plane to catch."
Later...
Wife: "So, you gonna take the offer?"
"Not unless it's so good that I could stand to work for idiots who don't even check my creds. Sheesh!!"
Yes, I would have sent them a custom sample of code -- even assigned rights to them: they took the time and effort to fly me in and intervew me, after all: worth a KLOC or two. No, I will not work for people that don't check their final cut interview candiate's skills. I have been known to turn down jobs on the basis of the incompetence of the people interviewing me. I have been known to accept jobs precisely because the interviews were "tough" and the interviewers sharp.
You could've hired me.
What about companies being abusive to employees? You know, like sending their jobs to India?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
"Um, I could be wrong, but my understanding is that many states, not just Montana, are not at-will states. I believe California is not at-will, for instance."
All of the states except for Montana are at-will states. Don't get confused with "right-to-work" states -- not all states are "right-to-work" -- but all except Montana are at-will.
At-will means that your employer may terminate you at any time for any reason that isn't specifically illegal, and you have the right to leave at any time without giving any notice. Right-to-work means that in general you can't be forced to join a union.
"They certainly have a lot of other employee-friendly laws, such as noncompete agreements being unenforcable."
In general you are correct -- there are a very limited number of areas where California will enforce a non-compete, see California Business and Professions code 16600. Interestingly, one of the area wherre a California non-compete CAN be enforced is deals with artists and writers who draw comic books...
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
Assuming we are talking about a publically funded institution, then there is a pretty clear support for the free speech of students.
I ran a website critical of my school district while I was in high school. They did all sort of things to try to shut me out. First, they tried to guess at my passwords to make entry into my server. Then they sent their lawyers to my website (detected when I saw their IP's in my server log and discovered they belonged to an area law firm that our school district retains). Then they tried to concoct various fake stories about how I have violated various technology resources policies to get disciplinary action taken on me (nothing happened of it). Then, the started randomly disabling my account on the NT domain controller so I couldn't log in to the school network.
I think the only reason why they didn't try anything more sinister like tampering with my grades or records is that there were alot of people in high places, including media, who were pretty much watching everything unfold.
The school district in question is Fort Bend ISD in suburban Houston, TX. There are numerous other incidents where district employees tried to squelch dissenting speech, including police intimidation of parents seeking records under FOIA, suspending employees didn't support increasing school taxes, and in one case, firing a school employee for blowing the whistle on a principal who was fudging records.
Basically, the key for students is to never let down. The law is in favor of free student speech and organizations like the ACLU will come down fast and furious in the courts if they do anything to students.
At the risk of asking a stupid question, is it not normal to have an employment contract? I've seen this "unless you have a contract" thing a few times in this discussion, and was surprised. I'm pretty sure that there is a law here in the UK that states you must have an employment contract within 13 weeks of beginning work, and if you don't have a contract I think you'd generally consider your job to be a bit on the dodgy side... is this not the case in the US?
One day, me and a couple of co-workers were out having a smoke, watching the gentle bunnies graze. And along comes this big cat (siberian maybe?), scares the bunnies away and _literally_ goes and uses one bunny hole as a toilet. Hey, I suppose it beat digging her own hole for that.
Basically just because you're a gentle bunny, doesn't mean that the others will leave you alone.
"If someone speaks to hurt me, have I given them
cause? Is there something I have said or done that has caused them pain?
Probably not; they probably weren't doing it intentionally, and simply
wounded me in blithe, unconcerned self-interest. They are, after all,
management."
Management isn't your only problem there, Mr Bunny. Some of your team mates might be wolves just as well. You'd be surprised what petty low-reward interests can spark a jolly good office backstabbing game.
For starters, there's always the purpose of making oneself look good. Which often involves making everyone else look bad. For example, being seen as a better programmer might give someone ideas like "hey, if I don't do something about it, this guy will get promoted before me."
Yes, you've said you don't even intend to be one of the "blood-gargling wolves in management", but that won't stop anyone from trying to push you off a cliff anyway. Better safe than sorry.
Or then there's always just petty narrow-mindedness. I've already posted several times the story of the marketer-turned-programmer co-worker that made it his personal quest to get both female programmers on his floor fired. He succeeded too. And _only_ those. Why? I wouldn't know.
Or then there's the "no good deed goes unpunished" kind of co-worker. The person you helped, might have become your arch-enemy: you know he's incompetent, and that makes you potentially dangerous.
I've met one like that too: so utterly incompetent, that he couldn't even write code that compiles. _Not_ an exaggeration. I mean, _literally_. As far as it eventually turned out his _only_ skill was faking a resume, but had _zero_ knowledge of programming. So he asks some co-workers for help. And they do take pity and write his modules for him. What does the idiot do? Try to badmouth them to his boss.
Or then there are cases where someone might hate you just because you do your job. For example, I've had an admin co-worker go on a berserk crusade against me, for a rather silly difference of opinions.
See, he had to be admin for an utterly dysfunctional piece of crap. Had all my compassion for that too. He wanted to convince upper management that the product is crap and should be replaced by something that at least works. Had all my support there too. Heck, he had the support of every single programmer in the division: that crap was just as much of a pain in development as it was to admin.
The problem? Management couldn't be convinced as long as all they saw was that the programs do work. With a lot of extra effort and cost, partly admin work partly programmer work to implement weird workarounds, but hey, they do run.
So to make his point, he wanted that we all stop doing work-arounds and let productive programs crash and burn. Let the whole damn project fail, if needed. Just to make a point to management. And that's where he no longer had my support. I was pretty outspoken that no, no matter what it takes, our programs _must_ run. The boss will, of course, be informed how much extra time and budget it cost to implement those workarounds and make the programs run on that crap server. But no, I will _never_ deliberately sabotage the project just to make a point like that.
Somehow that must have marked me as his arch-enemy. I was one of those that caused him to be stuck adminning that piece of crap.
So next thing I know, he goes on an all out berserk crusade to prove that all my code is crap. And when I mean "berserk", I mean complete with fits of hysteria.
I should probably say: "luckily". See, he was a nerd like us, not a professional backstabber, so he just threw a _massive_ fit. An outright offensive like that is easier to defuse. If I had offended a marketter-turned-programmer, on the other hand, I probably never would have even known what he's doing against me.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This seems a fairly good place to point out that the first amendment is an injunction against the government, not against private companies and individuals. Though there are laws that extend limited protections, such as whistle-blower laws.
So yes your employer can fire you for saying things he doesn't want to hear, but the government can't lock you up for your opinions (in theory, exceptions do exist).
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Writing is also an art, not everybody is able to write insightful yet civilised text, it might be better to seek some coaching at the start. Perhaps searching Google for the beginner's guide for publishing on the internet might help - not that i'm aware of anything of that kind. It's great that the web makes it easy for anyone to publish stuff, sadly it's never been this easy for all kinds of stupidity to hit the masses at lightning speed.
Writing flames on a blog is the same as releasing the hounds on a prey, you're publicly calling for others to have a go at your organisation. What's the point in that? Why do you bother calling in everyday?
If possible i would avoid hiring anyone with a past history of flaming their current employers on their blogs, chances are they will do it again.
My advices, if you've got to get it out of your chest and you still want to stay with your employer: