Slashdot Mirror
Gizmodo Blows Whistle On 4G iPhone Loser
Stoobalou writes "Not content with its iPhone scoop, Gizmodo has probably ruined the career of a young engineer. The tech blog last night exposed the name of the hapless Apple employee who had one German beer too many and left a prototype iPhone G4 in a California bar some 20 miles from Apple's Infinite Loop campus. Was that really necessary?"
It also came out that they paid $5K for the leaked prototype and that Apple wants it back.
I'm still not convinced that this isn't a marketing ploy. I mean really, you get entrusted with the Next Most Awesome Device Ever, go out for drinks, show it off to your friends.... you wake up the next morning and you don't have it.
My wife has called bars, stores, restaurants, and cabbies to track down her crappy LG. You're telling me this guy never thought to call the bar the next day? Or that the bar sold it off before the guy could claim it?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Double Bad Here -
The engineer breaking company confidentiality was out of line. Getting fired will probably be the outcome.
The "journalist" (such as it is here) revealed a confidential source. That said, they will never get anyone else to talk to them off the record.
Both did the wrong thing.
People on the outside of Apple don't like the "hush hush" way they do product development, but that's part of how Apple functions. If I was getting my paycheck there (and I am not, but friends of mine do!) I would keep that stuff internal as the company wants.
"Loose lips sink ships" - Good thing its not a defense contract, and just a next generation piece of consumer electronic gadgetry.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
I don't think the point was that publicly naming him would get him fired. The point was it would make it harder for him to land his next job.
And that really is the crux of the matter. Blogs and websites like to claim that they are as legitimate as broadcast and, dare I say it, print journalism. However, there are real journalists who have done jail time for refusing to reveal names of sources to the government. You have to keep names off the record unless you are given consent by the party concerned. This guy was stupid for letting that device out of his hand, even for a second, but this may have unintended consequences for Gizmodo and its affiliates.
Come on now, it wasn't that bad. He didn't kill anybody.
That reminds me an anecdote from a Apple engineer working on the first Mac (from a PBS special way back when; probably on YouTube somewhere.) Steve Jobs was pressuring him to knock a few more seconds on the time required for the Mac to boot up. They're already trying to meet the deadline for rollout and the guy is completely stressed out and asks Why, it's only a few seconds, what's the big deal? Steve replies that the Macs collectively will be started up hundreds of millions of times over their lifespans. So if we manage to reduce the boot time by ten seconds, that'll add up to decades of time saved amongst all the Mac users. That's the equivalent of saving the lives of one or more Mac users! The engineer says that Steve putting such issues in perspective like that is one of the ways he motivates the folks at Apple to go that extra mile to deliver (for the most part) stellar products.
So who knows? From Steve Jobs' point of view, maybe this guy did kill somebody.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
That just shows the horrible state the market is in....
A guy at work knocked over a table sending about 70k USD worth of very sensitive equipment crashing to the floor.
Know what he got? A generous amount of "bwhahahha, that has to hurt" comments from coworkers and it generated a little inquiry from management asking:
Why the -hell- was that much sensitive equipment stacked on a table with wonky legs... Brains people, brains!
The guy was not fired. Firing him would be stupid as he has now learned his lesson and he is the least likely person to do such a fuckup again ;)